Annapolis, Maryland – Annapolis Micro Systems, Inc. (Annapolis), announces delivery of their first DRFM-Optimized ADC & DAC COTS mezzanine card.
The WILDSTAR Dual 1.5GSps 12-bit ADC & DAC Mezzanine Card was designed from the ground up to have the lowest possible latency from ADC input to DAC output achievable. This COTS product achieves 24ns latency from SMA to SMA when in Digital Bypass Mode and 39ns when in Fabric Space Mode. There are two ADCs and two DACs which each run at up to 1.5GSps with a 12 bit resolution.
The Board Support Interface, which is available in VHDL or CoreFire Application Design Suite, was also designed from the beginning to be suited for DRFM applications. This interface provides a Digital Bypass Mode to achieve the lowest possible latency and a Fabric Space Mode to allow the user to do additional processing and manipulation of the ADC data before returning it out the DAC. The Fabric Space Mode adds only 14ns of latency. The Board Support Interface also includes a built-in Bypass Delay which can be controlled to be from 0 to 62 ADC sample clock periods. This allows the user to “walk” the latency out from the minimum Digital Bypass Mode latency to slightly beyond the Fabric Space Latency, providing for a smooth latency transition between the two modes.
The CoreFire Next Design Suite, Annapolis’ FPGA Design Tool, allows the user to design a 24ns latency DRFM-optimized application in minutes.
The industry is already talking about the ultra low latency that is achievable in this COTS product:
“The new IOADCDACD1.5G mezzanine card from Annapolis Micro Systems was built specifically for use as a DRFM, and it has some impressive specs. Its two analog input and output channels have around 600 MHz instantaneous bandwidth each, which is respectable and covers a good range of applications. The board’s latency, though, is where it really shines. The latency from SMA to SMA connector is only 39 ns when going through the user FPGA space, or even lower when using a digital bypass. This makes it well suited to self-protection applications. Its board support package is also designed to make the integration of a user’s DRFM kernel simple, which should be refreshing to anyone who has had to build a DRFM out of an FPGA board that wasn’t really designed to be one.”