Houston, Texas – Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) in collaboration with Xilinx, Lyrtech, and other third parties, today unveiled its Small Form Factor Software Defined Radio (SDR) Development Platform. The SDR Development Platform provides a full signal chain from antenna to baseband processing. The kit can be used to create single- or multi-protocol handset radios for military, public safety, and commercial applications as well as RFID readers. The kit can also be used as a rapid prototyping and test platform. For example, the kit can be used as a test platform for 802.11n MIMO equipment.
The SDR Development Platform provides digital baseband, intermediate frequency (IF), and radio frequency (RF) modules. The baseband module features a Xilinx Virtex-4 SX35 FPGA and a TI TMS320DM6446 chip. The TI chip contains a TMS320CC64x+ digital signal processor (DSP) core and an ARM9 general-purpose processor core.
The SDR Development Platform includes a unique Power Measurement API. This API measures the loading of the FPGA, DSP, and ARM, and reports real-time power data. This allows developers to extract important information such as burst and peak power for a specific data rate, enabling them to accurately estimate battery life. It also enables developers to quickly asses the power impact of various system configurations. For example, the developer can experiment with different system partitioning between the FPGA and DSP to obtain an optimal power/performance balance.
The platform can be programmed using Simulink model-based design. With this approach, designers do not need to write any C code for the DSP or ARM cores, nor do they need to write HDL for the FPGA. Developers also have the option of using traditional C/HDL methodologies to obtain more optimal performance. For more information, see www.ti.com/SDRpr.
The Small Form Factor SDR Development Platform is supported by a full complement of development tools and software. The software includes Green Hills' Integrity real-time operating system (RTOS) running on the ARM. TI also provides a FRS handset implementation to demonstrate the operation of the platform.
In addition, developers can purchase a Software Communications Architecture (SCA) package that includes an SCA framework from the Communications Research Centre of Canada (CRC) and Object Request Broker (ORB) middleware from Objective Interface Systems (OIS).
Complete hardware and software offering
As mentioned above, the SDR Development Platform is comprised of digital baseband, IF, and RF modules. The separate modules allow developers to extend the platform as needed—as well as optimize for cost and power consumption—by substituting their own or third party modules.
The TMS320DM6446 in the digital baseband module is intended to be used for complex signal processing (using the DSP core) as well as network and application processing (using the ARM core). The Virtex-4 FPGA in the baseband module is intended to be used for modem co-processing and acceleration functions. The baseband module also includes a low-power TI MSP430 MCU intended for power management.
The IF module includes two TI ADS5500 analog to digital converters offering 14-bits performance at 125 Megasamples per second (MSPS). It also includes one TI DAC5687, a 16-bit dual channel digital to analog data converter with 500 MSPS performance.
The RF module covers frequencies from 360 MHz to 960 MHz. It offers a selectable 5 MHz or 20 MHz bandwidth.
Price and availability
The Small Form Factor Software Defined Radio Development Platform (TMDSSFFSDRDP) without the SCA core framework or ORB middleware costs $9,900 and is available through TI distributors. Developers can also by the baseband module separately as an evaluation module. This "SDR Development Platform Evaluation Module" (TMDSSFFSDREVM) is available for $2,900. With either option developers receive free evaluation copies of TI, Xilinx, Mathworks and Green Hills software and tools.
An Enhanced SCA version of the SDR Development platform including licensed copies of the complete software suite—including the SCA framework and ORB middleware—is offered directly by Lyrtech. For more information, see www.lyrtech.com.
Texas Instruments, 1-800-477-8924, www.ti.com
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