Dual channel A/D-D/A converter engine for EW, SIGINT, and beamforming introduced by Curtiss-Wright
ASHBURN, Va., 30 Sept. 2014. The Curtiss-Wright Corp. Defense Solutions division in Ashburn, Va., is announcing volume production shipment of the VPX3-530 dual channel A/D converter-D/A converter engine for high-performance electronic warfare (EW), signals intelligence (SIGINT), direction finding, and other applications that require beamforming.
The rugged low-latency transceiver module's 12-bit A/D converter can be configured with either two 4-gigabit-per-second channels or four 2-gigabit-per-second channels. In addition the VPX3-530 provides two channels of 14-bit D/A data conversion at speeds to 5.6 gigabits per second on one 3U OpenVPX embedded computing card.
This next-generation transceiver card provides a user programmable Xilinx Virtex-7 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to couple the A/D converter and D/A converter channels, which results in low latency between inputs and outputs for efficient sense and response performance required by EW applications.
The VPX3-530 can be scaled for multi-board, multi-channel synchronization to form an array of synchronized analog inputs for applications such as SIGINT and direction finding.
To help system designers prototype their rugged high-speed transceiver applications quickly, Curtiss-Wright also offers a low-cost VPX3-530 Quick Start Kit (QSK) with air-cooled desktop system (OF-SMART3 3U OpenVPX Development Chassis) pre-configured with a Curtiss-Wright VPX3-1257 rugged, high performance 2.1 GHz Intel Quad-Core i7 3U OpenVPX single board computer (single-board computer).
Software support for the VPX3-530 includes Curtiss-Wright's FusionXF Development Kit, which provides software, HDL and utilities complete with examples for using the VPX3-530. FusionXF includes a C programming language API, driver framework, and DMA support.
The VPX3-530 comes in commercial, air-cooled rugged, and conduction-cooled versions. For more information contact Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions online at www.cwcdefense.com.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
