Developers in need of an affordable open source, mixed-signal frontend may be interested in the simpleFE developed and created by Ning Wang. The simpleFE development board offers a is a low-cost, easy-to-use mixed-signal frontend, specifically designed to serve as a versatile bridge, performing high speed analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversions. Watch the introductory video below to learn more about the simpleFE and its features.
“simpleFE frees your development team from the need to design, manufacture, and deploy complex digital and mixed circuits. By transparently streaming data over a USB 2.0 interface to and from the host system, simpleFE allows every bit of digital signal processing to take place on that host, which eliminates the need to port logic to an FPGA or DSP. As a result, engineers can focus on signal processing algorithms and software. This not only accelerates the prototyping phase of many projects, it shortens development cycles between iterations.”
“Having said that, if you are looking to develop custom embedded software, you can’t go wrong with the Lattice iCE40 at the heart of simpleFE. It’s an extremely popular, well-documented chip supported by a fully open source toolchain. Just because you’re learning doesn’t mean you have to spend your time making LEDs blink on and off. And if you do have experience with Lattice FPGAs, so much the better. simpleFE gives you the opportunity to utilize those skills for specialized, high-performance DAC and ADC applications.”
Features and specifications of the simpleFE :
– Analog-to-Digital Convertor (ADC): 8-bit, two channels, up to 7.5 Msps (I & Q)
– Digital-to-Analog Convertor (DAC): 10-bit, two channels up to 7.5 Msps (I or Q) or 5 Msps (I & Q)
– USB: High-speed interface (USB 2.0 Type B, 480 Mbit/s)
– GPIO: 16 pins
– DAC Output: 10-bit, four pins
– SPI interface
– I²C interface
– Antenna Connectors:
– Two U.FL analog output (50 Ohm output impedance)
– Two U.FL analog input (high impedance)
– USB: EZ-USB FX2LP (CY7c68013A)
– FPGA: ICE40HX1K
– Front-end: MAX5863
– DAC driver chip: ADA4891
– ADC driver chips: AD8137
– Software: GNU Radio, gr-simplefe out-of-tree module, libsimplefe C library
Source: Crowd Supply