AV153 – Agilex™ 9 Direct RF
Presentation of the AV153, a SOSA aligned VPX board, for ultra wideband applications
Product overview
The AV153 is a cutting-edge solution from our range of Ultra Wideband Radar, ECM, and SIGINT systems, built on the robust VITA47 ECC3 VPX standard.
This 3U VPX board delivers exceptional performance, featuring 8x 10-bit ADCs and DACs, each capable of reaching up to 64 Gsps, and supporting an analog bandwidth of up to 20 GHz, making it ideal for the most demanding applications.
Designed in full compliance with the SOSA standard, the AV153 ensures compatibility with various communication protocols, such as PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, and numerous user-defined I/Os. This alignment with SOSA enhances the interoperability of radar and electronic warfare systems, promoting smoother integration and better collaboration across components.
The AV153 is also equipped with an Altera® Agilex™ 9 SoC FPGA with Direct-RF technology. This advanced feature delivers both high-performance processing and direct radio frequency capabilities, enabling seamless integration between FPGA-based processing and RF operations.
This VPX board is perfectly suited for applications in Phased-Array Radar Transmitter/Receiver systems, Electronic Warfare (ESM/ECM), Broadband Communication, Target Radar Simulator/ Generator, and Airbone embedded systems, targeting a wide range of demanding markets.
Benefits & features
- Direct-RF SOC altera® Agilex™ 9 AGRW027
- 8 channels 64 Gsps 10-bit ADC
- 8 channels 64 Gsps 10-bit DAC
- Analog bandwidth up to 20 GHz
- Two Ultra Low jitter clock synthesizers
- External or internal sampling clock reference
- 2x 64-bit 8GBytes DDR4 2666 SDRAM (Fabric)
- 1x 32-bit 4GBytes DDR4 2666 SDRAM (HPS)
- Conduction Cooled
- SOSA-aligned
SOSA standard to improve interoperability between modules
The AV153 VPX board, which alignes with SOSA (Sensor Open Systems Architecture) standards, represents a significant advance in embedded systems for military and aerospace applications. As an essential component of the modular architecture, this board offers unrivalled flexibility and interoperability. By aligning its design with SOSA principles, it guarantees easy integration within complex systems, while facilitating component reuse and reducing development costs. Featuring 18 standardized connectors and SOSA-aligned functionalities, this VPX board offers a robust, scalable platform for the design of next-generation embedded systems, responding to the changing needs of military and aerospace missions.
RF Direct Sampling for enhanced performance and scalability
Recent advancements in data converter technologies have dramatically increased sampling rates, now enabling bandwidths of several tens of gigahertz in the latest ADCs and DACs. This breakthrough has opened the door to applications utilizing RF digitization through the intermediate frequency (IF) sampling technique.
In this method, the analog signal is first converted to a lower intermediate frequency before being sampled by the converter. However, with these higher sampling rates, direct sampling of RF signals—without the need for additional RF conversion stages—has become possible, even for frequencies in the tens of gigahertz range.
Known as direct RF sampling, this technique can now be applied across a variety of radar and electronic warfare (EW) frequency bands, including Ku, K, and Ka bands. The adoption of RF direct sampling streamlines system architectures and enhances equipment flexibility, scalability, and SWAP-C (Size, Weight, Power, and Cost).
