Date: 20/06/2012

Development kit for 28-nm Arria V FPGAs from Altera and TI

Altera Corporation and Texas Instruments Incorporated have introduced a complete RF development kit that eases RF prototyping for systems based on Altera's 28-nm Arria V FPGAs. The modular Arria V FPGA RF development kit includes all the hardware and software needed for RF transmit, receive and digital pre-distortion feedback, reducing the amount of time needed to design and verify RF systems, such as wireless base stations, remote radio heads, and military radio and intelligence equipment, from months to weeks.

The Arria V FPGA RF development kit offers RF developers with access to the latest generation of 28-nm FPGAs from Altera and the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and clocks from TI. The supplier claims that this kit is the industry's first complete main/diversity receive development platform supporting up to 75 MHz of bandwidth.

Features:
1. Up to 500 MHz of transmit and feedback bandwidth, enabling 100 MHz of transmit bandwidth with fifth order pre-distortion correction
2. Up to 75 MHz of main/diversity receive bandwidth with 14-bit resolution and 31.5 dB of gain range for multi-carrier 3G and 4G standards
3. Phase-noise-fractional phase-locked loop (PLL) / voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to provide local oscillator for transmit, receive and feedback mixers and modulators
4. Modular design enables alternative and future evaluation modules (EVMs) to be incorporated quickly.

The development kit includes the Arria V FPGA development board and the following RF components from TI:
1. TSW30H84EVM - A complete RF transmit reference design including the DAC34H84, a 4-channel, 16-bit DAC at 1.25 GSPS
2. TSW1266EVM - A digital pre-distortion feedback reference design
3. TSW1265EVM - A wideband dual-receiver reference design, which includes the ADS4249, dual 14-bit ADC
4. TSW3065EVM - A standalone local oscillator source designed with the TRF3765 integer and fractional PLL/VCO
5. HSMC-ADC-Bridge and ArriaV-TI-Adapter to interface between TI and Altera hardware

The kit can be ordered today from Arrow Electronics for US$6,299.

For more information: www.ti.com/arria-v-devkit-pr