Technical Summary

Band Circuit

Main function – To capture and sample the chirp signals from the nodes. The sampled signals are then sent to
the hub to be processed further.

Supply Voltage 9 V (±4.5 V)

Current 12 mA
Power Consumption 108 mW
Range (max) More than 3 m (SNR = 16 dB at 3 m)
Table 1 Hardware technical summary

Note: The maximum range is between the node and band (since these are not oriented in the same way. Node-to-node, the
orientation is the same). Measurements above 3 m have not been made yet. The typical range for ultrasound is around 10
m. From these measurements we can expect the range to be at least 5-6 m.

Band System

Figure 1 Band system diagram

The ultrasound receiver receives the signal which is passed through a bandpass filter to get rid of unwanted
frequencies. The non-inverting amplifier amplifies the signal. The level shifter introduces an offset that shifts
the signal to the mid-way point of the analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) range. The precision rectifier
ensures that only a positive signal is passed through. The clipper diode limits the maximum voltage to 1.4 V.

Bill of materials

Component Quantity
400SR120 Ultrasund receiver 1
TL084CN Op-amp 1
LT1010 Buffer amplifier 1
TLE2426 Voltage splitter 1
MCP1700 Voltage Regulator 1
100 µm capacitor 1
1N4148 diode 2
1N4001G 2
Resistors 18
Capacitors 8
 Table 2 Bill of materials

Sampling the signals

The CC3200 has an in-built analogue-to digital converter (ADC) with a sampling frequency of 62.5 kHz. The
CC3200 allows two ADCs to be concatenated to achieve a sampling frequency of 125 kHz (which is above the
Nyquist frequency for our signal). The ADC has a dynamic range of 1.4 V (0 – 1.4 V). When commanded by the
hub, the CC3200 collects samples for 0.065536 s to obtain 8192 samples.

Connectivity

The Band is connected to the hub via Wi-Fi from which it receives commands to start ‘listening’ for signals from
the nodes.

Powering the Microcontroller

The CC3200 microcontroller will be powered using 2× AAA batteries as per described in the datasheet. The
reason a different power supply is used is because the power consumption varies quite significantly. At this
prototyping stage we prioritised getting a functioning system over optimised portability.