Sundance, a manufacturer of DSP and reconfigurable FPGA solutions announced the release of its next generation WiMAX development system. The SMT703 is built around a user programmable FPGA architecture that features the latest Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGAs. It is supported with two WiMAX RF transceivers that in turn are supported with a mixed signal front-end that integrates dual 12-bit ADCs and dual 12-bit DACs. For applications where increased processing logic is required or where the processing chain needs to be extended the scalable SMT703 is supplied with High-Speed Bus and RocketIO Serial Link connectors to attach additional multiprocessing modules or to interface to external signal generators or analyzers.

Sundance are initially rolling out the the SMT703 to the WiMAX, MIMO and wireless chipset design segment, and the WiMAX verification market. PXI Express compliant, its FPGA architecture, logic density and reprogrammability make it ideally suited to design houses targeting custom silicon, and its capability to act as an RF front-end and processing module can be used to qualify WiMAX designs. The Maxim WiMAX transceivers mounted on the SMT703 are IEEE802.16-2004 compliant and support OFDM up to 64-QAM. They operate at 2.3 – 2.7 GHz and integrate a power amplifier driver, receive/transmit mixer, low-noise amplifier, receive/transmit filters, synthesizer, VCO, receive gain control, and transmit power control. Each RF transceiver is coupled with a Mixed-Signal Front End chip from Analog Devices that integrates two 12-bit ADCs (80MSPS) as well as two 12-bit DACs (200MSPS using interpolation), to provide analog and digital conversions.

The SMT703 can be supplied with a range of LXT, FXT or SXT Virtex 5 FPGA devices. LXT devices are optimized for high-performance logic with low power serial connectivity, with the SXT devices optimized for DSP and memory-intensive applications with low-power serial connectivity. For embedded processing, high speed serial connectivity and embedded PowerPC, customers can select FXT devices. For interfacing the SMT703 is fitted with SATA connectors and Fibre Optic modules carrying Virtex5 serial interfaces, LVDS Bus, RJ45 for gigabit Ethernet and a Rocket Serial Link (RSL) connector with 4 serial interfaces that are 3U PXI Express compliant.