National Instruments (NI) has unveiled the Field Programmable Gate Array-enabled PXIe-5785 FlexRIO transceiver. The transceiver helps to shorten the design cycle for advanced radar applications in the aerospace and defence sectors.
The transceiver gives access to the latest direct radio frequency (RF) converters in a modular, commercial off-the-shelf package to help them shorten the development cycle. NI has also incorporated emerging chipsets, including high speed converters that sample up to 6.4 GSPS with a 12-bit resolution. These high speed converters are critical for modern radar systems, in which increased RF bandwidth equates to better spatial resolution, leads to fewer false detections and enables sophisticated electronic protection techniques.
The PXIe-5785 FlexRIO transceiver can also sample directly at RF, which simplifies and lowers the cost of high-channel-count systems. This is important while building systems in which beams are formed using hundreds of antenna elements. Moreover, users can integrate systems and synchronise modules more easily compared to custom designs or alternative form factors because the FlexRIO modules are based on the PCI eXtension for Instrumentation platform.
