Spectrum Signal Processing has announced at MILCOM 2005 the flexComm SDR-3000 SMRDP, an "RF to Ethernet" wideband military communications (MILCOM) rapid-prototyping and development platform.
This fully integrated, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software defined radio platform is designed to reduce the effort and schedule required for the development of both Software Communications Architecture (SCA) and non-SCA-enabled MILCOM programs.
The SDR-3000 SMRDP is a 'skinny' version of Spectrum's SDR-3000 MRDP, launched November 2004, providing a single-slot modem hardware solution integrating the latest Xilinx Virtex-4 field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology with Spectrum's proven MPC7410 PowerPC and TMS320C64x digital signal processing technology.
The SDR-3000 SMRDP is specifically targeted at customers who need to start with one transceiver channel and scale up in single channel increments. This platform can be expanded and extended utilizing any of the cards and modules in the flexComm product line.
The SDR-3000 SMRDP integrates Spectrum's SDR-3000 SCA-enabled platform with a DRT 2110 radio frequency (RF) front-end transceiver from Digital Receiver Technology (DRT) based in Germantown, MD, providing a complete "RF to Ethernet" solution operating from 20 MHz to 3GHz.
"The SDR-3000 SMRDP takes advantage of the latest FPGA and XMC module technology to provide effectively the same per-channel functionality as our SDR-3000 MRDP, scaled down to fewer modem processing slots and offered at a lower price. The faster FPGAs enable us to serialize the architecture of the digital down converter and digital up converter cores, which in turn allows us to pack in more functionality," said Mark Briggs, Spectrum's Vice President of Marketing.
"Our continually expanding line of XMC-based modules gives our customers more options to evolve their systems to support various narrow and wide band applications."
The SDR-3000 SMRDP provides a turnkey black-side processing system for Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and other MILCOM developers. This system includes sample application software and FPGA cores supporting frequency agile operation.
The example software and cores include the source code, a key enabler in accelerating our customers' development efforts. In addition, the software and cores provide the following capabilities:
– Programmable resource-optimized digital up and down converters
– Time stamping and time triggering facility suitable for time-sensitive or time-slotted applications
– RF control application programming interface to manage the RF subsystem
The SDR-3000 SMRDP system is based upon Spectrum's SDR-3000 software defined radio processing and analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converter boards in a four slot 2U CompactPCI chassis, which leaves ample room for future expansion.
These components are integrated with the DRT 2110 RF transceiver subsystem consisting of four cards (RFT2, TEX, REF2 and CTRL12 single-board computer) in a 20-slot 3U CompactPCI chassis.
The system includes all software application libraries, including digital down-conversion and digital up-conversion FPGA cores, operating systems and an SCA Core Framework. The system is flexible, scalable and can be customized as required.
The package includes Spectrum's quicComm software, a hardware abstraction layer that facilitates platform programming and code portability. Technical support services and training courses are part of this comprehensive product offering.
The SDR-3000 SMRDP is available for order immediately.
