What is the FMC172? About, product history, etc.

Blog

September 30, 2022

Military customers looking to extend the bandwidth for their analog receivers and transmitters may have heard of the FMC172 FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) from Abaco Systems.

This guide provides a breakdown of what this product is and the features it offers, as well as a history of the product.

What is the FMC172 FPGA Mezzanine Board?

The FMC172 FPGA Mezzanine Board is a low-latency wideband FMC module designed for advanced embedded computing applications in electronic warfare, digital radar, wideband receivers, and wireless communications.

FMC is an ANSI/VITA 57.1 standard that defines I/O (input/output) mezzanine modules, specifying a low-profile connector and compact board size that makes it compatible with slot cards, motherboards, industry-standard blades and mezzanine form factors.

The purpose of the Abaco Systems FMC172 device is to provide another option for extending the bandwidth of analog receivers and transmitters. While the previous generation FMC170 only supported a single channel at 5 GSPS (giga samples per second), the FMC172 expands up to 6.4 GSPS at 10 bits – or two ADC channels (analog converter -digital) to 3.2 GSPS.

What is the FMC172 FMC used for?

The FMC172 is ideal for low latency applications. It allows the user to more easily control the sample rate and calibration.

“The board is equipped with power supply and temperature monitoring and offers multiple power-down modes to disable unused functions or protect the board from overheating,” according to a Abaco Systems fact sheet. “The FMC172 is ideal for applications where low latency and high bandwidth sampling are the driving requirements such as DRFMs [Digital Radio Frequency Memory].”

Some of the major military applications include:

• Software Defined Radio

• Radar/sonar electronic warfare

• Wireless communication transceivers

• Medical equipement

• Support for aerospace test and measurement instruments

• Direction finding

Recent Product History FMC172

In January 2019, Abaco announced the release of the FMC172 low latency broadband FMC module as an advanced on-board computing solution for a number of military applications. The company said it was based on an ADC RF (analog-to-digital radio frequency converter) device from Texas Instruments – known as the ADC12DL3200 – and DAC (digital-to-analog converter) devices from E2V.

“The FMC172 enables flexible control of clock source, sample rate, and calibration via I2C communication,” the release reads. “The ADC has individual calibration circuits for fine tuning gain, offset, and phase. The board is equipped with power supply and temperature monitoring and offers multiple power-down modes to disable unused functions or protect the card from overheating.”