COTS mezzanine card serves direct sampling frequency coverage
Believed to be the first COTS FMC+ Mezzanine Card to feature Jariet Technologies’ Electra-MA chip with 64Gsamples per second, 10-bit ADC and DAC capability, the Wild FMC+ DME1 ADC and DAC card is available from Annapolis Micro Systems. Target applications are those requiring direct sampling frequency coverage anywhere from 0.1 to 36 GHz, and/or wide instantaneous bandwidths.
The direct sampling Jariet transceiver performs frequency conversion and filtering in the digital domain, eliminating the need for costly analogue frequency conversion, explained the company and can be integrated into RF and microwave systems. Equipped with a two-channel, 40 to 64Gsamples per second, 10bit ADC and a two-channel, 40 to 64Gsample per second, 10bit DAC, it has a usable analogue bandwidth of 36GHz and a maximum instantaneous bandwidth of 6.4GHz on both channels simultaneously. All transceiver channels feature onboard digital down converters and digital upconverters, including sub-band channelisers for dynamic frequency selection.
“The daughter card integration allows for maximum flexibility of use, and for significantly higher performance than adding the transceiver directly to a baseboard,” said Noah Donaldson, CTO at Annapolis Micro Systems.
“While ADC and DAC prototypes sampling at tens of Gigasamples per second have existed in the lab for a few years, the technology has finally reached the level of maturity necessary to practically deploy it for the warfighter. Flexible spectrum access from VHF through Ka-band will be a gamechanger in the competition to control the electromagnetic spectrum,” added Craig Hornbuckle, CTO of Jariet Technologies.
The DME1 is available for use with third party FMC+ baseboards or with Annapolis’ Wildstar 3U OpenVPX Baseboards (one WFMC+ mezzanine site) or 6U OpenVPX Baseboards (two WFMC+ mezzanine sites). Annapolis Wildstar baseboards use up to three FPGAs.
The DME1 features Annapolis’ proven Wild100 EcoSystem range of 3U and 6U VPX products, which aligns with SOSA 1.0. The EcoSystem is an interoperable portfolio of rugged OpenVPX COTS boards and systems that are used for challenging data acquisition, digital signal processing and data storage applications.
Annapolis also offers Wild Chassis Managers for use with either a 3U or 6U VPX system. These are secure VITA 46.11/SOSA-aligned chassis managers that implement a Xilinx UltraScale+ Zynq and latest Microsemi PolarFire FPGA. Support for MIL-STD-1553 is included.
Board support packages include 40/100GbE IP and both VxWorks 7 and Linux support.
Annapolis supplies products designed for advanced high performance computing (HPC), ISR (industrial, scientific, research) and multi-function electronic warfare applications, including phased array radar, cybersecurity network processing, DRFM, beamforming, sensor processing, wireless communication, and radar signal processing.
Founded in 2015, Jariet Technologies is a fabless semiconductor company specialising in high-frequency ADC and DAC products for both defence and commercial wireless applications. It offers direct sampling ADC and DAC technology for multiple DARPA MTO programs, disrupting the way that RF, microwave, and mmWave systems are architected.
Jariet’s product vision is “Digital Microwave,” wherein extremely high-speed ADCs and DACs are used to directly sample signals as high as Ka-band, bringing the digital domain closer to the antenna. Direct Sampling transceivers such as Jariet’s 64 GS/s Electra-MA product perform frequency conversion and filtering operations in the digital domain, eliminating the need for the complex analog frequency conversion structures that are normally needed for C, X, Ku, K, and Ka-band sampling. Compared with traditional approaches, Digital Microwave ICs enable higher RF port density for digital phased arrays, lower front-end distortion and phase noise, and faster, lower cost development.
Founded in 1982, Annapolis Micro Systems supplies FPGA-based systems for signal processing applications in defence and commercial projects.
All Annapolis products are engineered and manufactured in the United States and believes co-location of engineering and manufacturing allows for better quality control and production flexibility and “substantially more aggressive” delivery schedules.
