channel emulator in NI 5792

[naty90]

Hi everyone,

is it possible to use this channel emulator https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-26423 in the NI 5792?

Thanks a lot 

[JoshWY]

Hi there,

My name is Joshua Young and I am from the Applications Engineering department at National Instruments UK.

I have been looking into your question about the compatibility of the channel emulator with the NI 5792. I haven’t been able to find any more information other than the details on the community channel where it only states compatibility with the NI PXIe-5644R.

However looking at the FPGA footprint of the emulator in relation to the specification of the PXIe-5644R and your NI 5792, I guess you may not have enough FPGA resources on a FlexRIO to compile and run.  

If you would like, I could see if I could get in touch with the developer Ryan_V[DE] (an NI employee) to see if he could shed any more light on the question. He would seem to have more expertise on this topic.

Kind Regards,

Joshua Young

Applications Engineer

National Instruments UK

[naty90]

Hi Joshua,

Please, ask to the developer to see if it's possible to implement a channel emulator using the NI 5792.

Many thanks. Best regards,
Natalia

[JoshWY]

Hi Natalia,

Just wanted to check in to share what stage I am currently at. I have tried to get in contact with the developer with no such luck.

In addition, all further research I have conducted only confirms my suspicion that the channel emulation would not be viable on the NI 5792 with FlexRIO.

I will continue to try to reach out to Ryan_V to obtain more information and will let you know if I find anything.

Regards,

Joshua Young

Applications Engineer

National Instruments UK

[naty90]

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for the updates. I'll be waiting in case you can contact the developer.

Thanks a lot. Best regards,

Natalia

[naty90]

Hi Joshua,

I've checked the specs of the FlexRIO FPGA and the Xilinx Virtex-6 LX195T that the NI 5644 form the example's got, and apparently the characteris of the FlexRIO shows that it's more powerful than the Xikinx one. Did you find anything else about the implementation of the channel emulator in the NI 5792?

Thank you. Best regards,

Natalia.

[JoshWY]

Hi again,

I have manged to get in touch with one of the developers. Hopefully I can summarise his anwser.

Firstly, his main concern was with the type of card you are wanting to use. The NI 5792 is infact an input only reciever card. Would you have access to a NI 5791 which is a transcevier card?

Now that we have out larger Kintex - 7 devices on the market, you should be able to reuse some of th code for FlexRIO. However the ADC and DAC rates are different meaning that you would have to build new fixed-rate resamplers, or use variable-rate resamplers that are in a 5791 sample project. this would consume more resources but is much simplier to develop. 

Its not certain it would fit, but you can give it a try. He guesses it would. 

I hope this gives you a better idea to what changes would be needed. If you have any further questions I will gladly pass them on.

Regards,

Josh

Applications Engineer NI UK

[naty90]

Hi Joshua,

thanks a lot for your answer. We actually have two NI 5792 and two NI 5793. Would this be suitable?

Many thanks,

Natalia

[BauerPower]

Hi Natalia,

It looks like Josh has gotten you mostly sorted out, you could implement the channelizer IP on a Kintex-7 FPGA module with the 5792, then use peer-to-peer streaming to stream data from one FPGA directly to the other for output on the 5793. I'm assuming that you are going for the combination of 5792+5793 for the increased RF bandwidth; keep in mind that at 200MHz BW, you will be streaming 1 GB/s of data across the backplane. While the PXIe-796xR FPGA modules would likely work from a resource perspective if you divided the channel emulator IP onto 2 FPGAs, you would need to go with the PXIe-797xR FPGA modules for their increased backplane throughput.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Rob