Pentek has announced its multi-channel data converter with digital down and up converters. As a member of the Cobalt family of express mezzanine card modules, the converter has a Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA at its core. The converter delivers 10kHz to 240MHz bandwidth and features two input and output RF channels, transformer-coupled to allow direct connection to HF or IF radio stages. The input channels feature 12bit, 500MHz ADCs that feed data into the FPGA. The output channels incorporate a Texas Instruments DAC5688 digital up converter that translates real or complex baseband signals to any IF frequency up to 380MHz. Dual 16bit, 800MHz DACs create real or in-phase and quadrature analogue outputs. Three acquisition IP modules accept data from any of the ADCs, a test signal generator, or the playback IP in loopback mode. Each acquisition module includes a DDC (display data channel) IP core, which has an independent 32bit tuning frequency from 0Hz to the ADC sampling frequency, and an independent decimation setting from 2 to 131,072. Each DDC core contains programmable I and Q phase and gain adjustments followed by a power meter that continuously measures the individual average power output and performs threshold detection, according to the company.
