September 13, 2005 -- Spectrum Signal Processing, Inc. has added the XMC-3311 high speed transceiver XMC/enhanced PMC (ePMC) module to its flexComm software defined radio (SDR) product line. The XMC-3311 is targeted at wide bandwidth processing applications including commercial and military satellite communications, signals intelligence and electronic warfare.

The XMC-3311 is one of the first commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products on the market to incorporate the Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA.

This new FPGA will simplify the algorithmic coding for Spectrum's customers and provide higher performance, higher density and greater memory capacity for processing. The module is designed to the VITA 42.0 XMC switched mezzanine card and VITA 42.1 Parallel RapidIO specifications and is also backwards compatible with Spectrum's existing ePMC-based products. In addition, Spectrum provides a high-speed packet interface that sets up physical and logical channels to route data flow from the FPGA through the module's fabric crossbar to the XMC connector. Spectrum expects that the packet interface alone will save its customers hundreds of hours that would otherwise be devoted to developing this functionality as part of their application.

"Consistent with Spectrum's mix and match approach in creating SDR solutions, the XMC-3311 is compatible with any of Spectrum's CompactPCI, PCI/PCI-X and VME-based product families," said Mark Briggs, Vice President of Marketing, Spectrum Signal Processing Inc. "This provides our customers with more options for defining signal processing platform configurations that best suit their application requirements. Customers who are developing multiple SDR applications will also enjoy the benefits from the use of common technology and application programming interfaces across different projects, ultimately lowering their cost and reducing development time."

The XMC-3311 has dual 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for input and a single 14-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for output, each running at up to 213.33 mega samples per second in a single-width VITA 42.0 XMC form factor. The ADCs and DAC are integrated with a single user-programmable Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA. A choice of the following Virtex-4 FPGA devices are available: LX40, LX60, LX80, LX100, LX160 or the SX55. These FPGA devices are user programmable for functions such as wide bandwidth signal processing and filtering in the digital domain. The module can also be used as an ePMC module. The ePMC standard is fully compatible with IEEE P1386.1 PMC standard but offers the additional benefit of dedicated low power Solano links between ePMC compliant carrier and mezzanine modules. Data can also be transferred over PCI, which provides an independent control path.

Availability