The Chestnut from Per Vices is a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) designed for wireless communication, spectrum monitoring signals intelligence, and phased arrays applications. It has a 4 receive and 4 transmit radio chain architecture with each radio chain being independently controlled and offering an RF bandwidth of 500 MHz (2 GHz RF bandwidth capture when all chains are enabled). The architecture allows for either a common LO or separately tuned LOs to be used for improved coherency and stability for the applications requiring this architecture. It has a tuning range from near DC to 9 GHz which allows for the radio chains to be used for a variety of applications that require wide operating frequencies.
The Chestnut has an internal, high-stability, oven-controlled crystal oscillator (OCXO) that provides excellent performance while maintaining the flexibility of being able to accept an external 10 MHz source or using the onboard OCXO to synchronize multiple devices. It is powered by an Intel FPGA SoC and includes separate interfaces for management and data. The management interface includes dual 1G ports that allow full redundancy and two qSFP+ ports which offer 100 Gbps of data transfer per port with the SDR able to support up to 200 Gbps transfers in total.
The Chestnut is available in a 19” 2U enclosure that measures 482.6 x 402.0 x 133.0 mm and has a native web interface, and UHD compatibility out of the box. With this SDR, users can prototype and test different communications, use the platform for spectrum monitoring, recording, and playback, phased array applications, and many more with a low cost of entry.
