Pentek Inc. is introducing the model 71640 data acquisition board for military radar, military communications, and unmanned aircraft system applications. The embedded computing module can digitize one 12-bit channel at 3.6 GHz, or two channels at 1.8 GHz, and has provisions synchronize several boards for capture and analysis of even wider bandwidths.
The data-capture module uses the National Semiconductor ADC12D1800 12-bit A/D converter, provides two transformer-coupled RF input ports, and can operate in single- or dual-channel mode. The board includes an on-board Xilinx Virtex-6 field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Also on the module are four banks of 256-megabyte DDR3 SDRAM and built in triggered data capture functions. A multi-channel direct-memory-access (DMA) engine moves data over the Gen2 x8 PCI Express interface to host processors. An optional 8x, or dual 4x, gigabit serial I/O interface helps support application-specific protocols and create high-bandwidth paths between modules or to other signal processing engines, Pentek officials say.
The module, which works with Pentek Cobalt family embedded computers comes with the company’s ReadyFlow board support package.