Alternative energy is a current issue. Windmills, e.g. in parks in the North Sea, are one form of alternative energy. But bird movements are a potential problem. Robin’s aim is to register the bird movements with the aid of radar.
Robin IV was developed in the past. This system used a military, ‘expensive’ radar. Its successor, Robin Lite, uses a system that can be combined with lower-cost commercial radar systems. This is required for larger-scale permanent measurements in the surroundings of e.g. windmill parks.
Robin Light uses a PCI-based interface card that acquires the radar signal in analogue form and digitises it. the digital signal is then split up into the areas that are interesting for study. This information is forwarded to the PC via PCI, where the processing software handles the analysis and presentation.
The quality of the signal of commercial radar systems is not as good as that of military radar systems, especially for birds. This means that the requirements for the analogue acquisition circuit and signal processing are high. Signal to noise ratio and ADC acquisition in particular necessitate a sophisticated mixed signal design.
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