Mercury Systems Inc. announced the SpectrumSeries™ DS-3000 synthesizer, the company’s latest high performance, direct digital synthesis (DDS)-based synthesizer. Designed to support customers’ advanced frequency conversion technology requirements and operate in the harshest environments, the DS-3000 synthesizer offers industry-leading phase noise of -121 dBc/Hz at 10 GHz with 10 kHz offset, and frequency coverage up to 20 GHz with 1 Hz resolution.
“Today’s announcement reinforces Mercury’s ongoing commitment to commercializing innovative RF solutions that provide the U.S. warfighter and our allies the technical edge they need to meet their mission requirements,” said Neal Austin, VP and general manager of Mercury’s Embedded Sensor Processing group. “In an environment of rapidly emerging electronic threats, customers can count on our industry-leading synthesizer technology to provide the expanded performance and reliability needed by modern EW and ELINT systems so they can monitor wide bands of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to detect, analyze and mitigate new threats.”
Ultra-low phase noise synthesizers are critical to electronic warfare (EW) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) systems that monitor large RF bandwidths through either a channelized architecture or wide instantaneous bandwidth (IBW). Mercury’s DS-3000 synthesizer increases the operational range and performance of a customer’s EW or ELINT system by employing both low phase noise and high frequency stability to maximize a receiver’s sensitivity. By exceeding the phase noise and frequency stability performance of other frequency generation products, Mercury’s innovative SpectrumSeries synthesizers provide next-generation EW systems with increased operational range, keeping the warfighter farther from the threat.
To support operation in harsh environments, Mercury’s synthesizer technology offers high performance over a wide temperature range of -30°C to +70°C, while minimizing the harmful effects of microphonics. Additionally, the ability to control the hardware through either a PC-based graphical user interface (GUI) or an SPI-bus makes these products well-suited for both benchtop operation and integration into ruggedized EW systems. To maximize system flexibility, the DS-3000 is available in a standard temperature-compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO)-based architecture as well as an ultra-low phase noise, oven-controlled crystal oscillator (OCXO)-based architecture. For laboratory applications, this technology is also available as the SIG-20 benchtop signal generator.