Carbon - Getting Started - step by step instructions

• 70 MHz to 6 GHz
• Xilinx Ultrascale+ MPSOC FPGA
• Dual Analog Devices AD9361 RF Transceivers
• 2 USB-C interfaces (1 Upstream Facing Port, 1 Dual Role Port) supporting USB 3.0 speeds
• 4 Phase coherent RX channels¹
• 4 Phase coherent TX channels¹
• Dock interface for optional accessory modules (RF accessories, PCIe accessories, etc)
• Powered by 6 CR123A batteries or external USB-C PD source (9V or greater)

¹Requires accessory module with calibration loopback circuit

The Carbon SDR is built upon the same ecosystem of components as RWT's Oxygen SDR, and is intended to facilitate the rapid deployment of custom SDRs for mission-specific applications. This platform was developed to provide larger FPGA options, more I/O connectivity, and more RF channels.

Carbon SDR can be used to stream data to a host computer as an iio device over USB gadget ethernet, or it can operate headless as a standalone embedded computer. The operating system for the radio is a custom Linux distribution built using the Yocto/OpenEmbedded development system. The Carbon kit includes several options of Xilinx FPGA sizes to allow users to optimize power consumption and performance for their applications. The default RF transceiver cards are based on the Analog Devices AD9361 and provide 4TX/4RX MIMO support with the use of an external loopback calibration fixture. Other RF transceiver cards are currently in development and will allow for additional options in the future. Carbon is powered by a removable battery pack that holds 6 CR123A batteries, or it can be powered from a USB-C Power Delivery compliant power source that can deliver 9V or greater.

In addition to the radio's standard features, a dock interface is provided to host application specific RF accessory modules if needed. These modules are intended to provide additional RF signal processing (e.g., up/down converters, low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, filters, etc.) as well as I/O accessories via the dock's PCIe and GPIO connections. Custom accessory modules can be developed by RWT or by customers. All of the physical and electrical specifications required to develop accessory modules for the dock interface are provided on the Carbon Specifications page.

• For information on starting to use the Carbon SDR see: Carbon Getting started

• For advanced information on building a custom Linux distribution

• For information on specifications see: Carbon Specifications

• For information on creating a sdcard see SD card creation

^{*Standard configuration ships with the 3EG option. All FPGAs have 128 MB SPI Flash. Other FPGAs from the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ portfolio are available with software development NRE. Contact RWT for details.}

An HDL development environment has been created that is similar to a GNU Radio out-of-tree module to allow some or all of the user signal processing algorithms to be implemented in the logic fabric. This results in a significant performance boost and more deterministic timing for applications such as CDMA and TDMA waveforms. Whether the radio is used as an iio device or a standalone embedded system using gr-rwt, there is ample remaining FPGA space for user code development.

The standard Carbon SDR kit comes packed in a hard sided case with the following contents:

1. Carbon Software Defined Radio
2. USB-C PD 18W wall-wart power supply
3. USB-A to USB-C cable
4. USB-C to USB-C cable
5. 32 GB microSD card, preloaded with boot image and example code
6. RWT USB-C console/debug port adapter