Commgenuity's Cool USB Radio is a LOW POWER / LOW COST Digital Signal Processing board. It's main function is to get digital signals in and out of your computer and interface them with your RF equipment. It's small form factor, low power, and single connection to your laptop PC's USB 2.0 port offers a highly portable DSP system. Connect the Cool USB Radio to your RF equipment's IF ports for a complete SDR communication system. The input signal is filtered and digitized using a 7-pole passive LC filter and a 12 bit ADC. This signal is processed in the FPGA and then fed to the USB 2.0 high speed interface running at 480 Mbps. The signal is received and stored by your computer and may be displayed and/or processed further. A digital transmit signal can be generated by your computer and sent to the Cool USB Radio via USB. The Altera Cyclone II FPGA processes the signal in preparation for transmission via the 14 bit DAC and 7-pole LC filter. The board dissipates less than 2.5W and is powered over the USB cable without an additional power supply.
The Cool USB Radio comes with an SDK (software developer's kit) including VHDL and C++ source code. You will be able to utilize the Cool USB Radio immediately using sample applications such as digitally tuning a receive signal to baseband and decimating to a lower sample rate using a chain of halfband FIR filters. The complex baseband signal can be streamed and captured on your PC and viewed in a live FFT display. Similarly, a complex baseband signal can be streamed from your PC to the FPGA where it is interpolated and tuned to an IF and sent to the DAC. Of course this is just a sample of what can be done with this fully programmable digital radio board.
Detailed Block Diagram
Prototype Test Results Part 1
Prototype Test Results Part 2
