Quickstart

The Quick Start Guide provides step by step instructions detailing how to plug in, and set up the AD-FREQCVT1-EBZ board. The ZC706 and AD-FMCOMMS3-EBZ platforms will be used to demonstrate the appropriate board and cable connections.

Supported carriers

Carrier

PMOD connector

ZC706

J58

ZC702

J63

Zed Board

JA1

IO layout

Carrier

PMOD connector pin

SPI interface

FPGA pin name

ZC706

PMOD1_0

CSN_TX

AJ21

PMOD1_4

CSN_RX

Y20

PMOD1_3

SCLK

AB16

PMOD1_1

DATA

AK21

ZC702

PMOD1_0

CSN_TX

E15

PL_PJTAG_TDI

CSN_RX

V8

PMOD1_3

SCLK

W5

PMOD1_1

DATA

D15

Zed

JA1

CSN_TX

Y11

JA7

CSN_RX

AB11

JA4

SCLK

AA9

JA2

DATA

AA11

Connecting to FMCOMMS3/4 and Cable Orienation

The AD-FREQCVT1-EBZ has four SMA connectors (TX_IN, RX_OUT, TX_OUT, RX_IN). 2 male to male SMA connectors are required to connect the AD-FREQCVT1-EBZ board to the AD-FMCOMMS3-EBZ platform.

Power is brought to the AD-FREQCVT1-EBZ board through a 3 pin cable. The connection is made at P1, which sits directly between TX_IN and RX_OUT. The power originates from the AD-FMCOMMS3-EBZ board, connector P301. It is very important to properly plug in this cable on both ends, according to the image below.

https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/analogdevicesinc/documentation/main/docs/solutions/reference-designs/ad-freqcvt1-ebz/images/dsc00053.jpg
Table 1 P1 Connector

Pin

Voltage

pin 1

3.3V

pin 2

GND

pin 3

12V

https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/analogdevicesinc/documentation/main/docs/solutions/reference-designs/ad-freqcvt1-ebz/images/12_pin_cable_orientation.jpg

The ZC706 board provides digital controls to the AD-FREQCVT1-EBZ board through a 12-pin ribbon cable. Be careful to properly plug in both ends of the cable according to the above image. These implement a SPI protocol used for configuration, and some general purpose IO’s.

The FMCOMMS2/3 HDL design fully supports the AD-FREQCVT1-EBZ board by enabling the second SPI interface of the Processing System 7 IP core, in this way providing full access for the software to configure and setup the frequency converter board.

To use the first channel of the FMCOMMS3, line up FREQCVT1 connectors RX_OUT and TX_IN with FMCOMMS3 connectors RX1A and TX1A. This requires flipping the board upside down.

To use the second channel of the FMCOMMS3, line up FREQCVT1 connectors RX_OUT and TX_IN with FMCOMMS3 connectors TX2A and RX2A.

Software

Two ADF4351 driver instances control the external synthesizers. The OSC FMCOMMS2/3/4 plugin implement the external and internal LO synthesizer tuning logic. In case the external synthesizers are probed for presence. An additional checkbox in the plugin is displayed, allowing the user to enable or disable the tuning logic. Once enabled the RX/TX LO Spin-Button switches it’s range from 70MHz-6GHz to 1MHz-100MHz.

https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/analogdevicesinc/documentation/main/docs/solutions/reference-designs/ad-freqcvt1-ebz/images/ad-freqcvt1-ebz.png

Two environmental variables allow the user to control the sign in the mixing equation as well as the window size (span) where the signal is centred around the SAW band pass filter center frequency.

ENV name

default

OSC_UPDN_FREQ_SPAN

2MHz

OSC_UPDN_FREQ_MIX_SIGN

Positive

Devicetree support

Function

File

FMCOMMS2/3 Device Tree

arch/arm/boot/dts/adi-fmcomms3-up-down-converter.dtsi