Annapolis Small Form Factor Module Leverages Altera FPGAs for Edge Applications

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland. Targeting edge applications close to the sensor such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and other tight envelope man-portable environments, engineers at Annapolis Micro Systems developed a Direct RF, small-form-factor solution that leverages Altera FPGA technology.

The module, named the WILDSTAR SAF1 Small Form Factor Module (WSSAF1), integrates the Intel Altera Agilex 9 MCP1 Direct RF-Series FPGA and delivers high-performance processing and four channels each of 64 GSps A/D and D/A converting at 10-bit resolution. It also includes options for back-end personalization, Jetson AGX Orin GPU/CPU processing, and a development kit.

The SAF1 is designed to mate with modular RF and digital I/O cards and an NVIDIA GPU. See the datasheet for options. Board support package (BSP) options include 40/100GbE IP and Linux support.

Agilex Details

The WSSAF1 includes one Intel Agilex Direct RF-Series AGRW014 FPGA (Other configurations also available – contact factory for part number options)

- 1,437 logic elements
- 9,020 18 by 19 multipliers
- 190 Mb embedded memory
- Quad Core ARM
- 58G PAM-4, 32G NRZ XCVR

For more ADC/DAC channels and the same Agilex 9 Direct RF capability in a 3U VPX form factor, Annapolis offers the WILDSTAR 3AE1 3U OpenVPX board (WS3AE1). The solution is 100GbE-enabled, aligned to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture, or SOSA, Technical Standard, and leverages the processing and A/D & D/A converting power of an Intel Altera Agilex 9 MCP2 Direct RF-Series AGRW027 FPGA.

These plug-in cards (PIC) offer very high ADC/DAC sample rates that are integrated into the FPGA. The Agilex RF-Series FPGA offers eight channels each of A/D and D/A converting with sample rates of 64 GS/s at 10-bit resolution.

WSSAF1 On-Board Features

4GB DDR4 SDRAM
32GBytes eMMC NAND Drive
10 GBase-T Ethernet
One GBase-T Ethernet
On-board PLL/VCO sample clock
Internal or external reference clock
Two RS232 UARTs
Eight expansion GPIO (LVCMOS)
One RS422 GPIO port
JTAG port

Other WSSAF1 Features

Optional WISD11 NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Industrial module
- 2048-core NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU with 64 Tensor Cores
- 1.2GHz GPU Max Frequency
- 248 TOPS
Mechanical and Environmental
- Available with 80 °C card edge support and -55 °C power-on
- Available with -55 °C to 105 °C storage temperature
Application Development
- Full BSP for fast and easy application development
- VHDL flow supports high-level synthesis (HLS)
ADC
- Channels: 4
- Sample rate: 64GSps
- Resolution: 10 bit
DAC
- Channels: 4
- Sample rate: 64GSps
- Resolution: 10 bit

Annapolis high-performance products are designed for advanced HPC, ISR, and multifunction EW applications, including phased-array radar, cybersecurity network processing, DRFM, beamforming, sensor processing, wireless communication, and radar signal processing.