NI (National Instruments, referred to as NI), as a supplier dedicated to providing a software-centric platform, aims to help users accelerate the development and performance of automated test and automated measurement systems. The company today announced the launch of the PXIe-5831 Vector Signal Transceiver (VST), which further solves the time-to-market challenge of radar and satellite communications (SATCOM) components and systems in X-band, Ku-band and Ka-band.

In order to meet the ever-increasing demands in the fields of electronic battlefield and satellite communications (SATCOM), the utilization of spectrum resources is becoming increasingly tight, engineers need to complete the prototype design of radar and SATCOM system in a higher frequency band in a shorter time, and verify and verify them. test. PXIe-5831 VST has a modular millimeter wave head and expands the frequency of the VST product family up to 44 GHz. It provides an instantaneous bandwidth of 1 GHz for signal generation and analysis, and has a high-performance FPGA, so users can perform measurements, real-time signal processing, and high-speed data transmission faster and more efficiently.

Luke Schreier, vice president and general manager of NI defense, aerospace and government business, said: "When VST was first released in 2012, it completely changed the way high-performance RF test programs were developed, providing calibrated, reliable RF measurement data and flexibility. User-programmable online signal processing functions. In addition, users can also program in LabVIEW or use the existing VHDL IP. These functions are extended to more radar and satellite communication frequencies, which can help the field solve the common problems of developing complex transceiver systems From the company’s perspective, these technologies are not only applicable to radar and satellite communications, but also to the commercial 5G field, which allows us to provide more efficient support for this product."

PXIe-5831 combines PXIe-5820 baseband VST with PXIe-3622 vector signal upconverter/downconverter, which can directly generate and analyze RF signals in the range of 5 to 21 GHz. The modular millimeter wave radio head not only further expands the frequency coverage, covering frequencies from 23 to 44 GHz, but also has an integrated and calibration switch that can support up to 32 channels. In this way, engineers can perform multi-channel beamformer and phased array measurements without additional infrastructure.

PXIe-5831 is another new member of NI modular instrument product series, this series covers more than 600 PXI products, the frequency range covers from DC to millimeter wave. PXIe-5831 also has the functions of the NI platform, such as high throughput data transmission based on the PCI Express Gen 3 bus interface, and sub-nanosecond synchronization between PXI modules through integrated timing and trigger functions. Therefore, users of PXIe-5831 can also take full advantage of the functionality of LabVIEW software, the flexibility of the LabVIEW FPGA module, and the huge ecosystem of partners, additional IP and application engineers. These advantages all help them adapt to fast-changing technologies and demanding technical requirements, and then deliver new systems within time and cost budgets.