RFEL : Products, System Design & Consultancy
 
IP Cores System Cores System Design and Consultancy  
RFEL provide individual IP Cores and System-Level Cores for Xilinx and Altera FPGAs, intended for use in high performance radio systems, and other signal processing based designs. The company also provides products and complementary System Design and Consultancy services for a range of different markets. These services encompass digital hardware design, RF system design, and PC application software.
For a general overview of RFEL's services and products, please refer to the Capability Brochure.

For access to detailed information on the individual cores, including datasheets, white papers and short form, then please refer to the list below.



 IP Cores : 

RFEL provide "off the shelf" IP cores for Xilinx and Altera FPGA devices that are highly optimised in terms of speed, power and size. For access to detailed information on the individual cores, including datasheets, white papers and short form, then please refer to the list below.

FFT Cores More Info
  - Xilinx FFT Library More Info
 

A collection of over sixty FFT cores from the HiSpeed and QuadSpeed range on a single CD. Targetted at Spartan III, Virtex II, Virtex II Pro, and Virtex IV FPGA devices.

  - HiSpeed ( Vectis Range ) More Info
 
Low-cost off-the-shelf FFT cores for Xilinx and Altera FPGA, with very small silicon usage. Sample rates up to 100MSps complex, and lengths up to 128k complex points.
  - QuadSpeed ( Vectis Range ) More Info
 
Low-cost off-the-shelf FFT cores for Xilinx and Altera FPGA, with sample rates up to 400MSps complex, and lengths up to 128k complex points.
  - HyperSpeed ( Vectis Range ) More Info
 
FFT cores that support complex sample rates up to 6.4GSps complex, and lengths up to 32k complex points
  - HyperLength ( Vectis Range ) More Info
 
FFT core that support transform lengths of up to 256M complex points, and speeds up to 200MSps
  - Mixed Radix DFT's ( Matrix Range ) More Info
 
FFT building blocks for building non-power-of-two length DFTs.

Channeliser Cores (Downconverters) More Info
  - ChannelCore64 More Info
      64 fully-flexible downconverters in a single FPGA core. Two ADC inputs up to 140MS/s each, high resolution channel tuning, channel filtering, and fractional resampler.
  - Polyphase DFT ( Ventrix Range ) More Info
 
High quality filter bank for uniformly distributed channel spacing.
  - PFT Pipelined Frequency Transform More Info
 
High quality multi-resolution channel bank, with flexible channel parameters.
  - Tuneable PFT More Info
 
Fully flexible channel bank core, supporting independently tuneable channels.

Rate Conversion Cores More Info
  - Flexible Resampler
      Efficient fractional resampling of many channels simultaneously.
  - Fixed Rate Converter
 
Single channel fractional resampler for for complex sample rates up to 200MHz.

FFT Ancillary Cores
  - Window Functions More Info
 
Fixed and programmable window functions for use with FFT.
  - Bit Reversers More Info
 
Efficient data reordering function for use with FFT.
  - Power Block Accumulator More Info
 
Convert FFT output to power, and accumulate.

Filters
  - Distributed Half Band Filters More Info
 
Highly optimised half band, third band, and Nth band filters, for simultaneously filtering, down-converting and decimating a real input signal.
  - FIR Filters More Info
 
Highly optimised FIR filters.

Data Format Conversion and Buffering
  - CORDIC More Info
 
Conversion of complex I/Q values to phase and/or magnitude representation.
  - Fixed-Floating Converter More Info
 
Convert fixed-point data values to single precision floating point format.
  - Interleavers / Deinterleavers More Info
 
Used to multiplex multiple channels though high speed cores.
  - Input Buffer More Info
 
Reorders and resamples data for parallel FFT inputs.

Miscellaneous signal processing functions
  - Numerically Controlled Oscillator More Info
 
Quadrature sinusoid signal generator for signals up to 100MHz.



System Cores

RFEL's System Cores provide rapid FPGA solutions for applications such as multi-channel channelisation, spectrum analysis, and spectrometers. The cores are targeted at Xilinx and Altera FPGA and can be customised to suit individual requirements.

Multi-Channel Downconverters
( Channelisers )
More Info
  - Fixed Downconverters More Info
 
Efficient solutions for converting a wide band input into a large number of regularly spaced channels.
  - Flexible Downconverters More Info
 
Highly flexible channelisation solutions that allow each channel's centre frequency, filter shape, and sample rate to be set independently.
  - Wideband Downconverters More Info
 
High performance DDC cores that support very wideband channelisation from input bandwidths of GHz.

SpectraChip™ More Info
  - SpectraChip™ IF More Info
 
SpectraChip™ IF is a digital replacement for the analogue intermediate frequency (IF) filtering used in spectrum analysers
  - SpectraChip™ MHz
 
Complete real-time spectral analysis cores for spectrum analysers with bandwidths up to 80MHz
  - SpectraChip™ GHz
 
A complete spectrometer system for the Acqiris AC210/AC240 hardware system, capable of supporting a 1GHz sample rate and producing a 16K-point FFT in continuous real-time



System Design and Consultancy: 


Consultancy More Info
  RF Engines provides consultancy at the system and detailed implementation level to establish optimal configuration of the down conversion and filtering requirements in the digital domain. Choice of Intermediate Frequency (IF) selection, analogue to digital conversion (A/D) selection and type of process used to perform the signal conditioning, splitting and filtering are complicated issues. Our engineers have extensive experience gained at system level, which enable this complex analysis to be provided.
Optimal FPGA selection and design is also a highly complicated area. Our engineers have years of experience in providing the most compact and efficient designs using the latest design tools available. Support can be provided on device selection and implementation issues.

Should you need to discuss your requirements with us, then please contact us on the Contacts page



Digital Hardware
  - Virtex II Development Board More Info
Whilst there are many Virtex II board designs in the market place, the RFEL Virtex II development board has primarily been designed for flexibility and very high memory bandwidth. This allows the development of very complex, high speed, 'memory intensive' cores such as those developed in the RFEL core architecture range.
Allowing a choice of Virtex II devices (from XC2V3000 to XC2V10000), and a choice of QDR II RAM sizes and types means that the board can be tailor-built to meet a specific application and budget


Application Software
  RF Engines has software development engineers able to produce graphical user interfaces, device drivers, and other PC application software to support FPGA systems. The company has experience of developing very high performance applications that maximise the data throughput


RF Design
  As part of a complete system solution offering, RF Engines undertake radio frequency design services, including detailed systems analysis, modelling, circuit design and prototyping.


System Design Solutions
  - Military Signal Processing Systems More Info
( Radar/Surveillence/EW/Comms)
 
Channelisation, spectral analysis, and other high performance signal processing solutions for RADAR, ELINT, SIGINT, Software Defined Radio (SDR)and DF systems. Wide band frequency hopping and sweeping signal detection / measurement.
  - Test Equipment Systems More Info
 
High quality and flexible real-time spectrum analysis. Analogue IF strip replacement. Specialist communication signal testing, Bluetooth 802.11x, UWB, etc. Low cost Spectrum Analyser on a Chip solutions (SpectraChip).
  - Communications Front End Systems More Info
 
High quality communications multi-channel filtering front ends. Graychip / Intersil replacement on FPGA. Wireless communications base station and satellite communications front ends. Flexible user controlled high quality filter banks.
  - SpectraView™ 900 (SV900) More Info
 
A complete and cost-effective solution for performing real-time spectral analysis of very wideband analog signals.