Multifunctional Digital Waveform / Spectrometer Receiver (MWSR)

Multifunctional digital Waveform/Spectrometer Receiver (MWSR) is a two-channel digital receiver which has been developed in the Institute of Radio Astronomy by the Department of Microwave Electronics. Among variety of possible applications, MWSR can be effectively used at telescopes for radio astronomical observations.

Receiver is in  the case of “5.25inch half-height” form factor

Receiver integration with the host PC

DSP board: GigaBee, Xilinx Spartan-6, Xilinx Artix-7

 

MWSR key features are listed below:

  • Low noise level and low spurious signals level providing the high linear dynamic range (~120dB)
  • Maximal ADC sampling frequency – 160MHz
  • Maximal input signal frequency – 180 MHz
  • Permanent Absolute Time Synchronization of the output data with the ADC synchro pulse accuracy.
  • Two modes of operation: waveform and spectrometer
  • Storing of the waveform data from both channels (650Mb/s at sampling rate 160MHz) on the local data storing system during 4 hours.
  • Controlled signal digitizing relative delay in the range of 0 to 0.8μs (with 8 picoseconds step) between two input channels.
  • Calculation of spectrograms in both channels and cross-spectrograms between channels
  • Averaging of the spectra and cross-spectra up to 32768 realizations (~7 s at sampling rate 160MHz)
  • Network Client-Server architecture of the high level software which allows the remote full control of the MWSR and “on-the-fly” monitoring of the received signal.

MWSR ADC module specifications

Number of channels 2
Analog input bandwidth 180MHz
Input impedance 50 Ohm
Input voltage ±1V
ADC sampling frequency 20-160 МГц
ADC resolution 16 bits
ADC intrinsic dynamic range 75 dB
SFDR (spurious free dynamic range) (16384 samples per FFT) 112 dB
Intrinsic noise level (16384 samples per FFT) -117 dB
Dithering option (for the increasing SFDR value) Yes

 

MWSR Data Processing specifications

FFT size 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, and 32768
Output FFT samples resolution 32 bit
Speed of processing 4800 complex 32768 FFT per second
Count of averaged spectrums 16 - 32768
Selectable frequency band output with step of 1024 samples
Spectrometer” modes
  • “A”  channel spectrum output
  • “B”  channel spectrum output
  • “A&B”  channels spectrum output
  • “A&B”  channels spectrum and cross-correlation between “A” & “B” channels spectra
Waveform” modes
  • “A”  channel waveform output
  • “B”  channel waveform output
  • “A&B” channels waveform output
Maximal data rate (“Waveform” mode) 650 MB/s
Maximal data rate (“Spectrometer” mode) 85MB/sec

 

MWSR Interfaces specifications

Output interface for data in “Spectrometer” mode / Connection cables (for “Spectrometer” mode) 1Gb Ethernet / Cat.5 UTP
Output interface for data in “Waveform” mode / Connection cables (for “Waveform” mode) 10Gb Ethernet / CX4 Passive Copper Cable (Ref. 1.3.6)
Control software interface TCP/IP
Data software interface UDP/IP
Powering 5V, 3A
Powering Interface Molex TOL-11297 (used in PC for powering peripheral devices)

 

Host PC specifications

OS OpenSuse 11.2 (x86_64)
CPU Intel CORE i5-3330 LGA1155
Motherboard SABERTOOTH Z77
RAM 8Gb
Data storage system RAID0 system with 6 2TB Toshiba HDDs on base of LSI_SAS_9211-8i PCI Express adapter
Ethernet Interfaces
  • 2 x 1Gb Ethernet interfaces
  • 2 x 10Gb Ethernet interfaces (Chelsio S320E- CXA)