Unitronix has introduced a new rugged FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC/VITA 57) module, the FMC-518 is a quad channel 500 MSPS 14-bit analogue input card It features Intersil’s new ISLA214P50 14-bit, 500MSPS analogue-to-digital converter, and enables I/O devices to be directly coupled to a host FPGA. By providing direct ADC connection to the host FPGA, this compact card ensures maximum throughput and enables multiple channels and boards to be synchronised. The FMC-518 speeds and simplifies the integration of FPGAs into embedded system designs. The low latency, high-bandwidth module eliminates data bottlenecks.

The card is designed for use in demanding military applications such as Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), Direction Finding (DF) and RADAR that require high-speed, high resolution ADC components as part of a digital receiver.

FMC format is supported on a wide range of CWCEC FPGA-based host boards, with or without local CPUs, which are designed to process the FMC-518’s I/O data with high bandwidth, low latency paths. The host FPGA, CPU and high performance I/O is an ideal platform for the next generation of digital receivers.

The FMC-518’s four (4) ADC devices connect through the module’s high bandwidth FMC connector to an FPGA-based host board to maximise data throughput and minimise latency. The FMC-518 supports an onboard programmable sample clock generator as well as an external reference input. Multiple FMC-518 boards can be synchronised to increase the number of input channels through the use of trigger input/output signals directly under the control of the FPGA so not only are ADC devices synchronously sampled, but the data pipeline is also coherent.