Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2006-) | Subject: SDR Development Platform
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 14 November 2006
Platform promotes software-defined radio
designs
Small Form Factor Software Defined Radio Development Platform is the industry's first and only development platform targeted at the portable military communications market.
Continuing to deliver on its commitment to provide the most comprehensive and flexible development tools in the industry, Texas Instruments has announced the availability of its Small Form Factor Software Defined Radio (SDR) Development Platform, the industry's first and only development platform targeted at the portable military communications market The platform, developed in collaboration with Xilinx and other third parties, provides the entire signal chain hardware from antenna to baseband as well as a software board support package that supports a complete suite of software development tools in a single integrated development platform
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 4 Apr 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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For example, a radio for military applications, such as a soldier radio, may need to support multiple waveforms as it is supplied to different groups within the military.
In public safety applications, multi-protocol radios need to be able to support various emergency bands including police and fire bands.
Unlike other SDR development offerings in the market, the SDR development platform is a hardware/software codevelopment environment that supplies the full signal chain for a multiprotocol software defined radio, including RF front-end module, A/D and D/A data conversion module and digital processing module.
By separating out the baseband, IF, and RF as distinct modules rather than as a single fixed architecture, developers are able to extend their radio development capabilities, as well as optimise for cost and power consumption, by substituting their own or third party modules.
This flexibility is vital, as it gives developers the ability to adjust their products around the industry's constantly varying requirements.
The digital processing module capitalises on the performance and architecture benefits of TI's TMS320DM6446 system on chip (SoC) comprised of TI's TMS320C64x+ digital signal processor (DSP) core and an ARM9T general-purpose processor.
The high-performance DSP core streamlines complex signal processing, while the GPP supports network and application processing.
Because the DM6446 device is equipped with both a DSP and ARM on a single chip, developers benefit from reduced system space and cost.
Additionally, TI's DM6446 SoC comes complete with a full set of peripherals necessary for SDR, including serial ports, USB and Ethernet connections and DDR2 and NAND Flash memory.
The module also comes with a Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA for modem co-processing and acceleration functions.
The use of the Xilinx Virtex-4 SX35 gives developers enough performance headroom with low enough power to implement custom IP and acceleration functions that have varying requirements from one protocol to another supported on the same hardware.
The data conversion module includes two ADS5500 analogue to digital convertors, offering 14bit performance at 125Msample/s and one DAC5687, a 16bit dual channel digital to analogue data convertor with 500Msample/s performance from TI.
The standard RF module included in the kit covers from 360MHz to 960MHz with a selectable 5 or 20MHz bandwidth, supporting a wide range of applications.
The platform also uses TI's MSP430 ultra-low-power MCU and power management technology.
As part of the development platform, TI has brought together several industry leaders to provide the necessary software components and tools to enable rapid SDR development.
Lyrtech developed the hardware for the platform and integrated all of the software components of the kit.
Relying on its industry-leading expertise in developing DSP+FPGA architectures, Lyrtech will also provide custom support for TI's SDR Development Platform.
Green Hills' Integrity real-time operating system running on the ARM provides the ideal environment for implementing higher layers of radio protocols.
Objective Interface Systems (OIS) is supplying the Object Request Broker (ORB) middleware for the ARM9, the DSP, and FPGA for the SCA version of the platform.
The ORB middleware substantially reduces development complexity and enables algorithm code portability.
The Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) supplies the Software Communications Architecture (SCA) core framework, as per version 2.2, that enables flexible implementation of different waveforms and protocols.
Full reference design specs, as well as a complete bill-of-materials (BOM), will be available to developers.
"SDR is an emerging technology that has been historically constrained by its inherent complex signal processing requirements".
"With the SDR Development Platform, developers can now harness the performance and efficiency of TI's TMS320DM644x device to overcome those traditional barriers", said Ram Sathappan, SDR Marketing Manager at TI.
"Through this development kit, TI is making a strong commitment to the SDR market by providing a robust silicon, hardware and software roadmap that will drive down cost and power consumption".
Because of the inherent mobility requirements of wireless radios, power consumption is an important factor that is a key challenge in creating an efficient and cost-effective radio design.
The SDR Development Platform is the only development tool in the SDR segment to include the Power Measurement API which enables developers to track real-world power consumption of the digital baseband unit precisely while algorithm functions are being executed.
Traditional power measurement techniques require external measurement of power consumption that offers rough estimates at best, but this development kit will include five different API functions to measure power consumption for all the different elements of the kit.
The Power Measurement API gives developers more visibility into their systems, enabling them to measure currents drawn from individual components such as the DSP and the FPGA.
This enables developers to extract important information such as burst and peak power for a specific datarate, enabling them to accurately isolate components as well as accurately estimate battery life.
Additionally, developers are able to achieve the optimal power balance while maximising performance between the different SDR components, all with effectively zero impact on system performance.
TI is also a Gold Sponsor of the Smart Radio Challenge hosted by the SDR Forum, a nonprofit organisation devoted to supporting the development, deployment and adoption of software defined radio technologies.
Universities around the world will compete to solve critical problems within the software-defined radio industry, including managing spectrum access for first responders and communications interoperability.
TI, in conjunction with Lyrtech, will provide the SDR Development Platform to participants on which to implement their entries, as well as cash prises for the best implemented solutions.
The Small Form Factor Software Defined Radio Development Platform (TMDSSFFSDRDP) without the SCA core framework or ORB costs US $9900 and is available through TI authorised distributors.
A reduced feature version of the SDR Development Platform for evaluation and development of digital baseband processing software (TMDSSFFSDREVM) is also available for $2900.
The full and reduced feature versions of the kit include free evaluation copies of TI, Xilinx and Green Hills software and tools.
An Enhanced SCA version of the SDR Development Platform including licensed copies of the complete software suite including SCA framework and ORB middleware is offered directly by Lyrtech.
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