Eight 300MSPS 16 bit Dac with Artix7 FPGA for Signal Generation
ISI LLC have released the third board in a new family of high performance data acquisition modules that is centred around the Xilinx Artix®-7.
The XA-TX is an XMC IO module featuring eight 16-bit, 300 MSPS DAC channels designed for high speed arbitrary waveform generation, wireless transmission, and RADAR pulse generation applications. Flexible trigger methods include counted frames, software triggering and external triggering. The sample rate clock is either an external clock or on- board programmable PLL clock source. Data acquisition control, signal processing, buffering, and system interface functions are implemented in a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA device. Two 256Mx16 memories provide data buffering and FPGA computing memory.
The logic can be fully customized using VHDL and MATLAB using the FrameWork Logic toolset. The MATLAB BSP supports real-time hardware-in-the- loop development using the graphical, block diagram Simulink environment with Xilinx System Generator. The PCI Express 2.0 interface supports continuous data rates up to 3200 MB/ s between the module and the host. A flexible data packet system implemented over the PCIe interface provides both high data rates to the host that is readily expandable for custom applications.
The XA-TX module is a wideband multichannel signal generation FPGA board and has:
- Eight 300MSPS 16 bit Dac’s.
- Artix®-7A200T2 with 33,650 slices, >13Mb of block ram and 740 DSP slices.
- 1GB of DDR3 memory attached to the FPGA for use as virtual FIFO’s between the analogue front end and the 4 lane Gen2 PCIe interface.
- A PLL and reference oscillator to provide the analogue front end with a high stability clock.
- Four lanes of Aurora links for communication with other XA modules.
- Flash memory for logic configuration storage.
The board is ideal for multi channel transmitting applications such as beamforming, RADAR, LiDAR and optical. Innovative’s XMC modules can be used in a variety of hosts using their adapters and standalone hosts. This includes:
- Desktop PC’s – PCI adapter, PCIe x1 adapter, PCIe x8 adapter.
- 3U chassis – cPCI adapter, PXIe adapter.
- VPX – VPX adapter.
- Standalone PC’s – ePC-nano, ePC-Duo.
All modules come complete with software drivers and examples for Windows and Linux operating systems. The libraries and example apps are written in C++ and are supplied with sourcecode. Drivers for using the boards in LabVIEW and Matlab are also available. Customers who wish to customise the logic in the FPGA need to purchase the Framework Logic library.
The XA family will replace the X3 family which was released in 2007 around the Spartan3A DSP.