Diagrams
Tech specs
Form Factor
- 3U VPX Conduction cooled Vita 48.2, pitch 1.0”
VPX Profile
- SLT3-PAY-1F1U1S1S1U1U2F1H-14.6.11-12
Analog Input/Output
- Input coupling: AC
- Full power bandwidth: 100MHz to 20 GHz
- Full scale: +7dBm @ 5 GHz
- Output coupling: AC
- Full power bandwidth: 100MHz to 20 GHz
- Full scale: -7dBm @ 5 GHz
- Impedance: 50 Ohm
- Connectors: Vita 67.3 NanoRF
Analog-Digital Conversion
- Eight channels, up to 64Gsps
- Resolution: 10 bit
- Sampling Performances at 64Gsps
- NSD: -150 dBFS/Hz at -3dBFS at 6GHz
- SDFR: -55 dBc at -3dBFS at 6GHz
Digital-Analog Conversion
- Eight channels, up to 64Gsps
- Resolution: 10 bits
- Sampling Performances at 64Gsps
- NSD: -156 dBFS/Hz at 0dBFS at 6GHz
- SDFR: -50 dBc at 0dBFS at 6GHz
Clock
- Two Ultra-low jitter clock synthesizers
- External or internal sampling clock reference
- Impedance: 50 Ohm
- Connectors: Vita 67.3 NanoRF
Memory
- Two banks 64-bit 8GBytes DDR4 2666 SDRAM (fabric)
- One bank 32-bit 4GBytes DDR4 2666 SDRAM (HPS)
- One 2 Gbit QSPI FLASH memory
- eMMC storage (HPS)
Operating Temperature
- ECC3, -40°C to 70°C
VPX interface
- P1:
- Data plane: one fat pipe DP01 supporting 100GBASE-KR4
- Data plane: one ultra-thin pipe DPutp01 supporting 10GBASE-KR
- Control plane: one ultra-thin pipe CPutp01 supporting 1000BASE-KX
- Expansion plane: one fat-pipe supporting PCIE GEN3 4x
- Expansion plane: 8 LVDS differential pairs
- P2:
- Vita 67.3C Aperture H
- NanoRF Contacts-6.4.5.6.10
- 8xIN, 8xOUT, REFIN, REFOUT
Power dissipation
- +12V: 14 A max (170W)
- +3.3VAUX: 0.6A max (2W)
Weight
- 630g
Board Support Package
- FPGA + HPS exemple design
- SW API and examples, Windows 10 64-bits / Linux 64-bits
- User manuals
- Quick start guide
Applications
What is Agilex™ 9 Direct RF ?
Agilex™ 9 Direct RF is a new generation of FPGA-based architecture developed by altera that integrates RF sampling data converters directly into the FPGA fabric.
Unlike traditional systems that rely on external RF front-end components, Agilex™ 9 Direct RF enables direct digitization of wideband RF signals. This significantly reduces system complexity, power consumption, and latency while increasing overall performance and signal integrity.
This architecture is part of the broader altera Direct RF technology evolution, designed to address next-generation radar, electronic warfare (EW), and advanced communication systems requiring ultra-wideband processing.
Key benefits of Agilex™ 9 Direct RF:
- Direct RF signal acquisition without intermediate frequency stages
- Ultra-wideband support for high-frequency applications
- Reduced system footprint and power consumption
- Tight integration between RF sampling and FPGA processing
- Optimized for real-time signal processing workloads
Why Agilex™ 9 Direct RF instead of traditional RF Front-End architectures?
Traditional RF front-end architectures rely on multiple discrete stages: analog mixing, frequency conversion, filtering, and intermediate frequency (IF) processing before digitization.
This multi-stage approach increases latency and system complexity due to multiple signal conversion steps, while also requiring more calibration effort. It typically results in a larger footprint, higher power consumption, and greater sensitivity to signal degradation.
Agilex™ 9 Direct RF replaces this architecture with a direct sampling approach, where RF signals are digitized closer to the antenna level.
Advantages compared to traditional RF architectures:
- Lower latency through direct digitization
- Simplified RF chain architecture
- Improved signal fidelity and dynamic range
- Reduced analog component dependency
- Easier system integration in VPX and embedded platforms
This makes Agilex™ 9 Direct RF particularly suited for real-time mission-critical systems such as radar tracking, electronic warfare, and SIGINT applications where speed and accuracy are critical.
What is SOSA™ VPX architecture?
The SOSA™ (Sensor Open Systems Architecture) VPX framework is an open standard-based architecture designed for modular, interoperable embedded systems used in defense and aerospace applications.
It defines standardized hardware and software interfaces for high-performance processing boards, particularly in rugged environments, enabling greater interoperability between vendors, faster system integration and upgrades, reduced lifecycle costs, and scalable designs that can evolve with mission requirements.
In a SOSA™ VPX architecture, boards based on Agilex™ 9 Direct RF-based FPGAs will perfectly fit into standardized slots (typically 3U or 6U VPX), enabling plug-and-play integration into larger systems.
Deliverables
Board Support Package
- FPGA example design
- Communication
- Front-Panel USB to Avalon
- JTAG to Avalon
- Data Conversion
- Clock component access
- 64Gsps support
- 8x ADC, Decimation x16 support
- 8x DAC, Interpolation x16 support
- ADC acquisition buffers
- DAC generation buffers
- Memory
- DDR4 Avalon access
- System management
- Avalon access to monitoring
- infrastructure
- Communication
- HPS example design
- Linux distribution built on Yocto
- HPS Interfaces:
- eMMC 128Gb
- RGMII GbE
- UART
- EMIF (Memory interface)
- 4GB DDR4 Memory
- Services
- SSH server only
- No direct access to FPGA
- SW API and examples, Windows 10 64-bits / Linux 64-bits
- User manuals
- Quick start guide