D/A converter brings high resolution radar images for military and commercial designers

Analog Devices have introduced the AD9164 D/A converter that brings high resolution radar images for designers of military and commercial radar while reducing solution component count. Additionally, for designers of precision instrumentation equipment, such as smartphone testers, the new device ensures improved accuracy as well as speed of test, contributing to faster market-ready time while significantly decreasing tester complexity and size. Thanks to its audio to 6GHz frequency coverage, the converter moves the tester market one step closer to a universal wireless test platform. The reduction in solution component count and thus size enables element level digital beamforming advanced radar solutions. With the same performance specifications as the existing AD9162, the AD9164 D/A converter also includes an on-chip DDS that ensures phase-coherent fast frequency hopping of less than 300ns for up to 32 different frequencies. This makes the converter well-suited for testing anything from AM broadcast band or Japanese FM band, to 5.8GHz UNII band. The converter features a 2x interpolator (FIR85), which enables configurability for lower data rates and converter clocking to reduce overall system power and ease filtering requirements. In mix-mode operation, this D/A converter can be configured to reconstruct RF carriers in the 2nd and 3rd Nyquist zones up to 7.5GHz while maintaining exceptional dynamic range. The device also comes with a unique remote evaluation tool, allowing designers to ‘test-drive’ the D/A converter’s performance.