FPGA-based baseband processor PMC

Interactive Circuits & Systems (ICS), which is part of Radstone Embedded Computing in Towcester, England, is offering the ICS-1580 baseband processing engine for software-defined radio (SDR). The ICS-1580 is designed for the high-data-rate, computationally intensive applications common in software-defined radio systems. Featuring a user-programmable Xilinx Virtex II Pro FPGA surrounded with memory and high-speed data I/O, the ICS-1580 includes four banks of SDRAM memory, four banks of high-speed QDRII SRAM, and two 128-megabit flash memory devices. For data I/O, legacy systems can rely on the 64/66 PCI interface, while more modern applications can make use of the ICS-1580A’s high-speed serial-switched-fabric capabilities, which provide aggregate bandwidth of 25 gigabits per second. The device “combines high-performance with ease of use, and its compact PMC form factor makes it ideal for the increasing number of applications that are being developed for environments that are constrained in weight or size,” says Ken Armitage, vice president of product development at ICS. The ICS-1580 allows FPGA-based processing power to be added to any host equipped with a PMC site. Alternatively, data acquisition and processing systems can be quickly deployed by combining the ICS-1580 with existing SDR modules such as the ICS-554, 564, or 572. The 400-MHz Power PCs (embedded in the Virtex II FPGA) run a pre-installed TimeSys Linux kernel, allowing remote systems to operate autonomously, and the ICS-supplied EDK/HDK enable rapid development and shorter time to market. For more information contact Radstone online at www.radstone.com.