(The cover photo for the project is Andrews dish (VK3CV/WQ1S) from the DUBUS article.)
I encountered a fascinating project by a group of Amateur Operators, where they are re purposing a radar module made by a German company, Silicon Radar, to operate as a general purpose 122Ghz transciever. The driver behind the project is Tim Tuck, VK2XAX, who run a very successful project where they crowdfunded via fundrazr.com for 350 units.
The original design was presented in DUBUS magazine, an international microwave experimenters publication, and the original project was developed by Andrew, VK3CV / WQ1S. The design has already been used to break many Australian 122G distance records. Here is a link to the DUBUS article https://tinyurl.com/y3gmm8bj. The cover photo for the project is Andrews dish from the DUBUS article.
The projects original fundraiser is here: https://fundrazr.com/122GHzProject
And the Wiki for making the boards is here: https://groups.io/g/The122GProject/wiki
Sadly, I was late to the party, and basically everything was gone, but I did manage to contact Tim and order the last of the PCBs that he had as well as some 20dB Horns and Chaparral feed & coupler assemblies.
(Yes, the waveguide is 2mm diameter)
I also contacted the manufacturer of the driver chip, the TRA_120_002 (Silicon Radar) and have ordered a number of parts, which will arrive soon. Here is a link to the TRA_120 component https://siliconradar.com/products/single-product/120-ghz-transceiver-tra_120_002/. The component is a 5mm x 5mm QFN32 package, which will be a small challenge to work with. Fortunately, I have the Surface Mount gear to help make it a success.
Next to do is the Mouser order for the rest of the components – The board is run with a ADF4153 PLL and a Microchip 16LF877, and the rest of the components is pretty standard fare, so its quite achievable.
Watch this space – More to come as I progress the project 🙂
