Transceiver SDR XTRX Mini-PCIe

Specjalizowany transceiver SDR XTRX Pro Mini-PCIe

XTRX to zminiaturyzowany tranceiver SDR w postaci karty Mini-PCIe, przeznaczony do zaawansowanych projektów takich jak np. monitorowanie sieci komórkowych 2G/3G/4G. Dzięki szerokiemu pasmu przetwarzania, pozwala na odbiór rozproszonych systemów komunikacji, zarówno SISO, jak i MIMO.

Dzięki niedużym rozmiarom oraz niewielkiej wadze XTRX nada się również jako moduł radiowy do zastosowań mobilnych, takich jak np. drony.

Istnieje możliwość zestawienia do 8 zsynchronizowanych ze sobą odbiorników XTRX na specjalnej karcie PCIe, dzięki czemu użytkownik uzyskuje dostęp do narzędzie potrafiącego monitorować pasmo radiowe o szerokości prawie 1GHz!.

Ze względu na duże możliwości i złożoność projektu, transceiver XTRX przeznaczony jest raczej dla osób mających doświadczenie z tego typu urządzeniami.

Opis i dane techniczne wg. producenta (j. angielski):

XTRX is the smallest easily embeddable software-defined radio (SDR). It is both affordable and high-performance. XTRX is designed to enable the next generation of wireless solutions, from prototype to production.

LTE modems and GPS receivers are commodity parts easily bought in any electronic components store and added to your project. On the other hand, everyone designing an SDR-based product had to spend precious time and money on a custom design – until XTRX.

Don’t waste your time designing yet another SDR. Embedding XTRX into your product is easy, freeing you up to focus on what your customers really need.

Overview

XTRX is the best platform available today for building SDR-based products. We designed it with demanding embedded applications in mind:

• Best-in-class Performance: 2 x 2 MIMO, 120 MSPS SISO / 90 MSPS MIMO, and more
• Compact Form Factor: as a Mini PCIe card, it’s the smallest commercially available SDR
• Thermal Coupling: well-designed thermal interface to a heatsink
• Stable Clock: accurate enough for cellular standards
• GPSDO: on-board GPS disciplined oscillator
• Synchronized Clocks: share the same clock source across many boards
• SIM Card Reader: appears as a typical USB serial SIM card reader
• High-speed GPIO: 12 total, of which eight can form four matched LVDS lines

If You’ve Ever Cursed Your SDR…

XTRX isn’t for everyone. We expect most people interested in XTRX to already have some experience with SDRs. If you’ve never used an SDR before, XTRX might be a bit overwhelming for you. XTRX might be right for you if you have:

• deployed SDR-based solutions in the field
• wanted to develop a massive MIMO system only to realize you don’t have $1 million
• cursed your SDR (or USB) for its latency, reliability, or cables
• yearned to level-up your SDR skills with cutting-edge equipment

If this describes you, or you are looking for a better SDR, fear not and read on!

Use Cases

Here are just a few of the things you could use XTRX for:

Massive MIMO System

XTRX boards can share the same sampling and reference clocks, which makes it easy to build a massive multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) system.

Monitor Massive Amounts of Bandwidth

With synchronized clocks, multiple XTRX boards can collectively monitor very large chunks of the RF spectrum. For example, eight synchronized XTRX boards could monitor nearly 1 GHz of bandwidth.

LTE Cellular

The combination of XTRX’s accurate, stable clock, on-board GPSDO, and low-latency PCIe bus makes LTE possible out of the box.

Software-defined 2G/3G/4G Modem

When inserted into a Mini PCIe slot reserved for cellular modems, XTRX appears as a USB SIM card reader.

Drones and Embedded Systems

Power consumption, weight, size, and performance all matter when it comes to drones and embedded systems. XTRX’s Mini PCIe form factor and GPIO enable you to interface with a wide variety of single board computers, sensors, and actuators.

DSP Acceleration

You can use the FPGA to accelerate your real-time signal processing; the high-speed, low-latency PCIe bus allows shuttling data back and forth between the host CPU and XTRX’s FPGA.

Features & Specifications

• RF Chipset: Lime Microsystems LMS7002M FPRF
• FPGA Chipset: Xilinx Artix 7 35T/50T (CS/Pro)
• Channels: 2 × 2 MIMO
• RF Output Power: 0 to 10dBm depending on frequency
• Sample Rate: ~0.2 MSPS to 120 MSPS SISO / 90 MSPS MIMO
• Tuning Range: 30 MHz - 3.8 GHz
• Rx/Tx Range:
  • 10 MHz - 3.7 GHz
  • 100 kHz - 3.8 GHz with signal level degradation
• PCIe Bandwidth:
  • PCIe x2 Gen 2.0: 8 Gbit/s
  • PCIe x1 Gen 2.0: 4 Gbit/s
  • PCIe x1 Gen 1.0: 2 Gbit/s
• Reference Clock:
  • Frequency: 26 MHz
  • Stability w/o GPS: 100 ppb or 500 ppb over the temperature range (depends on the XTRX version)
  • Stability w/GPS: <10 ppb stability after GPS/GNSS lock
• Form Factor: full-size Mini PCIe (30 × 51 mm)
• Bus Latency: <10 µs, stable over time
• Synchronization: synchronize multiple XTRX boards for massive MIMO
• GPIO:
  • FPC Edge Connector: four lines (usable as two diff-pairs)
  • Mini PCIe Reserved Pins: eight lines (including two diff-pairs, 1pps input, 1pps output, TDD switch control, and three LEDs)
• Accessories:
  • Antennas + Cables
  • USB 3 Adapter with Aluminium Enclosure
  • PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter
  • PCIe Octopack

Documentation & Sources

We’re publishig all XTRX-related code under the xtrx-sdr GitHub organization. The most important repositories to note:

• Documentation: connectors pinout, 3D models, etc.
• Pre-built binaries and a “make world” instructions
• Applications with XTRX support which is not yet merged upstream:
  • SDRangel
  • osmo-trx
  • Kalibrate
  • gr-osmosdr

Comparisons

Conceptual plot of XTRX's market position

Why Mini PCIe?

