Agilent's VME/VXS Digitizer Targets Programs for Defence Market

The Agilent SVM3500 builds on the modular U1083A VME/VXS base card with an analog digitizer mezzanine that includes four 12-bit, 500 MS/s ADCs. The mezzanine incorporates a clock distribution circuit, the MCK, distributing an external clock throughout the mezzanine, in phase, in anti-phase, or in quadrature with very low added jitter, allowing interleaved sampling rates at up to 2 GS/s. When interleaving, frequency-dependant gain and delay mismatch correction is handled by a finite impulse response (FIR) filter implemented in an on-mezzanine Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA that also includes an externally accessible lookup table (LUT), correcting any static offset and gain errors. The resulting analog performance, including spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of up to 80 dBc at 500 MS/s and 70 dBc at 2 GS/s, total harmonic distortion (THD) of 80 dBc at 500 MS/s and 79 dBc at 2 GS/s, and signal to noise ratio (SNR) over 62 dBc, maintains more than 10 effective bits over a 10 MHz to 1 GHz band.

The base card provides high-performance, real-time data processing by means of two very large Xilinx Virtex- 4 FPGAs, one SX55 and one FX100. The board supports eight 3.125 Gbps serial links on the VXS backplane and two optical links on the front panel supporting up to 3.125 Gbps, providing a substantial aggregate data bandwidth of more than 3.5 GB/s. The fully compliant VME64x interface supports the 2eSST protocol.

An optional firmware development kit (FDK) is available to help development of application firmware on the SX55 and FX100 FPGAs. The FDK includes a set of cores to easily interface to the underlying hardware, a base design for each family member to provide very simple, ready-to-use designs, and a test-bench environment for design and simulation.

This product is intended to benefit those charged with closing the gaps in emerging threats through technology insertion or refreshment of fielded Electronic Support (ES), Electronic Attack (EA) and Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) systems, the majority of which are based on the ubiquitous VME architecture. Longer emitter identification standoff ranges, more precise direction finding in dense emitter environments, and shorter defensive engagement cycles are possible with relatively low incremental development cost. Wideband radar and intelligence-gathering systems are also expected to benefit, with better clutter rejection, range and target differentiation now attainable without massive reinvestment.