The Sidekiq™ NV800 from Epiq Solutions is a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) that operates from 30 MHz to 6 GHz (can be extended to 18 GHz). It consists of a dedicated RF transmitter with 8 RF receivers, each with a bandwidth of 50 MHz, for a total bandwidth of 400 MHz. This SDR incorporates four ADRV9004 RF transceivers (from Analog Devices), all streaming data and command & control to an AMD® ZU7 Ultrascale+™ FPGA. It is capable of operating in either phase coherent or independent modes and supports fixed frequency and fast frequency hopping modes of operation, both of which can support direction-finding use cases. Fast frequency hopping on each channel can support a total spectrum coverage of almost 500 GHz per second.
The NV800 is controlled through a RESTful API in the host computer named ERFS (Embedded RF Sensor), which abstracts the thousands of control registers in the SDR to simple radio commands like frequency, bandwidth, gain, etc. It employs the WhiteRabbit synchronization standard for precision time synchronization of less than 1 ns. This SDR is easy to install and provides the flexibility to power using PoE++ (via 1 GbE connection) or a standard DC input connector. It also has a 10 GbE connection for high-speed data streaming using VITA49 that transmits IQ data swiftly to the primary processor.
On the Rx side, each Rx channel has a tuning step size of less than 5 Hz with a noise figure of 7 dB and has a 16-bit analog-to-digital converter while on the Tx side, this SDR has an RF tuning step size of less than 5 Hz and includes a 16-bit digital-to-analog converter. The Sidekiq™ NV800 is available in an enclosure that measures 25.2 x 18.4 x 5.1 cm and is suitable for spectrum monitoring, wireless detection, direction finding, geolocation, SIGINT, C5ISR, counter-UAS, and other mission-critical applications.
