16-channel mixed-signal front-end digitizer reference design

New Products | April 12, 2021

Four AD9081 or four AD9082 software-defined, direct RF sampling transceivers from Analog Devices are part of a 16 channel digitizer for aerospace and defence applications, including phased array radars and ground-based satellite communications

By Nick Flaherty

Analog Devices (ADI) has launched reference design for a 16-channel, mixed-signal front-end (MxFE) digitizer for aerospace and defence applications, including phased array radars, electronic warfare, and ground-based SATCOM (satellite communications).

The digitizer includes four AD9081 or four AD9082 software-defined, direct RF sampling transceivers. It is designed to accelerate customer development by providing reference RF signal chains, software architectures, power supply designs, and application example code. ADI also introduced a digitizing card to complement the platform and facilitate system-level calibration algorithms and demonstration of power-up phase determinism.

The ADQUADMXFE1EBZ 16-Channel, Mixed-Signal Front-End Digitizer includes 16x RF receive (Rx) channels (32x digital Rx channels) and 16x RF transmit (Tx) channels (32x digital Tx channels) with flexible clock distribution. The reference design includes application-specific examples in MATLAB application scripts and a graphical user interface.

The ADQUADMXFE-CAL Digitizing card provides both individual adjacent channel loopback and combined channel loopback options and combined Tx and Rx channels output via SMA connectors.

Product	Description	Availability	Price
ADQUADMXFE1EBZ	Quad-MxFE (2nd Nyquist Rx Operation, Populated with AD9081)	NOW	$12,000
ADQUADMXFE2EBZ	Quad-MxFE (1st Nyquist Rx Operation, Populated with AD9081)	June 2021	$12,000
ADQUADMXFE3EBZ	Quad-MxFE (Wideband Variant, Populated with AD9082)	June 2021	$12,000
ADQUADMXFE-CAL	16 Tx / 16 Rx Calibration Board	NOW	$2,500