Reference Designs

The RF sampling architecture offers an alternative to the traditional super-heterodyne architecture. An RF sampling analog-to-digital converter (ADC) operates at a high sampling rate and converts signals directly from radio frequencies (RF) to digital. Because of the high sampling rate: the RF sampling architecture supports very wide signal bandwidths. Higher signal bandwidths increase the capacity of the system allowing for faster data transmission or greater user access.The reference design features the ADC32RF45 which is a dual channel:14-bit resolution ADC sampling up to 3-GSPS. The maximum signal bandwidth is set by the ADC sampling rate divided by two. With this reference design the signal bandwidth capability exceeds 1-GHz. The maximum input frequency is set by the input bandwidth of the input buffers of the ADC and the input transformers. This reference design allows direct capture of RF signals up to 4-GHz which is suitable for all of the key telecommunication bands and S-band RADAR applications. The design includes an optimized clocking solution for maintaining the JESD204B serialized data interface and achieving the highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance.