News and New Products

Platform captures, processes, displays broadband data

By Warren Webb, Technical Editor -- EDN, 3/3/2006

Targeting transceiver applications, such as military radios and commercial wireless base stations, Pentek recently introduced the VME-based RTS 2502 development platform for real-time wideband-data acquisition, signal processing, and recording. The combination of data-recording and -playback capabilities in a single unit allows developers to capture and generate signals in real time for validation of signal-processing algorithms and system hardware.

Each 6U VME card in a RTS 2502 system accepts signals through two 14-bit ADCs operating as fast as 105 MHz and passes the signals through digital downconverters to Virtex-II FPGAs for signal processing and data handling. The unit can send raw or processed data to a disk array at speeds as high as 160 Mbytes/sec for recording, and the unit can also send the data off-board through FPDP (front-panel data port), Race11, or Gigabit Ethernet ports. Two playback channels each offer digital upconversion and dual 500-MHz, 16-bit DACs to produce either real or I/Q RF signals, drawing data from other I/O or the disk array at speeds as high as 160 Mbytes/sec.

Pentek’s GateFlow FPGA design kit includes design information, software files, optimized DSP functions, and development utilities. Their SystemFlow software includes API (application-programming-interface) libraries for the target board, as well as control libraries for the host PC. The software package also includes a data viewer, written in LabView, that displays collected data in either the time or the frequency domain. Prices for the RTS 2502 system start at $29,995 for hardware only and $41,495 with bundled SystemFlow and GateFlow software.