COMPANY 

INSIGHT

Wideband Signal Processing Hardware for Medical Instrumentation

Red Rapids offers a catalog of signal processing hardware products that target high performance data acquisition systems. Products include signal digitizers, digital signal generators, and signal processing algorithm accelerators. All products are built around open architecture standards for embedded systems or server/desktop computing environments.

The analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) products can be applied to virtually any type of signal. A wide selection of sample rates and support for AC or DC coupled analog connections allow the products to address a broad range of applications. They are frequently applied to high bandwidth transducers that operate in the ultrasonic or optical bands.

The digital signal processor (DSP) products use FPGA technology to accelerate application specific algorithms. The FPGA is directly connected to an ADC or DAC so that samples can be processed at the raw data rate and not limited by the speed of a general-purpose computer bus. These products require expertise in FPGA programming, but we can often tailor our existing base of intellectual property to meet a specific customer requirement.

Products Built on Open Architecture Standards

Red Rapids hardware is built around widely adopted open architecture standards. We offer the PCI Express form factor for desktop and server computers. The embedded products are available in the XMC and VPX form factors for both air and conduction cooled environments.

A unified code base allows application developers to transition between products and across operating systems with a common API. Windows and Linux drivers are provided at no additional cost. Demonstration software written in C (C++ compatible) provides a template for application development.

SigStreamTM Plug and Play ADC/DAC and Digital Up/Down Converter Products

The SigStreamTM product family digitizes and reproduces analog signals under software command from a host computer. The product behaves like any plug and play peripheral with minimal installation effort. Simply load the driver and begin processing digitized signal data from your application software.

The SigStreamTM products include a rich set of software programmable features that include selectable operating modes (continuous, snapshot, periodic), external or timed event triggers, programmable up/down converters, timestamped data samples, data sizing, and data packing. Data can be organized as a continuous stream of samples or in data packets defined by the VITA 49 specification.

SigStreamTM product options include a single channel 12-bit (1.5 Gsps) receiver, dual channel 16-bit (310 Msps) transceiver, quad channel 16-bit (250 Msps) receiver, and eight channel 16-bit (125 Msps) receiver.

 SigFPGATM DSP Accelerator Products

The SigFPGATM product family provides the ideal platform to rapidly field application specific signal processing functions minus the expense of custom hardware development. The products share a common Xilinx FPGA processing architecture with multiple size and speed grade options. Two banks of QDR SRAM attached to the FPGA provide 32 Mbytes of local storage. Each bank can sustain 1.8 Gbytes/sec simultaneous read/write transactions.

A library of FPGATM cores is included with each product to simplify communication with the ADC/DAC, SRAM, and host bus. A reference design written in VHDL demonstrates the complete datapath between the ADC/DAC and data transfers with the host computer.

SigFPGATM product options include a dual channel 12-bit (1.6 Gsps) receiver, dual channel 16-bit (310 Msps) transceiver, quad channel 16-bit (250 Msps) receiver, and eight channel 16-bit (125 Msps) receiver.

 Typical Applications

Red Rapids products are currently deployed in a production medical imaging system and numerous instrumentation applications around the globe.

Applied Harmonics:

Red Rapids is eager to help you match our product portfolio to your unique requirements