During the Parallella Technical Conference in Tokyo we announced a new Software Defined Radio platform, created by “friends of Parallella”. The platform is based on a popular Analog Devices RFIC called AD9361. The chip has some pretty impressive specifications:
- RF 2 × 2 transceiver with integrated 12-bit DACs and ADCs
- Band: 70 MHz to 6.0 GHz
- Supports TDD and FDD operation
- Tunable channel BW: <200 kHz to 56 MHz
- Dual receivers: 6 differential or 12 single-ended inputs
- Receiver sensitivity noise figure < 2.5 dB
- Independent automatic gain control
- General availability
Analog Devices has done an outstanding job creating open high quality reference designs and evaluation boards for the AD9361. Lucky for us a lot of those reference designs are based on the Zynq! The picture below shows the FMCOMMS evaluation board for the chip. The digital connector on the board is an FPGA Mezzanine Connector (FMC). In order to interface the ADI FMC board to the Parallella Samtec connectors, our friends designed an FMC to Samtec adapter board.
The new platform has been validated by running GNU Radio applications.
The new FMCOMMS adapter board is now in the production process and we are working on getting these on the shelves as soon as possible. We will be sending out a second announcement when the boards are ready to be purchased at distributors. So that we can gauge how many boards to build, please do leave a note in the comments below or send an email to “support@adapteva.com”.
[…] A new Parallella SDR platform […]
How much?
Any chance to see this FMC to Samtec adapter board?
Perhaps a stupid question, but what’s it for? From the description I couldn’t figure why I’d want one.
great stuff! but not quite the USRP killer if one can buy a B210 for 1K$ and the AD9361 evaluation comes at 750$ itself!
http://www.analog.com/en/design-center/evaluation-hardware-and-software/evaluation-boards-kits/EVAL-AD-FMCOMMS2.html#eb-buy
http://www.ettus.com/product/details/UB210-KIT
Well, its a Software Defined Radio… from Wikipedia:
“Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that have been typically implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.”
Image a radio that you could program to transmit or receive any kind of protocol on just about any band you have ever heard of. Wifi, GPRS, 2G/3G/4G, ADS-B, ZigBee, etc etc etc. all by just loading in new code.
Put me down for one.
I use my HackRF to tune in HF signals below 30MHz, so a radio that starts at 60MHz is no good for me.
That FMC adpater, however, would allow me to hook up a generic high speed ADC board…
The HackRF One has this beat hands-down at a price point level. The Parallella board might be $99 or $149, but with the RF eval board running another $700 – $1100, this is just too expensive for a SDR and too expensive for hobbyists.
A Chinese RF company run by a college classmate is interested in SDR which can cover the 5 GHz WiFi bands. I’m passing this on to them. I’m curious how this compares to the HackRF One in performance, other than the low end of the freq range starting at 70 MHz vs 1 MHz for the HackRF.
This is a great “killer” application addon for parallella scientific community and enthusiasts.
The FMCOMMS will be the most expensive part, but for the people who already have those, the cost should be nominal.
Unlikely that you could connect any ADC/DAC FMC. This is an LPC connctor with only some of the signals connected to the FPGA. We only have 48 signals in total on the Samtec connector.
Agreed, but for the thousands of people who have bought the FMCOMMS board already the incremental cost will not be high.
I would be interested if it worked with the AD-FMCOMMS4-EBZ board. It is much cheaper at around $400, and I don’t need more than 1×1 anyway. Would the Parallella be able to handle the full 56 MHz of spectrum with GNU Radio? If it does, that would be a great improvement over the HackRF or BladeRF bandwidth.
Not meant to be a USRP killer. There are already tons of FMCOMMS boards in the field. This is really for them first of all. (sunk cost) Agree that it would be really awesome to have a low cost SDR platform based on the Parallella…
Good point! I will take a look and let you know. Once we start selling the board, we will also publish schematics so you will be able to verify yourself.
Didn’t know such a thing existed but having looked online for examples none of them strike me as a must have killer app, this is the site I saw
http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/blog/10-things-you-can-do-with-software-defined-radio
What kinds of applications do you have in mind?
Analog Devices high speed multi-channel ADC boards like the AD9253 use the ANSI-644 high speed serial interface.
So it can be done with the limited IO on the Parallella. I have produced a board that is intended to work with the
AD9253 evaluation board but the project is on the back burner at the moment. Sadly the high speed connectors AD
use are even more expensive than the Samtec ones. http://www.digikey.co.uk/product-detail/en/0/A104049-ND
– Charles
If you are doing things like DPD Digital Pre-Distortion for example you need to manipulate the samples being sent to the DAC in realtime
especially if you want to compensate for the PA memory effect (which requires adaptive filtering) you need to do it in the FPGA fabric, as
close as you can to the ADC/DAC. That is something the Hack-RF is not capable of doing. So for some applications this is ideal especially
if someone else has done all the donkey work which allows you to concentrate on your own problem.
Last time an Analog Devices rep called me and asked me why I was not using their new wonder chip I had a good moan about how expensive their chips were. Hopefully the message will get through. Lime have the right idea they have dramatically cut the
price of the last generation chip with the intention of getting into into consumer orientated IOT (wash your mouth out) devices.
I would like one. I wonder how much it could monitor at the same time.
[…] https://parallella.org/2015/06/01/a-new-parallella-software-defined-radio-platform/ […]
Great, now parallel will get involved into SDR. 🙂 I have fmcomms1 and fmcomms2 boards, those are great. Looking forward to see what we can do
with multi core processor + zynq and fmcomms. Should be nice combination. What would be even nicer is to put your processor on this picozed SDR
http://zedboard.org/sdr
How much and when it goes on sale ?
I’d be interested in getting my hands on a couple. I’m not an expert in SDR but my coworkers use USRPs a lot.
Will the source of the FMC adapter daughter card be released?
I would like the gerber for FMC adapter card too, I have samtec connectors and FMC connectors spare.
[…] A new Parallella SDR platform […]
Is there any progress on this?
the AD9631 chip itself sells for about 250$ per piece, meaning the board itself + required components cost double of the chip it builds upon. Would it not be peachy if someone would publish an open source version for such an FMC board to click the AD9631 into ?
the AD9361 chip itself sells for about 250$ per piece, meaning the board itself + required components cost double of the chip it builds upon. Would it not be peachy if someone would publish an open source version for such an FMC board to click the AD9361 into ?
did this ever happen… need!!
I’m highly interested in this adapter-board aswel. I’ve send an email to support, but no reply. What is happening? Is there a phone number that I can call?
yep, I am eager to try this combination in my new project, BUT, where to buy the adapter-board? is there any commercial release?
Very fascinating short article
What ever happened with this?????
To powerful of a device now classified. In the wireless age hehe Think about all the weak key FOBs for cars . And that was way older I’m guessing FCC said heck no and to mass-produce it without that no factory would bother ?