SIGNALCORE SC5313A, Operating And Programming Manual

Page 1: ...SC5313A 400 MHz to 6 GHz IQ Demodulator USB SPI and RS 232 Interfaces Operating and Programming Manual 2013 SignalCore Inc support signalcore com ...

Page 2: ...hipment 4 Setting Up and Configuring the SC5313A 4 Power Connection 5 RF Signal Connections 5 Baseband Connections 6 Communication Connection 6 Reset Button 7 Indicator LED 7 SC5313A Theory of Operation Overview 8 RF Input Section 8 LO Input Section 10 IF Output Section 11 SC5313A Programming Interface Device Drivers 12 Using the Application Programming Interface API 12 Setting the SC5313A Writing...

Page 3: ...ity of the IQ Demodulator 15 Storing the Startup State 16 Writing to the User EEPROM 16 Querying the SC5313A Writing to Request Registers Reading the Device Temperature 17 Reading the Device Status 18 Reading the User EEPROM 18 Reading the Calibration EEPROM 18 Calibration EEPROM Map 19 Software API Library Functions Constants Definitions 21 Type Definitions 22 Function Definitions and Usage 22 Pr...

Page 4: ...e suspected In no event shall SignalCore be liable for any damages arising out of or related to this document or the information contained in it EXCEPT AS SPECIFIED HEREIN SIGNALCORE INCORPORATED MAKES NO WARRANTIES EXPRESS OR IMPLIED AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE CUSTOMER S RIGHT TO RECOVER DAMAGES CAUSED BY FAULT OR NEGLIGENCE ON T...

Page 5: ...nformation and data provided by our component suppliers and may not have been independently verified through other means For products sold into China we also comply with the Administrative Measure on the Control of Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products China RoHS In the current stage of this legislation the content of six hazardous materials must be explicitly declared Each of those ...

Page 6: ...TRONIC MONITORING OR CONTROL DEVICES TRANSIENT FAILURES OF ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS HARDWARE AND OR SOFTWARE UNANTICIPATED USES OR MISUSES OR ERRORS ON THE PART OF THE USER OR APPLICATIONS DESIGNER ADVERSE FACTORS SUCH AS THESE ARE HEREAFTER COLLECTIVELY TERMED SYSTEM FAILURES ANY APPLICATION WHERE A SYSTEM FAILURE WOULD CREATE A RISK OF HARM TO PROPERTY OR PERSONS INCLUDING THE RISK OF BODILY INJURY AN...

Page 7: ...nstantly and permanently damage several of the components found in SignalCore products Therefore to avoid damage when handling any SignalCore hardware you must take the following precautions Remove the product from its packaging and inspect it for loose components or any signs of damage Notify SignalCore immediately if the product appears damaged in any way Verifying the Contents of your Shipment ...

Page 8: ... use lint free swabs and isopropyl alcohol to gently clean inside the connector barrel and the external threads Do not mate connectors until the alcohol has completely evaporated Excess liquid alcohol trapped inside the connector may take several days to fully evaporate and may degrade measurement performance until fully evaporated Tighten all SMA connections to 5 in lb max 56 N cm max LO OUT This...

Page 9: ...B 2 0 protocol found on most host computers The pinout of this connector viewed from the front of the module is listed in Table 1 Table 1 Pinout of the SC5313A USB communication connector Pin Number USB Function Description 1 VBUS Vcc 5 Volts 2 D Serial data 3 D Serial data 4 ID Not used 5 GND Device ground also tied to connector shell The user can also communicate with the device through the micr...

Page 10: ... resetting the device will reinitialize the device to the saved user configuration Indicator LED The SC5313A provides visual indication of important modes There one LED indicator on the unit Its behavior under different operating conditions is shown in Table 3 Table 3 LED indicator states LED Color Definition ACTIVE Orange Device is powered on and working properly ACTIVE Green Device is open commu...

Page 11: ... preserved as seen at the input port of the device This requires that the demodulator is not driven too hard high signal amplitude nor too soft low signal amplitude When the device is driven hard nonlinear effects dominate the system When driven too softly signal to noise dynamic range suffers A general rule is to apply more attenuation earlier in the RF signal path to improve linearity and more g...

Page 12: ...Vocm Variable Diff Amp Vocm Vocm Out Diff Amp IQ Demodulator Linearity Dac 90 0 i i 50W 50W RF Amp 1 RF Amp 3 RF Amp 2 9 Selectable RF Filters 9 Selectable LO Filters LO Amp 2 LO Amp 1 Gain Selectable IF Diff_Amp RF Atten 1 RF Atten 2 RF Atten 3 Figure 2 Simplified block diagram of the SC5313A ...

