Spectrum Introduces New Family of Rugged Embedded Radio Modules for Deployment in Size and Power Constrained Environments
29 October 2007
Spectrum Signal Processing by Vecima ("Spectrum"), a provider of software defined radio (SDR) technology, today announced at MILCOM 2007 the launch of its rugged flexCommTM SDR-4800 family of embedded radio modules for tactical military communications (MILCOM), data link, defense and civil satellite communications (SATCOM) systems. The SDR-4800 product family combines high performance embedded RF and System-on-Chip (SoC) technologies with proven hardware, software and services from the SDR-4000 product line. This allows Spectrum to deliver a highly integrated radio solution that significantly reduces the technical risk, development cost and time to deployment in its customers' radio programs.
Traditional software commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) radio architectures typically employ separate hardware modules to accomplish the signal processing functions of the radio, from RF down/up conversion to baseband and network processing. The SDR-4800 product family combines customizable embedded RF technologies with SoC field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology on a single module to reduce the overall size and power consumption of the radio system. By leveraging the rugged technology from the SDR-4000 product line, the SDR-4800 radio modules are also designed to address the needs of both benign and harsh operating environments. The SDR-4800 also supports conduction-cooling, extended temperature ranges, and increased shock and vibration immunity.
"The SDR-4800 family offers our customers access to Spectrum's core SDR technologies and best-in-class engineering services to tailor a unique radio solution that meets their specific size, weight, power consumption and production cost targets," said Mark Briggs, VP of Marketing at Spectrum. "The SDR-4800 family builds on Spectrum's 20 years of experience and proven portfolio of software defined radio platforms in order to meet the needs of large scale production programs."
"The SDR-4800 architecture was created to meet the RF, I/O and performance demands of the latest tactical MILCOM, SATCOM and commercial waveforms such as SINCGARS, HAVEQUICK, INTELSAT, UHF SATCOM, INMARSAT BGAN, and many others," said Cyrus Sy, Product Manager at Spectrum. "Spectrum recognizes the unique nature of each radio program or application and provides significant value to the customer with our ability to rapidly optimize and customize the SDR-4800 base architecture to meet specific program requirements. This ability to rapidly spin a product can save customers up to three to four man-years of hardware and software development of the radio subsystem. This allows customers to focus on the value-added radio feature sets, while meeting their aggressive deployment schedule targets."
SDR-4800 radio modules combine a Xilinx Virtex-4TM FX FPGA SoC processor as the primary modem processor, with a customizable embedded RF conversion stage and modem co-processor. The embedded RF stage can be customized to meet the RF requirements of various tactical MILCOM, data link and SATCOM waveforms. Embedded RF options include a high-performance L-Band (950 MHz to 2 GHz) single channel transceiver capable of handling IF bandwidths of up to 40 MHz. The RF front-end stage can be customized to meet specific customer RF requirements, such as terrestrial HF, VHF/UHF and UHF SATCOM. The secondary modem co-processor can be customized to meet specific waveform processing needs. Options for the secondary modem co-processor include Texas Instrument's TMS320C6455 DSP, Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA, FreescaleTM/P.A. SemiTM PowerPC®, or other co-processing or fixed-function application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) devices for IF or security processing.
The SDR-4800 product family is designed to support both Wind River® VxWorks® and Green Hills® INTEGRITY® real-time operating systems (RTOS). Both of these operating systems are designed for use in embedded systems that require maximum reliability and predictable response times. The SDR-4800 also includes an application development software package that uses standards-based hardware abstraction layers that facilitate platform programming and code portability to reduce integration and porting time of waveform and application software. Application developers will utilize standard application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Spectrum's quicCommTM, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Modem Hardware Abstraction Layer (MHAL) and Open Cores Protocol (OCP) for FPGA and embedded processor development. Texas Instrument's eXPress DSP API for DSP is used for DSP co-processor application development. Customers requiring support for an industry-standard Application Framework can order their SDR-4800 with support for the Software Communications Architecture.
Contact Spectrum to learn more about the SDR-4800 product family and the application-specific variant designs that meet your specific radio program needs.
