The use of software radio technology has spread to almost every commercial, consumer, government, industrial, and military platform across the entire radio frequency spectrum during the technology's 25-year lifespan.

Innovations in data converter technology, DSP devices, system interconnects, processors, software, design tools, and packaging techniques have improved performance levels and reduced the size, weight, and power consumption of software radio systems.

"The rapid explosion of software radio applications is characterized by ad hoc, proprietary interfaces between each element of the system. VRT offers a consistent protocol for these interconnections to improve interoperability, maintainability, and upgradability." Rodger Hosking, Pentek Vice President and Co-founder

Features Complete radar and software radio interface solution PCIe output supports VITA 49.0 VITA Radio Transport (VRT) Standard Supports Xilinx Virtex-6 LXT and SXT FPGAs Four 200 MHz 16-bit A/Ds Four multiband DDCs Multiboard programmable beamformer Up to 2 GB of DDR3 SDRAM or 32 MB of QDRII+ SRAM Sample clock synchronization to an external system reference LVPECL clock/sync bus for multimodule synchronization PCI Express (Gen. 1 & 2) interface up to x8 wide

Model 71664

• Complex Signals
• Digital Downconverters (DDCs)
  • Receiver Systems
  • Decimation
• Digital Upconverters (DUCs)
  • Transmitter Systems
  • Interpolation

As a Certified Member of Xilinx's Alliance Program, Pentek has passed a comprehensive 320-point review of its technical, business, quality, and support processes and has engineers who completed the same rigorous training used by Xilinx Field Application Engineers worldwide.

Pentek continues to demonstrate expertise with Xilinx devices and implementation techniques and consistently delivers high-quality products and services utilizing Xilinx programmable platforms. As a certified member of Xilinx's Alliance Program, Pentek will have early access to Xilinx's technology road map.

As a certified member of Xilinx's Alliance Program, Pentek's profile is on Xilinx's website. Pentek's use of Xilinx FPGA technology is described on Pentek's Xilinx FPGA central.

It's difficult for some people to imagine what technology was like in 1986 during the time period in which a 6 MHz computer with a 20 MB hard drive was state-of-the-art – and processing data would take hours.

We can all fully appreciate where technology is today: 1,000 times faster – and in milliseconds processing is complete!

Here at Pentek, we are proud to have witnessed, discovered, optimized, and innovated all of the new technology over the past 30 years. We thank you for your support as we continue to thrive and provide you with high-performance products needed for your leading-edge data acquisition, digital signal processing, and software radio applications.

"Pentek takes pride in listening to its customers and creating new products to meet their needs. We promise an atmosphere of freedom and creativity among our engineers, so they can design industry-leading products to satisfy the most demanding applications. This has been the key to our success through the years."

Pentek's founders are shown in the photo above (left to right):

Information about Pentek's 30-year history can be found here.

Pentek's SystemFlow® Software provides the tools necessary to analyze and record RF signals without complex configuration or programming. A simple and intuitive GUI allows for out-of-the-box operation of any Talon Recording System with point and click parameter selection, simple profile creation, and automatic file naming.

The SystemFlow Signal Viewer provides a virtual oscilloscope, virtual spectrum analyzer, and spectrogram display prior to, during and after a recording session.

The Talon RTR 2729A provides the performance of a rackmount recorder in a lightweight portable package. With a 3.6 GHz 12-bit A/D, built-in digital downconversion this portable recorder allows users to capture extremely wide bandwidth signals in real time for hours.

In this 5 1/2 minute video, Chris Tojeira, Recording Systems Director, explains the key features of the Talon 2729A, including the removable storage drives and system drive.