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Signal analyser from Keysight helps customers test aerospace comms

Thu, May 13, 2021

To test the performance of millimeter-wave (mmWave) innovations in 5G, aerospace and defence and satellite communications, Keysight has developed the N9042B UXA X-series signal analyser which provides wide analysis bandwidth and deep dynamic range. It is designed to address difficult mmWave challenges including tight design margins and timelines, complex modulation and stringent standards.

“Understanding signal fidelity is critical to the performance of products in 5G, aerospace and defence, satellite and automotive radar markets,” observed Kiran Unni, vice president, industrial technologies practice, Frost & Sullivan.

“At mmWave frequencies, signals are more susceptible to impairments that affect the signal quality, such as IQ modulation errors, phase noise, distortion, signal-to-noise ratio, amplitude and phase linearity. For designers and manufacturers, addressing these challenges is crucial when characterising and testing the true performance of mmW products,” she added.

The N9042B UXA X-Series signal analyser ensures designs meet the latest standards with ready-to-use measurement applications and signal analysis software. It has an unbanded, pre-selected sweep from 2.0Hz to 110GHz and up to 11GHz of analysis bandwidth. The analyser tests the true performance of a 5G new radio (NR) transmitter with an advanced error vector magnitude (EVM). It also finds out-of-band emissions or spurs quickly in radar designs with superior swept displayed average noise level (DANL). The analyser develops high-throughput satellite communication designs with 4.0GHz of corrected analysis bandwidth.

“With the increasing demand for data, higher frequency and bandwidth, Keysight’s signal analyser and generator solutions embody our deep expertise in mmW design and measurements, for the latest 5G wireless, radar, aerospace defence, satellite and communications research,” said Joe Rickert, vice president and general manager of high frequency measurement R&D for Keysight’s communications solutions group.

To ensure designs meet the latest standards with ready-to-use measurement applications for cellular communication, wireless connectivity, and aerospace/defence, the company integrated PathWave X-Series measurement applications with the UXA X-Series signal analyser. These applications simplify complex tasks and deliver repeatable results. The 89600 PathWave vector signal analysis software comprises tools for demodulation and vector signal analysis. It offers support for over 75 signal standards and modulation types. It also enables customers to explore every facet of a signal and optimise their most advanced designs, added Keysight.

Testing 5G components and devices per the 3GPP 5G New Radio (5G NR) standard Releases 15 and 16 requires higher accuracy, sensitivity, and bandwidth capability in an analyser. To meet these parameters, the N9042B signal analyser tests the true performance of transmitter designs with error vector magnitude (EVM) and 5G NR signal analysis software which perform transmitter downlink and uplink measurements with one-button simplicity.

For satellite communication systems, customers need to characterise amplifiers and components at bandwidths wider than the target application. The N9042B UXA X-Series signal analyser provides a wide analysis bandwidth and unbanded, pre-selected frequency range to characterise the performance of satellite designs.

It also enables high levels of measurement accuracy with the Keysight V3050A signal analyzer frequency extender which is claimed to deliver unmatched measurement accuracy of wideband signals at very high frequencies. It provides sensitivity, unbanded and pre-selected frequency coverage up to 110GHz, high dynamic range and a seamless interface to the N9042B UXA signal analyser.

Keysight’s RCal receiver calibrator corrects system path losses and frequency responses up to 5.0GHz IF bandwidth without the need for an external vector network analyser, cabling and manual test-plane characterisation. The palm-sized RCal seamlessly transfers precision factory calibration data to the X-Series signal analyser over a USB connection.

A companion VXG microwave signal generator offers high output power with low phase noise and wide bandwidth for demanding wireless, as well as aerospace and defence applications. The VXG’s dual-channel architecture, quickly switches from blocker and interferer tests to dual channel MIMO and beam forming tests.

http://www.keysight.com

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Software and tools in Lattice’s latest FPGA stack accelerate automation

Thu, May 13, 2021

Development of factory automation and industrial robotics can be accelerated with the Automate stack, says Lattice Semiconductor. The stack includes software tools, industrial IP cores, modular hardware development boards, and software-programmable reference designs and demos. All help developers simplify and accelerate development of robotics and scalable multi-channel motor control with predictive maintenance and real-time industrial networking, says the company.

The latest addition to Lattice’s low power FPGA-based solution stacks offers scalable motor control, which accelerates the development of flexible motor control systems, including a GUI-based user interface for system monitoring and control. There is also predictive maintenance which minimises machine downtime by monitoring multiple motors in a system.

Another feature is embedded real-time networking which implements an extensible sense and control system for a large number of devices using a Lattice Nexus FPGA as the central controller.

For security there is the Cyber Resiliency feature which enables a hardware root-of-trust that can detect, protect, and recover from a firmware-based attack in real-time.

The stack has easy to use software design methodology, says Lattice, with support for Lattice Propel for simplifying development of industrial automation systems with software/hardware co-processing using an embedded RISC-V processor.

Lattice Semiconductor provides low power, programmable technology to solve customer problems across the network, from the edge to the cloud, in the growing communications, computing, industrial, automotive, and consumer markets.

http://www.latticesemi.com

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Microchip adds device configuration platform to Trust suite

Wed, May 12, 2021

Microchip has added enhancements to its Trust Platform Design Suite (TPDS) with dedicated software for device configuration and onboarding to Microchip secure provisioning services for embedded security.

TPDS 2.0 software extends the company’s Trust Platform for CryptoAuthentication which is believed to be the first pre-provisioned platform for hardware-based secure elements to implement secure authentication.

