Pentek Adds VITA 49 Protocol Engine to Cobalt FPGA Boards

Pentek today, at Embedded Tech Trends, announced the newest member of its highly popular Cobalt family of high-speed data converter XMC FPGA modules: the 4-channel Cobalt Model 71664, isa 200 MHz 16-bit A/D with programmable digital down converter, based on the Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA. The Model 71664 is the first Pentek product to include an IP engine for the VITA 49 Radio Transport (VRT) protocol.

Why is this important?
VRT is the future of software defined radio.  The protocols defined in VRT provide data and context packets that standardize the way information is transported from radio to signal processing equipment. 

What is the VITA 49 VRT standard?
The VITA Radio Transport (VRT) standard defines a transport-layer protocol for data and context packets designed to promote interoperability between RF (radiofrequency) receivers and signal processing equipment in a wide range of communication and radar systems. The VRT protocol provides a variety of formatting options that allow the transport layer to be optimized for each application. VRT enables high-precision timestamping to provide time synchronization between multiple receiver channels. Context packets can capture very precise context for each signal,including antenna gain and azimuth, frequency, spatial location, temperature and
more.

How does VRT interoperability work?
The VITA 49 specification addresses the problems of interoperability between elements of Software Defined Radio (SDR) systems. Previously, each SDR receiver manufacturer developed customand proprietary digitized data and meta-data formats, making exchange of data from different receivers challenging. With a common protocol, SDR receivers can be interchanged, enabling hardware upgrades and mitigating hardware lifecycle limitations, without the need to create new software to support each new receiver.

Attached for your convenience is a Word document and high-resolution image. Rodger Hosking is available for an interview to provide additional announcement details.

Regards,


Barbara Stewart 
Patterson & Associates 
embedded-to-Enterprise (e2E) Media Relations
Tel: 480-488-6909 
Email: barbara@patterson.com