The Sidekiq NV100 from Epiq Solutions is a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) Transceiver Module with an operating frequency from 30 MHz to 6 GHz (RF access down to 10 MHz). It integrates on-board Rx pre-select filters and a GPS disciplined oscillator (GPSDO) into a compact M.2 2280 Key M form-factor. This form-factor allows the transceiver to be used in host devices where PCIe-based NVMe® solid state drives (SSDs) are supported such as a laptop or tablet, making it ideal for on-the-go electronic warfare (EW), signal intelligence (SIGINT), and command, control, communication, computers, cyber, intelligence, and reconnaissance (C5ISR) applications.
This embeddable SDR-based RF transceiver leverages Analog Devices’ ADRV9004, a wideband transceiver RFIC that delivers extended RF tuning capabilities, as well as exceptional RF fidelity and instantaneous dynamic range. It has two U.FL antenna ports which support multiple RF operating modes including single channel 1 Rx + 1 Tx FDD/TDD, dual-channel phase coherent Rx or Tx, and dual-channel independently tunable Rx or Tx.
The Sidekiq NV100 has flexible bandwidths between 12 KHz and 40 MHz per channel. It features an integrated sub-octave Rx pre-select filter that provides out-of-band interference protection on both RF receiver paths from 400 MHz to 6 GHz. The Rx pre-select filtering is automatically configured by Epiq Solutions' libsidekiq API. It has a Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A50T FPGA with a Gen2 x2 PCIe interface to host for ultra-high-end connectivity bandwidth, logic capacity, and signal processing capability for demanding high-performance applications. The transceiver has 16-bit A/D and D/A converters for exceptional instantaneous dynamic range.
The Sidekiq NV100 measures 22 x 80 x 4.5 mm and consumes 4-6 W of power. Its platform development kit (PDK) includes one Sidekiq NV100 integrated into an Intel NUC computer running Linux (to serve as a reference development platform), as well a second NV100 card mounted to a Thunderbolt 3 development board.
