Pentek’s latest addition to its software radio transceiver modules is the model 7142. The PMC module provides complete software radio transceiver functions suitable for IF or RF communications systems and offers increased capabilities, including dual Virtex-4 FPGAs, four ADCs and 50% more memory.

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A built-in clock/sync bus supports multimodule synchronization as well as providing dual on-board oscillators for independent input and output clock rates. The bus allows synchronization of local oscillator phase, frequency switching, decimating filter phase and data collection among multiple model 7142s.

One board acts as a master, driving clock, sync and gate signals out to a front-panel flat cable bus using low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS). The master alone can drive as many as seven slaves. By using a Pentek model 9190 Clock and Sync Generator to drive the signals, developers can configure as many as 80 boards to operate synchronously.

Digitized RF signals from the four 14-bit 125 MHz ADC pass into a Virtex-4 SX55 FPGA for signal processing or routing to other module resources. These resources include a dc-to-160 MHz digital upconverter, a 16-bit 500 MHz DAC, 768 MB of DDR2 SDRAM and a Virtex-4 FX FPGA that handles I/O. The FX device includes both a PCI bus interface with 9-channel DMA controller and a VITA 42-compliant XMC dual 4x gigabit serial interface to support switched fabrics with data rates up to 2.5 Gbps in each direction.

The model 7142 also benefits from Pentek's ReadyFlow Board Support Libraries of C-callable device functions. ReadyFlow simplifies board operation and set-up through easy-to-use function calls while offering low-level access to all of the board's hardware.

Pentek support libraries, device drivers and software development tools, plus third-party offerings, are all available for a variety of operating systems: Linux will be introduced first with Windows and VxWorks platforms to follow. This module is also available in a variety of form factors including PCI, 3U and 6U cPCI, as well as a PMC conduction-cooled version.