RF Engines Limited (RFEL) has recently leased a hardware/software demonstrator to one of the French Atomic Energy Commission Laboratories (Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique or CEA) in order to evaluate the PFT (Pipelined Frequency Transform) signal processing hardware architecture, in connection with their ongoing programme of real time RF signal characterisation.
The work was carried out at a CEA facility just south of Paris. The main purpose of the work was to benchmark the use of the Pipelined Frequency Transform (PFT), one of RF Engines proprietary FPGA signal processing designs, for the analysis of very short duration incoming RF signals.
The work focussed on pulse width measurement performance of the PFT, and assessed the performance of signal detection, acquisition, and tracking of signals down to 100-ns width, across a matrix of tracking speeds and durations.
The RFEL development system used for the work incorporates a scaleable PFT with up to 1024 points running on four 1 million gate Xilinx Virtex E FPGAs, with performance data being displayed via RFELs proprietary software ASDS (Advanced Spectrum Display Software). The development system and an example of the data display, is shown below.
John Summers, VP of Sales and Marketing at RFEL commented, "This work with CEA demonstrates the wide range of applications for our most advanced signal analysis techniques. We are optimistic that this signal characterisation work could lead on to further developments in this very interesting area."
Jean Russat, Project Leader for High-Frequency Electronic Systems Developments at CEA commented,"The availability of a complete test system incorporating the most advanced signal processing design as a test package from RFEL has been very worthwhile in progressing our research in this specialist area of RF signal analysis. We will be very interested in evaluating RFEL’s latest development system when this becomes available early in the New Year."
François Durbin, Senior Expert in Modelling and Signal Processing also from CEA said, "The first results we obtained were encouraging, regarding future use of PFT for real-time accurate analysis of complex signals."
RF Engines
RF Engines Limited (RFEL) is a UK based signal processing specialist, providing high specification signal processing cores, system on chip designs, and FPGA based board solutions for applications in the defence, communications and instrumentation markets. These applications include base stations, wireless and wireline broadband communications systems, satellite communications systems, test and measurement instrumentation, as well as defence, signal intelligence and surveillance systems.
More specifically, RFEL is a solutions provider for projects requiring complex front end, real time, wide and narrow band, flexible channelisation. The company provides a range of standard cores covering multiple FFT, polyphase DFT and proprietary PFT techniques, as well as system design services for more specialist applications.
For further information, please see the website at
www.rfel.com or contact RF Engines at Innovation Centre, St Cross Business Park, Newport, Isle of Wight, PO30 5WB, Great Britain. Tel +44 (0) 1983 550330. E-mail
info@rfel.com
Press information and illustrations can be obtained from Nigel Robson, Vortex PR, Island House, Forest Road, Guernsey, GY8 0AB, Great Britain. Tel +44 (0) 1481 233080. E-mail
nigel@vortexpr.com