Board-Level hardware enables preemptive experimentation with latest Ka-Band DACs

The company is about to start initial sampling of the EV12DD700 dual-channel DACs, which are capable of operating up into Ka-band frequencies. Predominantly targeting mission-critical microwave systems, these devices support beamforming applications. They have a 25GHz output bandwidth with only 3dB attenuation being witnessed, and can go way beyond this with just a little over 3dB attenuation. Built into each DAC is an array of sophisticated signal processing functionality. This encompasses a programmable anti-sinc filter and direct digital synthesis (DDS) capabilities, as well as a programmable complex mixer. Also included is a digital up-converter (with four interpolation stages, plus sinc compensation). Via the EV12DD700 evaluation kit, engineers will have the opportunity to investigate the key operational parameters of the 12.5GSamples/s EV12DD700, ahead of the full production release later this year. This means they can assess its validity in respect to their particular design criteria early on. Having registered, users will also get access to valuable lab measurement data over the course of the coming months. "There is a growing need to migrate RF systems from being heavily hardware dependent to following a more software-centric structure, thereby making them much easier and quicker to configure. It's now becoming clear that the Ka-band is going to be where much of this activity occurs," states Nicolas Chantier, Marketing Director at Teledyne e2V Semiconductors. "Through the EV12DD700, and its support for higher frequency levels, it will be possible for engineers to replace a much larger proportion of RF hardware with digital code, and our evaluation kit will give them a useful head-start."