Page 13: ...t perform in situ equalization to remove IQ errors such as phase imbalance and quadrature gain offsets that are inherent to the device There are nine low pass filters in the RF filter bank These filters are automatically selected when the user enters the operating frequency These filters can also be selected manually should the user choose to do so As with all filters there is generally an amplitu...

Page 14: ...is not a hard requirement and the user will need to adjust the voltage levels to suit their specific requirements As an example setting to some other voltage may be required to optimize the dynamic range of the receiving digitizer and as a result better optimize the entire system DC offsets may limit the dynamic range of the receiving digitizer and where it is critical the user can tune out to min...

Page 15: ...ost computer should identify the device and load the appropriate driver For more information please see the SC5313A_Readme txt file also located under the Win directory A LabVIEW API is provided and it consists of function wrappers that call the sc5313a dll A LabVIEW API written in G that uses NI VISA is also available from the SignalCore website The National Instruments driver wizard that is part...

Page 16: ...ers Register Name Register Address Serial Range Bit 7 MSB Bit 6 Bit 5 Bit 4 Bit 3 Bit 2 Bit 1 Bit 0 LSB INITIALIZE 0x01 7 0 Mode SET_SYSTEM_ACTIVE 0x02 7 0 Enable active LED RF_FREQUENCY 0x10 7 0 MHz Frequency Word 7 0 15 8 MHz Frequency Word 15 8 23 16 MHz Frequency Word 23 16 31 24 MHz Frequency Word 31 24 39 32 MHz Frequency Word 39 32 RF_AMPLIFIER 0x12 7 0 Amplifier Mode RF_ATTENUATION 0x13 7 ...

Page 17: ...s register is generally written when the device driver opens or closes the device Setting the RF Frequency RF_FREQUENCY 0x10 This register provides the device frequency information to set up the filters appropriately Data is sent as a 40 bit word with the LSB in Hz Setting RF Input RF Amplifiers RF_AMPLIFIER 0x12 This register enables or disables the RF amplifiers Setting bit 0 low 0 disables RF a...

Page 18: ...T_DAC 0x19 The common output voltage of each channel of differential amplifiers can be adjusted by writing to this DAC The output voltage is linear in the region of 1 0 V to 3 5 V and follows the equation Removing DC Offset in Differential Amplifiers DC_OFFSET_DAC 0x1A The DC offset between the and terminals of the differential amplifier output can be minimized by writing this DAC Varying the DAC ...

Page 19: ...the write command is needed to initiate the save Writing to the User EEPROM USER_EEPROM_WRITE 0x1B There is an onboard 32 kilobyte EEPROM for the user to store data User data is sent one byte at a time and is contained in the last least significant byte of the three bytes of data written to the register The other two bytes contain the write address in the EEPROM For example to write user data 0x22...

Page 20: ...N to obtain the data The number of valid bytes returned varies from 1 to 3 bytes See the register details below Reading the Device Temperature GET_TEMPERATURE 0x17 Data returned by this register needs to be processed to correctly represent data in temperature units of degrees Celsius Data is returned in the first 14 bits 13 0 Bit 13 is the polarity bit indicating whether it is positive 0x0 or nega...

Page 21: ...ding above this address will cause the device to retrieve data from the lower addresses For example addressing 0x8000 will return data stored in address location 0x0000 The calibration EEPROM map is shown in Table 7 All calibration data whether floats unsigned 8 bit unsigned 16 bit or unsigned 32 bit integers are stored as flattened unsigned byte representation A float is flattened to 4 unsigned b...

Page 22: ...OM map EEPROM ADDRESS HEX NUMBER OF DATA POINTS TYPE DESCRIPTION 0 1 U32 Manufacturing information 4 1 U32 Product serial number 8 1 U32 RF module number C 1 U32 Product manufacture date 24 1 F32 Firmware revision 28 1 F32 Hardware revision 2C 40 F32 Reserved CF 33 U8 Startup state F4 1 F32 Calibration temperature ...

Page 23: ...ceStandby sc5313a_SetFrequency sc5313a_SetIfGainDac sc5313a_SetLinearityDac sc5313a_SetLoFilter sc5313a_SetLoOut sc5313a_SetRfAmplifier sc5313a_SetRfAttenuators sc5313a_WriteUserEeprom sc5313a_StoreStartupState sc5313a_SetRfFilter sc5313a_GetDeviceInfo sc5313a_GetDeviceStatus sc5313a_GetTemperature sc5313a_ReadCalEeprom sc5313a_ReadUserEeprom sc5313a_AutoDcOffsetComp sc5313a_SetDcOffsetDac sc5313a...

