Pentek Inc. has released a development platform containing all hardware and tools required for software-defined radio development compliant with the Software Communication Architecture (SCA) mandated for all future U.S. military radios. The Pentek SCA 2510 hardware platform consists of a Pentek 7640 software radio transceiver PCI card installed in a PC workstation. The computer is loaded with the Linux operating system, development tools and the SCARI++ SCA core framework from Communications Research Centre (CRC) Canada. The hardware and software are fully integrated to ease development. The PCI card comes preconfigured with drivers and libraries so developers can immediately begin their software-defined radio projects.

The model 7640 dual-channel transceiver PCI board digitizes HF or IF input signals using a pair of 14-bit, 105 MHz A/D converters and generates output signals with two 16-bit, 500 MHz D/A converters. The 7640 is also equipped with a Virtex-II Pro VP50 FPGA that serves as a control and status engine with data and programming interfaces to each of the onboard resources, including a four-channel digital downconverter, a digital upconverter and a versatile clocking and synchronization system. The FPGA is supported with a total of 512 MB DDR SDRAM for built-in buffering functions, including data capture and delay. A 64-bit 66 MHz PCI interface includes a high-performance nine-channel DMA controller to boost PCI bus transfer speeds.

The SCA 2510 software development environment is based on the SCARI++ SCA core framework, component development library and software-defined radio (SDR) development toolset. This toolset is integrated with Pentek's SCA-compatible board support package for a complete development solution ready for radio and waveform designers.

Compared to proprietary development platforms, the use of a PC-based hardware platform, Linux operating system and CRC's SCA software reduces the cost of entry for potential developers. The PC workstation and the 7640 PCI rival the performance of larger multiboard system alternatives while reducing hardware costs. Because the model 7640 architecture is identical to the 7140 PMC/XMC module, development efforts can easily be scaled to large, multichannel VME and cPCI systems ranging from commercial through conduction-cooled environments.