DRS Technologies, Inc. has introduced a new family of small, high performance RF monitoring and detection receivers for U.S. military, intelligence agency and commercial spectrum monitoring. Providing a significant advancement in RF performance with a modular, open system architecture, the Vesper family can be configured with up to 10 RF channels—either receive or transmit—in a single slot, 1" pitch, 6U VPX module. The modular design is an advantage compared to proprietary solutions that hinder upgrades over the system’s lifecycle.
The current instantiation of Vesper accepts nine blind-mate antenna inputs, each feeding a receiver channel covering 2 MHz to 6 GHz. Each receive channel down-converts the incoming RF signal to IF, with up to 100 MHz bandwidth. The raw output data from the analog-to-digital converter feeds a field-programmable gate array for time stamping, digital down-conversion, filtering, decimation and packetization. Data is formatted per the VITA 49 VRT standard for transport using the Aurora protocol. Other transport protocols, including 10GigE, and PCIe Gen 2/3, will be available.
The current product instantiation also includes one exciter channel, covering 2 MHz to 6 GHz with 100 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. Input data should be formatted using the Aurora data transport protocol. Additional Vesper configurations are available.
The Vesper synthesizers have low phase noise with fast tuning and rapid phase settling. To extend application possibilities, the channels within a VPX card or between multiple VPX cards can be operated independently or, when tuned to the same frequency, will be phase coherent.
DRS Technologies, Inc.
Germantown, Md.
www.drs.com/Vesper