Leonardo DRS, a leading supplier of integrated products, services and support to military forces and intelligence agencies has developed a new small, high-performance RF monitoring and detection tuner. The RF tuner is part of its popular Vesper family.
The smaller Vesper, the 3U VPX RF receiver is optimized for U.S. military, intelligence agency, and commercial customers who require a device with a smaller form factor for spectrum monitoring applications. It offers the same high performance as the larger 6U model. The multiple size options give customers the scalability required to support a variety of missions. All channels can be dynamically configured for flexible applications as mission requirements change.
The Vesper product line has provided a significant advancement in RF performance for modular, open-system architecture design. Developed with over 60 years of DRS’s RF expertise, the family of wideband Vesper tuners can be configured with up to a class-leading ten RF channels of receive or transmit capability in a single slot 1-inch pitch 6U VPX module, or five RF channels of receive or transmit capability in a single slot 1-inch pitch 3U VPX module.
As a front end to larger system applications, each RF receive or transmit channel can tune from 2 MHz to 6 GHz with 100 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. Digital data is time stamped and output via VITA 49 standard for system processing. Channels within a VPX card or between multiple VPX cards can operate independently or are automatically phase-coherent when tuned to the same frequency, which allows for greater application possibilities. The low phase noise synthesizers have fast tuning and rapid phase settling. These features are ideal for geolocation systems performing direction finding or beam forming.
The modular design offers users an advantage over proprietary solutions that hinder upgrades to a system over its lifecycle. Adherence to modular design approaches for rapid product instantiations, and open standards, was a strong consideration in the design of the Vesper product line. The performance, density, scalability and Open VPX technology greatly simplifies and extends a system’s capability.
Built by the signal solutions product line of the DRS Airborne and Intelligence Systems line of business, the Vesper systems are a leader in RF design for size, weight, power and performance, and with its high-signal fidelity and low spurious content, users can be confident they are detecting and analyzing genuine signals.
Click here to learn more about the Vesper Family of RF Tuners.