The software enables Microchip partners to add use cases to its security solutions onboarding ecosystem and includes support for additional security solutions such as the TA100, the first cryptographic companion device for the automotive market.

It can take an experienced firmware engineer months to specify an application’s threat model and develop a security use case that encompasses all necessary measures related to secure authentication, secure boot, IP protection, and more. The two main challenges are configuring the device’s security boundaries and provisioning secrets including private keys as well as symmetric secrets and other forms of secret data.

The TPDS software simplifies the process of specifying an application’s threat model and developing a secure use case which includes all measures to secure authentication, secure boot and IP protection. This is achieved by providing pre-defined use cases addressing the most common market requirements.

It is available with Trust&GO and TrustFLEX programs which enable new secure projects to be prototyped in a matter of minutes says Microchip. At the same time customers are presented with options based on the size of their deployment, use case requirements, and how much customisation they need.

Using Trust&GO, devices are pre-defined and pre-provisioned, off-the-shelf, for secure cloud authentication in both TLS-based and LoRaWAN-based networks. Minimum order quantity (MOQ) is just 10 units.

TrustFLEX allows customers to use the program’s pre-configured devices either with default generic certificates or their own credentials (Custom PKI). There is a broader range of pre-defined uses cases than with Trust&GO.

To address the most demanding use cases, Microchip’s TrustCUSTOM family gives customers the freedom to fully define the secure authentication configuration and fully customise secure key storage.

The TPDS v2 has an integrated onboarding flow which allows a customer to select a security solution, validate its use case, prototype it, and then start the process of secure provisioning.

TPDS v2 also enables third-party partners to add their own use cases to improve customer options for secure element onboarding and security features. Partners include EBV Elektronik (part of the Avnet Group). EBV Elektronik enables TPDS v2 users to connect to the Avnet IoTConnect Cloud quickly and securely through the ATECC608B TrustFlex configuration using the EBV-IoT Secure Shield evaluation kit.

Other features of TPDS v2 are training videos and interactive application notes spanning a variety of use cases for onboarding security, users can develop applications based on the selected use cases, finalise the security solution configuration, and perform the secret key exchange. There is also the facility to procure verification samples and start production.

The Trust Platform Design Suite is supported on Windows and macOS environments. The TA100 configurator is only available for the Windows platform.

Microchip’s open-source Trust Platform Design Suite is available for download on Microchip’s website at no cost for Trust&GO and TrustFLEX flows. The site also allows access to training videos, interactive application notes, C code and other project support. TrustCUSTOM software extensions for TPDS are available under NDA.

http://www.microchip.com

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Reference IP accelerates creation of signal and data processing SoCs

Tue, May 11, 2021

Power signal and data processing SoCs can be created faster and for lower costs, says Sondrel, using its latest reference IP platform.

The SFA 300 reference IP is the latest addition to the. It is a semi-custom SoC design to which a customer’s IP can be added to create a bespoke solution for high performance data processing.

Each SFA 300 reference design has four CPU clusters. Several SFA 300s can be ganged together and synchronised via the PCIe interface to scale the processing performance. There is also the option to integrate accelerators and/or custom logic to further increase performance and minimise power requirements. Developers can use the SFA 300 to tailor designs for processing-intense applications such as 8K video, artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition for surveillance, smart factories, blockchain servers and medical data analysis.

An ASIC with four CPU clusters is complex to design,” explained Rowan Naylor, a principal engineering consultant at Sondrel. “Moving data around the chip without bottlenecks needs a network on chip, a multi-width data path, internal RAM, scaled and distributed across the design for optimal performance, and data conflict arbitration”. He also went on to explain that data security aspects are required in the Arm-based security sub-system, such as activity/intrusion detection. These function are in the SFA 300 IP platform, which allows engineers to reduce the design time and costs by up to 30 per cent, declared Naylor.

The SFA 300 framework design enables it to be scaled to suit the application as well as be the basis for different solutions of varied processing power capabilities. The four CPUs can be chosen to suit the processing power need by each of the four channels of the chip because the interconnects on and off the CPUs are standardised. This standardisation of interconnects on the boundaries of IP blocks and the rest of chip enables most other IP blocks such as memory to be also exchanged as required.

If the processing power required is greater than can be achieved by upgrading the processors, then several chips can be ganged together to form a cluster to achieve the processing power required with the limiting factor being the speed of inter-chip communications dropping as more chips are ganged together.

According to Sondrel, this is an inexpensive means of achieving a high-performance solution as it requires just one chip repeated several times rather than a more expensive, single chip solution. Typical performance figures are 4 tera operations per second (TOPS) for each channel for AI and 400 giga operations per second for each channel for DSP.

The SFA 300 can be used for image and video analysis, for example. For a static image, it could find a face or count the number of blood cells on a sample slide and a neural net could provide more sophisticated recognition for data analysis, explained the company. Treating a video as a series of images, it could deduce the direction and speed of an object of interest.

Another use case could be heavy duty number crunching such as for block chains and cryptocurrency mining.

The SPA 300 has low power consumption, making it suitable for battery powered applications, such as a drone. The powerful image processing capabilities and AI enable it to be used as an autonomous drone controller to fly the drone.

The SPA 300 is the third in the company’s Architecting the future IP platforms.

Sondrel offers a full turnkey service that turns designs into fully tested, shipping silicon.

http://www.sondrel.com

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Signal analyser from Keysight helps customers test aerospace comms

Software and tools in Lattice’s latest FPGA stack accelerate automation

Microchip adds device configuration platform to Trust suite

Reference IP accelerates creation of signal and data processing SoCs

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