By John McHale
BURNABY, British Columbia — Engineers at Spectrum Signal Processing released a new Digital/Soft Radio Development System package for signal intelligence applications. The package combines hardware and software tools, and includes the Digital Radio Wizard graphical configuration/ analysis software tool to help reduce development time.
The new package will "expedite the development cycle of most DSP-based soft-radio applications," says Mike Radhanauth, manager of the product marketing group at Spectrum. It should cut development time by about two thirds, he estimates.
He declined to comment on specific intelligence applications.
The Digital Radio Wizard enables users to experiment with all its programmable features, see the effects in real time, capture data at selected stages of processing, and produce hard-copy graphical output.
The package includes Spectrum`s Monaco TMS320C6201 Quad VME digital signal processor (DSP) board, PMC-MAI 65 MHz 10-bit A-D converter module, PEM-4PDC quad programmable down converter receiver, Digital Radio Wizard, Go DSP Code Composer, TI Tools, software development kits, and documentation, and cables.
Spectrum`s digital radio software architecture supports VXI, PCI, VME, and CompactPCI. Users can configure these products for use in "one tuner — one signal" as well as "one tuner — many signal" applications. These applications include surveillance, beam forming, direction finding, cellular testing, ground stations, base stations, spectrum monitoring, and cellular-fraud prevention.
Spectrum`s mezzanine boards and software libraries port from one platform to another, Spectrum officials say. Spectrum`s TMS320C4x and TMS320C6x digital radio solutions include analog input modules, down converter modules, a single-channel digital radio receiver module, and multi-channel software radio libraries.
The performance is 640 million instructions per second, or 480 million floating point operations per second in one slot. Spectrum officials plan to use the next-generation DSPs from Texas Instruments and Analog Devices in the next versions of their software radio products.
For more information on the Digital Radio Wizard or Spectrum Signal Processing, contact Mike Radhanauth by phone at 604-421-5422, by fax at 604-421-4229, by mail at Spectrum Signal Processing, #100-852 Baxter Place, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 4V7, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.spectrumsignal.com.
Spectrum`s software-radio package cuts develoment time for signal intelligence applications.
