Signal acquisition cards for SDR, radar pulse applications

Product

May 01, 2013

Designers at Red Rapids in Richardson, TX, developed a product family called Signal Stream for general-purpose signal acquisition and generation for military applications such as Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and radar pulse receivers/transmitters as well as applications in the medical and...

Designers at Red Rapids in Richardson, TX, developed a product family called Signal Stream for general-purpose signal acquisition and generation for military applications such as Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and radar pulse receivers/transmitters as well as applications in the medical and industrial markets. Available in PCIe or XMC form factors, the devices integrate a set of software programmable features including selectable operating modes – continuous, snapshot, and periodic – time-stamped data samples, external or timed event triggers, data packing, and data sizing.

Signal Stream devices, which come in seven different models, configure their data path as a receiver for ADC channels and a transmitter for DAC channels. Each type of channel may process raw sample data or data packets as defined by the VITA 49 specification. Each channel also can continuously stream data samples from the ADC to host memory, or from host memory to the DAC. Signal acquisition or generation may be started by software command, software trigger, external hardware trigger, or by a preset time of day. These same options are available to stop a collection or transmission. Its API has drivers for Windows, Linux, and VxWorks operating systems.