RFSoC L-Band Transceiver Card:
RFX-8440L

Acquire | Process | Act

Need a Price Quote?

Multi-channel Direct RF Transceiver

The BittWare RFX-8440L card is an L-band digital direct sampling transceiver featuring the third generation AMD Zynq® UltraScale+™ RFSoC. This innovative solution uses the RFSoC’s ADC for L-band direct sampling, displacing legacy down conversion approaches at and below L-Band, and displacing external amplification above L-Band. 

The RFX-8440L was designed as a standalone card that just happens to be in PCIe form factor. Installing the card in a ruggedized chassis would allow you to mount the RFX-8440L card near the antenna to transform antenna data into packets. Since the RFX-8440L gets all of its power via the external power connector and can be communicated with via an on-board RJ45 connector, it does not need a PCIe slot. The RFX-8440L also works in traditional server PCIe slots.

L-band Direct Sampling

Tapping three decades of experience in designing sensor processing cards, BittWare’s analog front-end features variable gain input down to -64 dBm.  This innovative solution uses the RFSoC’s ADC for L-band direct sampling, displacing legacy down conversion approaches.

Do More in the Digital Domain

At the center of the RFX-8440L is the latest generation single-chip RFSoC from AMD, the Zynq ZU43. This device is designed to bring together multi-channel data conversion and processing on a single chip.

"Now with complete coverage of sub-6GHz spectrum bands available as a readily-deployable PCIe card from BittWare, customers are able to gain a competitive advantage by accelerating the design and development of their next-gen wireless systems today."
David Brubaker
Senior product line manager, Wired and Wireless Group, AMD
RFX-8440 with qsfps

RFX-8440L PCIe card with dual QSFP28 connectors. The RFX-8440L is designed to work in a host system or standalone.

RFX-8440 RF performance thumbnail

Looking for RF Performance Specs?

Request the RFX-8440L RF Performance Specifications Document

Analog Front End

Transmit Side Block Diagram

Just need Data Acquisition?

Check out our RFX-8440A variant.

The RFX-8440 is available in two variants: the RFX-8440L and the RFX-8440A. RFX-8440L is a direct RF transceiver that can connect directly to an L-Band antenna to process signals. RFX-8440A is a data acquisition card that seamlessly crosses between analog and digital at up to S-Band rates.

RFX-8440 card with QSFPs

Flexible 4 Channel Analog In/Out

With features like variable gain down to -64 dBm (input), we’ve designed the critical analog circuitry to match the performance needs for a clean signal to/from the RFSoC’s 14-bit interfaces. Our heritage in high-performance analog PCB design spans three decades as a core strength for BittWare.

RFSoC chip

Powered by Third-Generation AMD Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC

At the heart of the RFX-8440L card is the Zynq ZU43 RFSoC: a powerful single-chip adaptable radio platform providing up to 6 GHz of direct RF sampling. With a multi-element processing system: FPGA, real-time dual-core ARM and a second quad-core ARM, this RFSoC has what it takes to acquire, process and act on RF signals.

Tap a slide for more details on the RFSoC from Xilinx:

Slide content copyright Xilinx

Digital I/O

Expansion Options With up to 200 Gb/s Bandwidth

With 200 Gbps of digital I/O available on the FPGA side of the RFSoC, the card supports twice the bandwidth of RFSoC implementations that depend upon PCIe for data transfer. This I/O is available through two QSFP28 cages. Customers have implemented transports using Aurora, Ethernet MAC frames, and UDP. 

RFX card with two 100Gb/s inputs
Card Configuration with Dual QSFP28s

Included IP

BittWare RFX cards ship with an application that converts between analog data and timestamped, VITA-49.2 packets. It works in both ADC and DAC directions. The application also transfers raw data between the RFSoC and the ARM memory or eMMC. The RFSoC’s ARM Processing System runs Linux and acts as a control plane. More specifically, BittWare has integrated card management functions through customized Linux drivers. BittWare has also ported AMD’s RF Tool application, a socket library that configures an RFSoC chip. Above both Linux and RF Tool, BittWare provides its own RFUtils commands and examples. RFUtils can generate synthetic waveforms as well as load and stream waveforms from files. All of this is fully supported by BittWare and we provide source code.

BittWare also supplies an unsupported port of AMD’s RF Analyzer which we use to help characterize our cards.

Block Diagram, Data Sheet and Specifications

Want More Details?

Request the Hardware Reference Guide (HRG)

The HRG gives you much more detail about the card such as block diagrams, tables and descriptions.

Board Specifications

FPGA

  • Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC
    • XCZU43 in an E1156 package
    • Core speed grade -2
  • Contact BittWare for other FPGA options

Analog

  • L-Band 1GHz - 2GHz: Includes several signal conditioning components including variable gain
  • 4 x 5 GSPS 14-bit ADCs: -64 to +38 dB
  • 4 x 9.7 GSPS 14-bit DACs: 32 dB of output power control inside the FPGA
  • Programmable clocks
  • External reference and triggers
  • SSMC style connectors

On board flash

  • Flash memory for booting FPGA
  • Flash memory for ARM bootloader and OS image
  • 32GB eMMC for ARM disk

External memory

  • Processing system: 16GB, 64-bit DDR4-2100 with ECC
  • Programmable logic: 10GB, single bank 40-bit DDR4-2400, no ECCC

External digital interfaces

  • Processing system
    • PCIe Gen2 x1
    • RJ45 Ethernet
    • USB UART
    • USB 3.0
  • Programmable logic
    • Up to 200 Gb/s via Front panel 2x QSFP28
    • AMD Hard IP support for dual 100GbE

Cooling

  • Standard: double-width passive heatsink
  • Contact BittWare for other cooling options

Electrical

  • On-board power derived from 6-pin AUX connector
  • Power dissipation is application dependent
  • Typical max power consumption 50W

Environmental

  • Operating temperature: 5°C to 35°C

Quality

  • Manufactured to ISO9001:2015 IPC-A-610-Class III
  • RoHS compliant
  • CE, FCC, UKCA & ICES approvals

Form factor

  • 3/4-length, standard-height PCIe dual-slot card (x16 mechanical)
  • Supports standalone operation
  • RFX-8440 can be ordered as a TeraBox™ integrated server platform

Development Tools

FPGA development

  • Bittware provides interface software support for an example bitstream that fully configures the RFSoC chip using a scripting language running on the FPGA’s ARM. AMD Vivado development tools are fully supported for development of custom designs.

Deliverables

  • RFX-8440L Analog Data Acquisition Card
  • Data capture and relay example - Full source code
  • 1-year hardware warranty

r2 v4

Sales Ordering Numbers

RFX-8440-0011 RFX-8440L card with L-band RF front end with QSFP28 mezzanine

Looking for a different configuration? Check out the RFX-8440A variant, or ask us about other configuration options.

Ready to Buy?

This product is available for quick online ordering from Mouser Electronics. Check stock at Mouser’s website:

Interested in Pricing or More Information?

Our technical sales team is ready to provide availability and configuration information, or answer your technical questions.

Use this form to also request the RF performance specifications document.

RFX-8440 RF performance thumbnail