Software radio board with backplane optical added to FPGAs

The Model 54821 is the latest addition to the Pentek 3U VPX architecture with the advanced wideband I/O options afforded by OpenVPX.

“Our customers are eagerly adopting the new optical and RF I/O standards for VPX,” said Robert Sgandurra, director of Product Management. “Over half of new product orders require optical or RF I/O per these standards for high-performance I/O that perfectly match our product capabilities.”

The Model 54821 takes advantage of these VPX I/O options for RF and optical interconnects through the VPX backplane:

• Option -109: Optical connections based on VITA 66.5 (draft), containing blind-mate MT optical connectors with fixed contacts on the plug-in module and floating displacement on the backplane.
• Option -111: RF connections based on ANSI/VITA 67.2, containing multi-position blind-mate analog connectors with SMPM contacts.
• Option -112: RF connections based on ANSI/VITA 67.3 type C, containing multi-position blind mate analog connectors with SMPM contacts, spring-loaded on the backplane allowing more movement and larger diameter cables for better performance.

This new 3U VPX architecture further expands the options for custom I/O by offering 20 pairs of LVDS connectivity and one 8X gigabit link for serial protocols. Future options for higher density optical and RF connectors are planned as the supporting standards become available.

The VITA 66.5 draft standard calls out blind mate optical connectors with fixed contacts on the plug-in module and floating displacement for the MT ferrule on the backplane. The 3U VPX module uses a single assembly that includes an electro-optical transceiver, a fixed MT ferrule blind mating connector, and the mechanical housing. This eliminates the need for internal optical cables on the plug-in module to ease assembly and save space.

The Model 54821 can be populated with a range of Kintex UltraScale FPGAs to match specific requirements of the processing task, spanning from the entry-level KU035 (with 1,700 DSP slices) to the high-performance KU115 (with 5,520 DSP slices). The KU115 is ideal for demanding modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, encryption/decryption, and channelisation of the signals between transmission and reception. For applications not requiring large DSP resources or logic, a lower-cost FPGA can be installed.

The Model 54821 also includes a complete multi-board clock and sync engine and a large DDR4 memory. In addition to supporting PCI Express Gen. 3 as a native interface, the Model 54821 includes optional high-bandwidth connections to the Kintex UltraScale FPGA for custom digital I/O. With the Xilinx Kintex Ultrascale FPGA, data converters and optical or RF I/O, the Model 54821 becomes an excellent high performance interface to HF or IF ports of a communications or radar system.

The Jade architecture

The Pentek Jade architecture is based on the Xilinx Kintex UltraScale FPGA, which raises the digital signal processing (DSP) performance by over 50% with equally impressive reductions in cost, power dissipation and weight.

Its PCI Gen.3 interface allows access to control and status registers for controlling algorithms, state machines and data flow across the LVDS I/O front panel and carrier board interfaces. A 5 GB bank of DDR4 SDRAM is available for additional functions. The factory-installed DMA controller can sustain 6.4 GB/s data transfers across PCIe.

Navigator design suite for streamlined IP development

Pentek’s Navigator Design Suite was designed from the ground up to work with Pentek’s Jade architecture and Xilinx’s Vivado Design Suite providing an unparallelled plug-and-play solution to the complex task of IP and control software creation and compatibility. Graphical design entry for Xilinx and Pentek AXI4-compliant IP modules using the Xilinx IP Integrator greatly speeds development tasks.

The Navigator Design Suite consists of two components: Navigator FDK (FPGA Design Kit) for integrating custom IP into Pentek sourced designs and Navigator BSP (Board Support Package) for creating host applications. Users can work efficiently at the API level for software development and with an intuitive graphical interface for IP design. The Navigator BSP is available for Windows and Linux operating systems.