Narrowband DRFP hardware assembly

communications - digital RF processor

The Digital Radio Frequency Processor family of signal processing hardware assemblies is a versatile enabling technology that provides comprehensive user programmability through the use of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device and a general-purpose central processing unit. The narrowband and wideband DRFP employ flexible and adaptable discrete interfaces, industry standard bus interfaces, and a general-purpose processor for data and command interfacing.

The DRFP Family of products each collocate a receive and transmit capability on a single VME64x form-factor hardware assembly and provide an advanced firmware-based signal processing architecture utilising state-of-the-art Altera Stratix™ FPGA devices.

DRFP applications:

  • EW receivers
  • radar
  • EW countermeasures
  • software defined radio
  • RF simulation
  • test and measurement

Benefits of the DRFP family:

  • generic digital radio frequency processing capability
  • reconfigurable and reusable hardware platform for application development
  • user-programmable RF acquisition/transmission technology
  • co-location of receiver and transmitter on a single hardware assembly
  • direct intermediate frequency (IF) processing capability and
  • capable of supporting a wide variety of industry standard interfaces


DescriptionPertinent information

Tenix Defence Electronic Systems Division (ESD) has developed the digital RF processor (DRFP) family of signal processing, hardware assemblies. The DRFP comes in a narrow bandwidth (80MHz instantaneous bandwidth) and a wide bandwidth (800MHz instantaneous bandwidth) variant and performs acquisition, digital processing and synthesis of RF signals. The narrowband and wideband DRFP are core enabling technology for applications that require the acquisition of a ‘slice' of the RF spectrum, processing of received RF signals and/or synthesis/modulation of transmit waveforms.

Narrowband DRFP:

  • 80MHz instantaneous bandwidth
  • 160MHz nominal IF input frequency (DC to 700MHz capable)
  • dual 12-bit, 213.33MHz, analog-to-digital converters
  • dual 16-bit, 350MHz, quadrature digital-to-nnalog converters
  • 2MB dual port ram, 128Byte NVRAM
  • PCI mezzanine card (PMC) and VME64x capable, 10/100MBit ethernet, RS-485, RS-232, LVDS and JTAG I/O options

Wideband DRFP (preliminary specifications):

  • 800MHz instantaneous bandwidth
  • 500MHz nominal IF input frequency
  • Single 10-bit, 2GHz, analog-to-digital converters
  • Dual 14-bit, 1GHz, digital-to-analog converters, suitable for quadrature upconversion
  • 16MB flash RAM, 256MB DDRII SDRAM, 32MB SDRAM
  • PCI mezzanine card (PMC) and VME64x capable, 10/100MBit ethernet, RS-485, RS-232, LVDS and JTAG I/O options

Status

Company

The Narrowband DRFP is currently in small-scale production. It has already been acquired by Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and is the core technology for a Tenix Defence R&D program investigating digital radar processing applications.

The Wideband DRFP is currently under development and prototype units are expected to be available in January 2005. Initially, the Wideband DRFP will be used as a digital EW receiver for a Tenix Defence R&D program investigating the detection of low probability of intercept (LPI) emitters.

 Team Australia - Tenix Defence - Electronic Systems Division