A compact wideband transceiver from Teledyne Defense Electronics (TDE) demonstrates the flexibility of the modular VPX format while achieving outstanding performance from 6 to 18 GHz. Unveiled earlier this year at the 2019 Association of Old Crows (AOC) exhibition in Washington, D.C., the air-cooled model TSA-219040 demonstration unit weighs less than 2.75 kg and consumes 75 W or less power but delivers a 1-GHz instantaneous bandwidth while requiring 5 us or less to tune within 10 kHz of a new frequency.
“This is an exciting first step in delivering Teledyne Microwave’s ‘best-of-breed’ family of modular solutions. The architecture allows for tailoring to meet the customer’s needs in terms of tuning speed, phase noise, IBW, and frequency range. We anticipate this Transceiver will attract strong interest from customers and we encourage everyone to view the demo unit and meet our team at AOC,” said Mike Penta, vice president of strategy and business development for TDE.
The 6U VPX transceiver has a typical noise figure of 17 dB and delivers a 90-dB linear dynamic range within a 1 MHz bandwidth. It is designed for an external frequency reference from 10 to 100 MHz and can generate local oscillator (LO) signals for external tuning. The VPX transceiver handles RF input power levels to +20 dBm without damage. It has an intermediate-frequency (IF) range of 1.4 to 2.4 GHz with typical RF-to-IF signal gain of 20 dB. The transceiver has an output third-order-intercept point (OIP3) of +15 dBm at maximum gain. The composite phase noise is −79 dBc/Hz offset 10 kHz from the carrier and −115 dBc/Hz offset 1 MHz from the carrier, with maximum single-tone internally generated spurious levels of -80 dBc. The compact modular transceiver is designed to meet demanding requirements for reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP).