Frequency handling capability of NI 5640 ?

[Mustafaa]

Hi,

     I want to ask this particular question about NI PCI 5640 IF transceiver card that what Frequency Range can this card handle. Actually I want to use this card as a transceiver whos detail is given as follows:

TX Side:

A signal with some specified parameters is to be generated and transmitted on RF frequency(220-240MHz) using NI PCI 5640.

Rx Side:( RF Front End)

Using the same NI PCI 5640, this RF frequency( 220-240 Mhz) is received and transformed to some IF and it is further processed using FPGA based embedded hardware to find out the characteristic parameters of the received signal.

Also, How can the examples " Single Tone Generation" and " Spectrum Analyzer" be used for this task.

Thanks for any help to be provided in this regard.

Message Edited by Mustafaa on 11-02-2009 07:49 AM

[jaced]

Hi Mustafaa,

The analog input and output frequency range of the 5640R is between 250kHz and 80Mhz with a bandwidth of 20Mhz. Based on your frequencies you will need an RF front end for both the generation and acquisition side on your transceiver to convert the signal to a usable frequency.  As for the examples I am confused what you are asking, the examples are meant to serve as a starting point for application development and not a turnkey solution.

[Mustafaa]

Thanks jaced for the help.

I am new in this field so u might get some very basic queries from my side but thanks for your patience and continuing help. Now as my desired frequency (220-240 Mhz) exceeds the maximum frequency limit of NI PCI-5640(i.e 80Mhz) so I have decided to use NI- PXI 5670 (2.7 Ghz RF Vector Signal Generator) on the transmission end and NI PXI 5660 (2.7 Ghz RF Vector Signal Analyzer) on the receiving end. I'll be using Modulation Tool Kit and Spectral Measurement Toolkit to do the task. Do you support my approach to  use NI PXI-5670 & NI PXI-5660 instead of NI PCI-5640 IF transceiver card?

Regards

[jaced]

Hi Mustafaa,

Based only on your frequency ranges these two devices should be fine for your application. For help with these modules your best bet will be to post in the RF forums found here: https://forums.ni.com/t5/RF-Measurement-Devices/bd-p/290

[Mustafaa]

Thank you jaced for ur time and help. I'll switch to the said forum section for further assistance

[Chris_W.]

Hi Mustafaa,

I think you really have a couple options here for this application. You can use the two devices that you mentioned (5670 and 5660) for those frequency ranges, however, I would have to make a suggestion that if you are going to use the 5660, I would definitely choose the 5661 instead. The reason is that the 5660 uses the 5620 digitizer, which is Traditional DAQ based, which forces you to use the NI-5660 driver instead of the NI-RFSA driver. The 5660 driver is not currently being updated and will eventually get phased out, whereas the NI-RFSA driver is up to date and will continue to be for a long time.

Your other option, if you're really thinking that you would like to use the NI-5641R, then you can pair the AO channel with the PXI-5610 to perform the upconversion to your 220-240MHz range. You can then use a PXI-5600 to bring that back down to IF for the AI channel of the 5641R. The modification in the example that you mentioned above are very slight and would mainly include adding some simple RFSA and RFSG code that sets the 5610 and 5600 into upconverter and downconverter mode. There are example programs that will install with the RFSA annd RFSG drivers that will do this. 

Here are some links to those products:

NI PXI-5661

NI PXI-5670

NI PXIe-5641R

NI PXI-5610

I hope this helps you make your decisions. 

Chris W