AD-FMCOMMS11-EBZ

16-Bit, 12 GSPS RF DAC and 12-Bit, 2.5 GSPS RF ADC Development Platform.

Overview

The AD-FMCOMMS11-EBZ board is a system platform board for communication infrastructure applications that demonstrates the Direct to RF (DRF) transmitter and observation receiver architecture. Using high sample rate RFDAC(s) and RFADC(s), a number of components in previous generation transmitters can be eliminated, such as mixers, modulators, IF amplifiers and filters. The objective being to bring the ADC or DAC as close to the antenna as possible, leading to possibly more cost effective and efficient communications solution. It is composed of multi-GSps RF ADC AD9625 and DAC AD9162, Cheetah and Barium respectively. The transmit path contains a balun, low pass filter, gain block and variable attenuation to produce an output appropriate for a power amplifier module. Along the observation path, the PA output is coupled back into the board through a variable attenuator, a balun and finally the ADC. Clock management is taken care of on board; all the necessary clocks are generated from a reference. Power management is present as well. We will provide typical performance data for the entire range (70 MHz – 6 GHz) which is supported by the platform. This is primarily for system investigation and bring up of various waveforms from a software team before their custom hardware is complete, where they want to see waveforms, but are not concerned about the last 1dB or 1% EVM of performance.

Features:

• TX

  • 16-bit 12GSPS RFDAC

  • JESD204B Interface

    • 8 lanes up to 12.5Gbps

  • 1x/2x/4x/6x/8x/12x/16x/24x/32x Interpolation

  • 64-bit NCO at max rate

  • Analog Modes of Operation:

    • Normal Mode: 6GSPS DAC rate

      • Synthesis up to 2.5GHz (1st Nyquist)

    • Mix Mode: 6GSPS DAC rate

      • Synthesis in 2nd & 3rd Nyquist zones

    • 2X Normal Mode: 12GSPS DAC rate

      • Synthesis up to 6GHz (1st Nyquist)

    • Excellent dynamic performance

• RX

  • 3.2GHz full power bandwidth at 2.5GSPS

    • Noise Density = -149.5dBFs/Hz, ENOB = 9.5 bits

    • SFDR = 77 dBc at 1GHz Ain (2.5Gsps)

    • SFDR = 77dBc at 1.8GHz Ain (2.5Gsps)

  • +/-0.3 LSB DNL, +/-1.0 LSB INL

  • Dual supplies : 1.3V and 2.5V

  • 8 or 6 Lane JESD204B Outputs

  • Programmable clipping threshold for Fast Detect output

  • Two Integrated wide band digital down converters (DDC) per channel

    • 10-bit complex NCO

    • 2 cascaded half band filters (dec/8, dec/16)

  • Timestamp for synchronous processing alignment

    • SYSREF Setup/Hold detector

  • Programmable Interrupt (IRQ) event monitor

Applications:

• TX

  • Broadband communications systems

  • DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem termination system (CMTS)/video on demand (VOD)/edge quadrature amplitude modulation (EQAM)

  • Wireless communications infrastructure

  • W-CDMA, LTE, LTE-A, point to point

  • Instrumentation, automatic test equipment (ATE)

  • Radars and jammers

• RX

  • Spectrum analyzers

  • Military communications

  • Radar

  • High performance digital storage oscilloscopes

  • Active jamming/antijamming

  • Electronic surveillance and countermeasures

Recommendation

To better understand the AD9625 and AD9162, we recommend to use the AD-FMCOMMS11-EBZ evaluation board.

Table of Contents

1. FMCOMMS11 Hardware: This provides a brief description of the AD-FMCOMMS11-EBZ board by itself, and is a good reference for those who want to understand a little more about the board. If you just want to use the board, you can skip this section, and come back to it when you want to incorporate one of the devices into your product.

   1. Functional Overview & Specifications

   2. Characteristics & Performance

2. FCC or CE certification

3. Production Testing Process

4. Using the evaluation board/full stack reference design that we offer:

   1. User guide- what you need to know about the evaluation board

   2. Prerequisites- what you need to get started

   3. Quick-Start Guide:

      1. Using the ZC706

   4. Configure an SD Card with Kuiper

   5. Software Solutions

      1. IIO Oscilloscope

      2. FMCOMMS11 Plugin Description

      3. Scopy

      4. IIO Command Line Tools

      5. Python Interfaces

      6. FMCOMMS11 Python Example

5. Design with the FMCOMMS11

1. Block diagram

   1. AD-FMCOMMS11-EBZ Product page

   2. AD9162 Product page

   3. AD9625 Product page

1. Resources for designing a custom AD9625/AD9162-based platform software

   1. For Linux software:

      1. About the device driver:

         1. JESD204B Transmit Linux driver

         2. JESD204B Receive Linux driver

         3. JESD204B/C AXI_ADXCVR High-speed transceivers Linux driver

         4. AXI ADC HDL Linux driver

         5. AXI DAC HDL Linux driver

         6. AXI-DMAC DMA Controller Linux driver

         7. AD9162 Linux driver

      2. About the device tree:

         1. Customizing the device tree on the target

      3. About the JESD204 utilities:

         1. JESD204 (FSM) interface Linux Kernel framework

         2. JESD204 status utility

         3. JESD204 Eye Scan

         4. JESD204 Interface Framework

   2. FPGA Resources:

      1. FMCOMMS11 HDL reference design

      2. HDL User Guide

      3. HDL Customize Guide

Block diagram

ADI Articles

• Four Quick Steps to Production: Using Model-Based Design for Software-Defined Radio

  • Part 1—the Analog Devices/Xilinx SDR Rapid Prototyping Platform: Its Capabilities, Benefits, and Tools

  • Part 2—Mode S Detection and Decoding Using MATLAB and Simulink

  • Part 3—Mode S Signals Decoding Algorithm Validation Using Hardware in the Loop

  • Part 4 - Rapid Prototyping Using the Zynq SDR Kit and Simulink Code Generation Workflow

Videos

• Silent Switcher µModule Regulators Powering GSPS Sampling ADC

MathWorks Webinars

• Modelling and Simulating Analog Devices’ RF Transceivers with MATLAB and SimRF

• Getting Started with Software-Defined Radio using MATLAB and Simulink

Help and support

People who follow the flow that is outlined have a much better experience. However, like many things, documentation is never as complete as it should be. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on the EngineerZone technical support community, but before that, please make sure you read our documentation thoroughly.

Warning

All the products described on this page include ESD (electrostatic discharge) sensitive devices. Electrostatic charges as high as 4000V readily accumulate on the human body or test equipment and can discharge without detection. Although the boards feature ESD protection circuitry, permanent damage may occur on devices subjected to high-energy electrostatic discharges. Therefore, proper ESD precautions are recommended to avoid performance degradation or loss of functionality. This includes removing static charge on external equipment, cables, or antennas before connecting to the device.