cyamamot@girtab.usc.edu (Cliff Yamamoto) (11/04/89)
Well for those who have been following up on the new CMI radar detectors, there is an article in the Oct. 30 issue of Electronic Engineering Times about it. I'm not sure how much is fact or marketing hype, but the writing tends to make you think no other manufacturer uses these ideas/components. By the way, I own a Passport, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything CMI thinks (like making a Ka band detector since I work in Pasadena) Here's some highlights for those who don't get EE Times: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - The Escort and the Solo are the first consumer units to come loaded with a DSP chip, in this case the Motorola 56000, which extends their range beyond that possible with conventional RF circuitry. - Surface-acoustic wave filters boost selectivity, and high-efficiency GaAlAs LEDs make for displays that are easier to read under ambient lighting. - Solo draws just 2% of the power of traditional radar detectors... Most of the power saving comes from substituting a GaAs FET front-end oscillator for the traditional, power-hungry, Gunn Diodes used in rival systems. - The miniature unit (Solo) packs seven SMT-studded cards and a flexible board into a 5.5-ounce magnesium case the measures 2.3 X 0.78 X 4.55 inches. - Escort is sensitive to -121 dBm/square centimeter (X band) and -114 dBm/ square centimeter (K band), about 8 dBm better for either band than comparable products. That translates into a sensitivity roughly seven times that of rivals. - ...getting ultrasensitive RF componentry to work just an inch away from a noisy 20-Mhz DSP was no easy task. Software simulation of critical microwave RF elements, signal processing and digital power management provided the answer. - Engineers developed software algorithms specifically to boost weak Doppler radar signals above the noise floor without handicapping new-found sensitivity with too many false alarms. - Once the code was tried and roadtested, company engineers handed it over to Motorola so it could be mask-ROMed into DSP. Motorola's 10.25-Mips, 78-pin chip looks at each traffic radar contact over 50,000 times each second, picking out Doppler radar signals from among other RF components - Copper-wire Faraday cages are used to ensure RF shielding during alignment and test before an extensive burn-in is performed to ensure operation over the harsh -5 Faren. to +165 Faren. environment encountered inside a car. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well there you have it. It does sound like a advertisement so take it for what it's worth. The CMI was under the "Technology" section of EE Times, so I doubt the staff really confirmed any of these items. In any event, it does sound pretty good, and Digital Key security module on the Solo should deter most would be theives. Now if only CMI would let trade in my Passport for a Solo. :^) Cliff Yamamoto