IntroductionĪ design constraint that faces every radio designer is the trade-off of designing for signal bandwidth with the highest possible quality vs. This article explores the advances in RF converter technology that make this new breed of data acquisition systems and wideband radios possible, and discusses the possibilities that software configurability creates. With the capabilities to digitize and synthesize instantaneous signal bandwidths as high as 2 GHz or 3 GHz, RF converters can now deliver on the promise of truly wideband radios, enabling radio designers to dramatically reduce the amount of hardware needed to create a radio, and enabling a new level of reconfigurability via software that simply is not possible with conventional radio designs. RF Converters: A Technology That Is Enabling Wideband RadiosĬonverters that can directly synthesize signals in the radio frequency range (RF converters) have matured to a point that they are poised to transform conventional radio designs.

Digital optical converter definition