TOYON RESEARCH CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF221-0032

Description

The introduction of the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC analog-to-digital system‑on‑chip with eight or sixteen digital channels, each sampling at 4 Gsps and higher, has provided a significant increase in the channel density and performance of many software defined radios. The inclusion of the RFSoC in OpenVPX and SOSA-compliant cards is allowing compact VPX-based systems to implement more complex radio designs. While the RFSoC is a revolutionary leap in improving the size, weight, and power (SWaP) of the digital back-end of a radio system, there is still need for a compact multi-channel RF front-end (RFFE) to expand the usable frequency range of the system and interface the RFSoC to antennas to ultimately send and receive RF signals. Toyon proposes using our existing receiver design capabilities to design a compact multi-channel RF personality that provides frequency coverage from 2 GHz (or 6 GHz) to 18 GHz between antenna elements and the RFSoC. The RF personality will adhere to OpenVPX standards and be SOSA-compatible for integration into existing SOSA chassis. This RF personality card will support multi-card configurations supplying 32-channels to 128-channels, or more.