We chose the Mini PCIe form factor for XTRX because it’s the best option for a high-speed, low-latency bus that is both physically compact and widely used. In other words, using Mini PCIe results in a device that is both high-performance and easily embeddable.

While it’s true that many laptops are moving away from Mini PCIe slots and toward M.2 slots, Mini PCIe is still the most popular PCIe form factor among standards-based, professional single-board computers (SBCs) and embedded systems. We will likely release an M.2 version of XTRX after the Mini PCIe version has been delivered.

We also considered USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3, but the former is high-latency and the latter is not yet very popular. However, should you want to use USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3, there are adapter boards for both.

Adapter Boards & Accessories

While Mini PCIe is a great form factor, you might need something else. That’s why we developed the USB 3 Adapter with Aluminum Enclosure and the PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter. We’re also offeringAntennas + Cables known to work with XTRX. All of these are available separately, or together in the XTRX Deluxe Bundle. In addition, we’re offering a special XTRX PCIe Octopack loaded with eight removable XTRX boards.

USB 3 Adapter with Aluminum Enclosure

This adapter converts your XTRX from Mini PCIe to USB 3 and comes with an aluminum enclosure designed specifically for XTRX. We’re working hard to maximize the heat dissipation through the metal case so you won’t need a fan even under long, heavy loads. The adapter has three status LEDs, a micro USB 3 port, one SMA connector for the GPS antenna, four SMA connectors for the MIMO Tx/Rx antenna pairs, a micro SIM card slot, and a slot for a GPIO FPC cable. The adapter comes with a USB cable and all RF cables needed to connect an XTRX to the SMA connectors within the aluminum enclosure. The adapter does not include an XTRX, antennas, or FPC cable.

PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter

This PCIe card securely holds an XTRX board (not included) so it can be used in a standard PCIe x4 slot. It includes an RF front end with a low-noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA) for up to 100 mW output on each channel. A time duplex division (TDD) switch is incorporated for applications like TDD LTE. You can bypass the front end by attaching cables directly to XTRX. This adapter achieves the full 10 Gbit/s raw bus bandwidth and can be plugged into x4/x8/x16 PCIe slots, though it won’t fit into an x1 slot unless the slot has an open end. A six-pin JTAG connector on the edge is compatible with a JTAG-HS2 cable, so you can easily program and debug the FPGA. The board also has a micro SIM card slot.

XTRX PCIe Octopack

If you need a massive MIMO deployment or have a large swath of spectrum you need to monitor, you’ll want one of these limited availability Octopacks. This single PCIe card comes loaded with eight removable XTRX boards, metal installation brackets, cables for all of the GPS and MIMO Tx/Rx ports, and a special board for synchronizing all eight XTRX boards.

The Octopack is based on a switch that routes between a single x4 PCIe 2.0 card and eight x1 PCIe 2.0 cards. This means you can’t simultaneously utilize the full bandwidth of all eight XTRX boards, but it’s still capable of running LTE-A and other applications. All eight XTRX boards on an Octopack can be synchronized using the included sync board, which has a more stable clock generator and connects via the included FPC cable to the first XTRX. Using external clock synchronization ports (CLK_IN/PPS_IN), it’s possible to synchronize multiple Octopacks, thus creating 32 x 32, 64 x 64, or even larger MIMO systems.

Flexible Development

Hardware

The XTRX hardware itself is proprietary, though the hardware accessories we designed for it (e.g., the USB 3 and PCIe adapters) are open hardware.

Firmware

XTRX’s main FPGA code is open source and without a viral license, so not only can you modify the code, but you can also develop your own proprietary FPGA blocks. The FPGA is approximately 30% utilized. We will share a detailed utilization report in a future update. You can upload your own firmware with our USB 3 adapter board or with a JTAG cable and our PCIe adapter board. If you are good at soldering, you can even solder JTAG directly to the XTRX board – that’s how we programmed our first samples.

Host Software & Drivers

The host-side software and drivers are open source.

We developed our low-level API to maximize performance (i.e., we’re using a zero-copy interface). We provide a SoapySDR interface to our low-level library, so you can quickly start developing if you’re already familiar with SoapySDR. For example, using SoapySDR plugins, you can easily get UHD support. Of course, there’s always the option to interface directly to the low-level API if you don’t want to use SoapySDR or need to eek out the most bandwidth and lowest latency.

The USB 3 adapter relies on a libusb wrapper, so it will work on almost every platform libusbworks on. In contrast, PCIe communication requires a kernel-level driver for direct memory access (DMA) and interrupt handling. Our host library talks to a device provided by the kernel driver. Currently, we have an implementation for Linux only. A Windows driver is in early stages of development and will be released later. We don’t plan to develop PCIe drivers for other platforms right away. Our Linux kernel driver exposes TTY devices for GPS, UART, and SIM card UART, so you can use existing software, like gpsd and xgps. The adapter also provides a kernel pulse per second (LinuxPPS) interface for handling the lowest levels of jitter in NTP-like applications.

Urządzenie sprzedawane jest z gwarancją 24 miesięcy.