Development system speeds RF design

Cambridge Radio Frequency Services uses the XJTAG boundary scan development system to debug, test and programme its RFeye real-time spectrum monitoring system.

The XJTAG development system is being used by engineers at CRFS's design facility in Cambridge, England, to speed up debug and test of ball grid array (BGA) populated printed circuits boards which form part of the RFeye system.

XJTAG is also being used to create test harnesses to improve coverage during production testing at CRFS's contract manufacturing partner's site.

The CRFS RFeye system is a distributed, GPS-based interference measurement system that can survey radio spectrum.

It can be tuned to a frequency between 10MHz and 6GHz and detect frequency data in real time.

It has a fully programmable embedded Linux processing platform with high-speed digital signal processing acceleration support in the form of a Xilinx 1152-pin field programmable gate array (FPGA).

Alistair Massarella, CEO at CRFS, said: "XJTAG is an absolute necessity for any company that is designing complex circuits that feature high pin count BGA or chip scale devices".

"XJTAG is easy-to-use and incredibly fast which has enabled us to shave weeks off the development schedule for our RFeye module thereby leaving our development team free to develop rather than sitting around painstakingly debugging boards".

CRFS has recently been selected by Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, to undertake one of the most detailed spectrum mapping projects ever conducted in the UK.

It will use its purpose-built and technically advanced RFeye system to gather the radio spectrum data.

Applications for RFeye include frequency interference detection, spectrum usage database, licence enforcement, spectrum release and liberalisation, cell planning, RF environment check and remote site monitoring.

"XJTAG's appeal is also its versatility".

"It is designed to be used right throughout the product lifecycle from design and development through to the factory floor and beyond", added Alistair Massarella.

"XJTAG can also test both JTAG and non-JTAG devices which means that test coverage is very high we can get to over 80% of devices on the RFeye boards via the JTAG chain".

"What's more, XJTAG provides the ability to re-use and port test scripts between circuit boards which saves us loads of time".

The XJTAG development system is a cost-effective solution for debugging, testing and programming electronic printed circuits boards and systems throughout the product lifecycle.

The XJTAG system reduces the time and cost of board development and prototyping by allowing early test development, early design validation of CAD netlists, fast generation of highly functional tests and test re-use across circuits using the same devices.

XJTAG enables engineers to test a high proportion of the circuit (both boundary scan and non-JTAG cluster devices) including BGA and chip scale packages, such as SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, Flash memories, FPGAs and microprocessors.

XJTAG also enables in-system programming of FPGAs, CPLDs and Flash memories, includes an ever growing library of device-centric test scripts, and provides support for Xilinx's Virtex-5 FPGA System Monitor.

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