Mercury Systems, a technology company that delivers mission-critical processing power to the edge, has introduced a system-on-module (SOM) and 3U SOSA-aligned OpenVPX board powered by Altera’s™ most advanced Agilex 9 Direct RF FPGA chips.
The DRF2270 SOM and DRF5270 3U board are the latest additions to Mercury’s portfolio of Direct RF digital signal processing products that use Altera FPGAs to detect and process information from a wide portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. These commercially available products directly digitize radio frequency signals at the antenna, eliminating the analog signal down conversion stages required by legacy hardware. This approach requires extremely fast converters, high-bandwidth digital data links, and powerful real-time digital signal processing. The results are reductions in size, weight, power, cost, and latency that can benefit a variety of radar, communications, electronic warfare, SIGINT, and industrial applications.
Mercury’s DRF2270 is an 8-channel SOM that converts between analog and digital signals at 64 gigasamples per second. It features Altera’s latest-generation Agilex 9 AGRW027 FPGA, which delivers enhanced performance with double the number of channel converters, 47% more logic elements, and 34% more memory than the previous generation chip. The DRF5270 board incorporates the DRF2270 SOM into a defense-ready 3U form factor with 10, 40, and 100 GigE optical interfaces. The flexible SOM design allows the DRF5270 to be easily customized to specific applications without requiring the board to be redesigned from scratch. The DRF2270 SOM can also be packaged into other small form factors and customized designs.
Mercury continues to offer the DRF2580 SOM based on the earlier Agilex 9 AGRW014 FPGA, and the DRF4580L, a small-form-factor module that incorporates the DRF2580 within a ruggedized, conduction-cooled enclosure that is ready for defense applications. All of Mercury’s Direct RF products come with the Navigator® Board Support Package and FPGA Design Kit that allow customers to develop custom IP for the module that can be installed within hours.
“The Mercury Processing Platform brings advanced commercial technologies to defense missions, allowing customers to save time and cost by deploying easily customized hardware that leverages the same core technology and IP across different programs,” said Ken Hermanny, Mercury’s Vice President of Signal Technologies. “With a growing portfolio of products that make Direct RF spectrum digitization possible, our customers now have more options to deploy this technology to capture, process, and exploit signals at the edge.”
“Altera’s Agilex™ 9 Wideband Direct RF FPGAs integrate either four or eight 64 GSPS ADC/DAC data converter pairs in the package with FPGA resources that provide real-time processing of up to an unprecedented 32 GHz of instantaneous bandwidth,” said Ben Esposito, Senior Principal Engineer, Military, Aerospace, and Government Business Unit at Altera. “By integrating circuitry that used to be done in the analog domain, these devices address size, weight, and power challenges of next-generation aerospace and defense missions. Our partnership with Mercury brings this cutting-edge RF technology to military customers, enabling rapid deployment via the different wideband platforms Mercury has developed.”
Key Features of Mercury Systems' SOM and 3U SOSA-Aligned OpenVPX Board:
- 2.6" x 4.75" system on module architecture
- Altera Agilex 9 SoC FPGA AGRW027
- Eight 64 GSPS A/D and D/A converters
- 16 GB DDR4 SDRAM
- Built-in multichip and multi-board synchronization circuitry for high channel, phased array antenna systems
- GT connections for gigabit serial communication
- Ruggedized and conduction-cooled options for DRF5270
- FPGA design kit for custom IP development
- Board Support Package (BSP) for software development
- IP functions suite and example applications
- Carrier Design Kit
Mercury was showcasing the DRF2270 and DRF5270 at the AOC International Symposium and Convention in National Harbor, MD, December 11-13, 2024.
Click here to learn more about the DRF2270 SOM.
Click here to learn more about the DRF5270 3U SOSA-Aligned OpenVPX board.
