PX14400 – 400 MS/s, 14 bit, 2 Channel, PCIe x8, Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA, Digitizer Board

The PX14400 is a dual channel waveform capture board that provides a remarkable combination of high speed and high resolution sampling along with a very large memory capacity. Signal frequencies up to 200 MHz can be accurately captured when using the programmable gain amplifier or up to 400 MHz if the direct transformer coupled connection is used.

The entire 1 GB memory may be used as an exceptionally large FIFO for acquiring non-stop, continuous data directly to either the PCI Express (PCIe) bus or the SAB. In Buffered Acquisition Mode (where the 1 GB RAM FIFO is used) the PX14400 is capable of sustaining the full 1600 megabyte/sec data rate over the SAB or 1200 MB/s over the PCIe bus. Significant test data has shown that recording with large FIFO buffering can be continuous at these rates even when operating in traditional non real-time environments such as the Windows operating system.

The PX14400 employs up to two Virtex-5 FPGAs, where one of the FPGAs is available as an option for customers to implement their own custom in-line signal processing. A standard FIFO interface to the Signatec specific logic portion of the PX14400 along with control flags, an example program using the FIFOs/flags and a programmer’s manual are provided with the optionally available PX14400 Firmware development kit.

The PX14400 can be ordered either with or without this 2nd user accessible FPGA. Boards without the FPGA are –DR versions of the product (data recording only) and boards with the user FPGA are –SP versions of the product (signal processing).

The PX14400 was designed to maximize the quality of the captured signal in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and spurious-free dynamic range over a very wide frequency range. The programmable amplifier allows for setting the full scale input voltage from 200 millivolts to 3.0 volts in 1 dB steps.

A frequency synthesized clock allows the ADC sampling rate to be set to virtually any value from 58 to 400 MHz, offering maximum flexibility for sampling rate selection. This frequency selection flexibility comes at no cost to the acquisition clock quality/performance when locked to either the onboard 10 MHz, 5 PPM reference clock or to an externally provided 10 MHz reference clock. The ADC may also be clocked from an external clock source.

Up to five PX14400 boards may be interconnected in a Master/Slave configuration via a ribbon cable that connects at the top of the board. In this configuration the clock and trigger signals from the Master drive the Slave boards synchronize sampling across all boards. Additional boards can be synchronized, even across computer chassis, when using Signatec’s SYNC1500-6 product. The PX14400 supports single shot, segmented, and pretrigger triggering modes.


Product Specifications

Specification Data Sheet Revision 1.00 – 09/29/2009


External Signal Connections
     Analog Input, Channel 1: SMA
     Analog Input, Channel 2: SMA
     Clock Input: SMA
     Trigger Input: SMA
     Digital Input / Output: SMA
 
Analog Inputs – Amplifier
     Full Scale Voltage Ranges: 200 mV to 3.0 V in 1dB steps
     Impedance: 50 ohms
     Bandwidth: 100kHz - 200 MHz (Bessel filter)
     SNR (1-200 MHz): 65 dB
     SFDR (@ 100 MHz): 83 dB
 
Analog Inputs – Transformer
     Full Scale Voltage Ranges: 1.1 Volts
     Impedance: 50 ohms
     Bandwidth: 500 kHz to 400 MHz
     SNR (1-200 MHz): 70 dB
     SFDR (@ 100 MHz): 83 dB
 
External Trigger
     Signal Type: digital, TTL signal level
     Impedance: >10k ohms
     Bandwidth: 50 MHz
 
Internal Synthesized Clock
     Frequency Range: 58.0 - 400 MHz
     Resolution: better than 10 PPM
     Accuracy: better than 5 PPM
     Unsettable Ranges: 277-308 MHz
 
External Clock
     Signal Type: sine wave or square wave
     Coupling: AC
     Impedance: 50 ohms
     Frequency: 20 MHz to 400 MHz
     Amplitude: 100 mV p-p to 2.0 V p-p
 
Post ADC Clock Divider
     Divider Settings: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32
 
Reference Clock
     Internal: 10.0 MHz, +/- 5 ppm max.
     External: 10.0 MHz, +/- 50 ppm max (required for lock)
 
Digital Input / Output
     Type: TTL Logic Level (standard)
     Max. Frequency: 200 MHz
     Connection: 50 ohms to FPGA I/O
 
Trigger Modes
     Post Trigger: single start trigger fills active memory
     Pretrigger: single trigger stops acquisition
     Segmented: start trigger for each memory segment
 
Trigger Options
     Pretrigger Samples: samples prior to trigger are stored; Single Channel: 8k max.; Dual Channel: 4k max per channel
 
     Delayed Trigger: delay from trigger to data storage; Up to 64k digitizer clock cycles
 
Memory
     Total Size: 512 Megasamples
     Segment Size: Up to 128 Megasamples
     Segment Re-Arm Time: 150 nanoseconds
     Addressing: DMA transfers from starting address
 
Signatec Auxiliary Bus (Version 4)
     Data Transfer Rates: up to 2000 MB/s max @ 64 bits
     Data Direction: Output only
 
Power Requirements
     +12V: 1.0 Amps max.
     +3.3V: 3.3 Amps max.
 
Absolute Maximum Ratings
     Analog Inputs: +/- 4 volts
     Trigger Input: -0.2 to +4.0 volts DC
     Clock Input: 5 volts peak to peak
     Ambient Temperature: 0 to 50C