Page 24: ...ve LED define RF_FREQUENCY 0x10 set the frequency define RF_AMPLIFIER 0x12 enable amplifiers define RF_ATTENUATION 0x13 set attenuation for digital step attenuators define RF_PATH 0x14 select the RF path define RF_FILTER_SELECT 0x15 manually select the RF filter define LO_FILTER_SELECT 0x16 manually select the LO filter define LO_OUT_ENABLE 0x17 enable LO output define IF_GAIN_DAC 0x18 set the I a...

Page 25: ...rl H to assist with understanding the input and output parameters Function sc5313a_SearchDevices Definition int sc5313a_SearchDevices char serialNumberList Output char serialNumberList pointer list to serialNumberList Description sc5313a_SearchDevices searches for SignalCore SC5313A devices connected to the host computer and returns an array containing their unique serial numbers This information ...

Page 26: ...tus sc5313a_RegWrite devHandle RF_FREQUENCY 2000000000 set frequency to 2 GHz Declaring define MAXDEVICES 50 libusb_device_handle devHandle device handle int numOfDevices the number of device types found char deviceList 2D to hold serial numbers of the devices found int status status reporting of functions deviceList char malloc sizeof char MAXDEVICES MAXDEVICES serial numbers to search for i 0 i ...

Page 27: ...bool mode set the mode of initialization Description sc5313a_InitDevice initializes resets the device Mode 0 resets the device to the default power up state Mode 1 resets the device but leaves it in its current state Function sc5313a_SetFrequency Definition int sc5313a_SetFrequency deviceHandle deviceHandle unsigned long long int frequency Input deviceHandle deviceHandle handle to the opened devic...

Page 28: ...signed char attenuator unsigned char atten Input deviceHandle deviceHandle handle to the opened device unsigned char attenuator selects the attenuator to program unsigned char atten attenuation value 0 31 dB Description sc5313a_SetRfAttenuation Sets the attenuation of the RF attenuators Function sc5313a_SetRfFilter Definition int sc5313a_SetRfFilter deviceHandle deviceHandle unsigned char filter I...

Page 29: ...the differential amplifiers The default factory setting is 2008 Function sc5313a_SetDcOffsetDac Definition int sc5313a_SetDcOffsetDac deviceHandle deviceHandle unsigned char channel unsigned short dacValue Input deviceHandle deviceHandle handle to the opened device unsigned char channel select the I or Q channel unsigned short dacValue DAC value 0 16383 Description sc5313a_SetDcOffsetDac sets the ...

Page 30: ...int sc5313a_GetDeviceInfo deviceHandle deviceHandle deviceInfo_t devInfo Input deviceHandle deviceHandle handle to the opened device Output deviceInfo_t devInfo device info struct Description sc5313a_GetDeviceInfo retrieves device information such as serial number calibration date revisions etc Function sc5313a_GetDeviceStatus Definition int sc5313a_GetDeviceStatus deviceHandle deviceHandle device...

Page 31: ...igned char byteData Input unsigned int deviceHandle handle to the opened device unsigned int memAdd EEPROM memory address Output unsigned char byteData the read back byte data Description sc5313a_ReadCalEeprom reads back a byte from a specific memory address of the calibration EEPROM Function sc5313a_ReadUserEeprom Definition int sc5313a_ReadUserEeprom deviceHandle deviceHandle unsigned int memAdd...

Page 32: ...or obtaining the SERIAL_READY bit which is returned in bit 0 of the device MISO line Figure 3 Querying the SerialReady bit All data transferred to and from the device are clocked on the falling edge of the clock as shown in Figure 4 Figure 5 shows a 3 byte SPI transfer initiated by the host the device is always in slave mode The CS pin must be asserted low for a minimum period of before data is cl...

Page 33: ...wo additional registers available for SPI communication as shown in Table 8 Data byte s associated with registers can be zeros or one it doesn t matter which value since the device ignores them They are only required for clocking out the returned data from the device Table 8 Additional SPI registers Register Name Register Address Serial Range Bit 7 MSB Bit 6 Bit 5 Bit 4 Bit 3 Bit 2 Bit 1 Bit 0 LSB...

Page 34: ...ansfer buffer Reading the SPI Bus Data is simultaneously read back during a SPI transfer cycle Requested data from a prior command see Table 9 is available on the device SPI output buffers and these are transferred back to the user host via the MISO line To obtain valid requested data would require querying the SPI_OUT_BUFFER which requires 5 bytes of clock cycles 1 byte for the device register 0x...

Page 35: ... receive a factory calibration The SC5313A is sold as a component and users will need to perform amplitude and IQ correction as part of their system which may minimally include a digitizer LO source and the SC5513A Should users require SignalCore to perform any calibration please contact SignalCore support directly ...

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