bladeRF x40 Kit

2018-10-14 Note: Product is still in production by Nuand.

Out of the box the bladeRF can tune from 300MHz to 3.8GHz without the need for extra boards. The current open source drivers provide support for GNURadio among other things, allowing the bladeRF to be placed into immediate use. This gives the bladeRF the flexibility to act as a custom RF modem, a GSM and LTE picocell, a GPS receiver, an ATSC transmitter or a combination Bluetooth/WiFi client without the need for any expansion cards.

Highlights:

• Full-duplex 40MSPS 12bit quadrature sampling
• Only SDR in its class to support high precision FPGA timed RX and TX scheduling
• 40ppb (0.040ppm) factory calibrated VCTCXO
• Removable-cap RF shields for increased system sensitivity and isolation, system sensitivity as low as -102dBm
• Upgraded clocking architecture greatly improves system SNR to 35dB

Technical Specifications:

• Fully bus-powered USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Software Defined Radio
• Portable, handheld form factor: 5″ by 3.5″
• Extensible gold plated RF SMA connectors
• 300MHz – 3.8GHz RF frequency range
• Independent RX/TX 12-bit 40MSPS quadrature sampling
• Capable of achieving full-duplex 28MHz channels
• 16-bit DAC factory calibrated 38.4MHz +/-1ppm VCTCXO
• On-board 200MHz ARM9 with 512KB embedded SRAM (JTAG port available)
• Altera Cyclone 4 E FPGA /w JTAG port available
• 2×2 MIMO configurable with SMB cable, expandable up to 4×4
• Modular expansion board design for adding GPIO, Ethernet, and 1PPS sync signal and expanding frequency range, and power limits
• DC power jack for running headless
• Highly efficient, low noise power architecture
• Stable Linux, Windows, Mac and GNURadio software support
• Hardware capable of operating as a spectrum analyzer, vector signal analyzer, and vector signal generator

Difference between x115 and x40 bladeRF devices:

The only difference is the FPGA. The bladeRF x40 has an On-board 40KLE Altera Cyclone 4 E FPGA and the bladeRF x115 has an On-board 115KLE Altera Cyclone 4 E FPGA. The x115 provides additional room for hardware accelerators and signal processing chains including FFTs, Turbo Decoders, transmit modulators/filters, and receive acquisition correlators for burst modems.

Kit includes:

• bladeRF
• One USB 3.0 cable
• Two SMA cables
• One clear PolyCarbonate case for the bladeRF