The RFNM: A Next Generation SDR with 10 MHz to 7200 MHz tuning range, 12-Bit ADCs and up to 612 MHz Bandwidth
The RFNM is an upcoming software defined radio that has some impressive high end specifications only seen in SDRs costing thousands, and at the same time the creator claims that it will be priced at a steal. While no pricing has been set, the creator noted in a Reddit post that pricing will be "closer to $500", bringing it's price similar to SDRs like the HackRF, bladeRF, LimeSDR, PlutoSDR.
The RFNM will have eight 12-bit ADCs on board, and provide up to 612 MHz of real time bandwidth for receiving. For transmitting it has two DACs, with up to 153 MHz of TX bandwidth. The tuning range will be from 10 MHz up to 7200 MHz. They note that their front end also has 13 preselection filters and six different LNAs and programmable attenuators.
Pushing 12-bit 612 MHz bandwidth of the device would be difficult, so to help with processing all that data, there will be an onboard VSPA DSP processor, as well as built in ARM CPU cores, and a 16 GFLOPS GPU. Connectivity will be either through USB 3.0, or Ethernet.
The main baseband chip on the SDR is the Layerscape® Access LA9310 chip sold by NXP which provides I/Q ADCs and DACs. Those signals are sent to the RFNM Daughterboard Interface, where they are upconverted to the frequency range of interest. This lets the end user choose a different daughterboard for different applications.
The Granita daughterboard has tuning capability from 600 MHz to 7200 MHz. To get frequencies down to 10 MHz the RFNM is making use of the RFFC2071A mixer. There will also be a cheaper 'lite' version that does not use a mixer, and hence only provides tuning from 600 MHz to 7200 MHz.
In addition, the website states that they are pursing a version of their board that will make use of the LimeSDR LMS7002 chip that will cover 10 MHz to 3500 MHz. They are also looking into boards that may break out more ADC lanes, an oscilloscope add-on, and breakout board.
You can join the RFNM email waiting list, and find more details about it at rfnm.io. At the time of this post they state that the waiting list is "53% full". As of right now the project appears to have nothing concrete to show off, but the lead creator Davide Cavion was behind the FPV Blue HD Video system, so he appears to have the experience to take this project forward.
The next version should be called RTFM
The most important information is missing…
…what will it cost?
The actual website for this SDR explains all the great applications of this unit. Used as a test instrument, and seeing all to outputs this thing has, if you are an electronics experimenter, this is a need-to-have piece of equipment. I understand wanting a unit that drops a into the VLF range, but if you want a high precision stable frequency standard, this would be hard to beat.
Tommy, as you’re saying, the modularity/connections are hard to beat. We can (and will) design a RFNM daughterboard for HAM radio, it’s not going to require any changes to the baseboard.
It would be great to be able to tune down to few khz insteead of 10 mhz.
HF is often not addressed (limesdr, bladerf, plutosdr, etc)
I think a lot of people would like to have it.
And please, provide enclosure for this nice piece of hardware.
You could always add something like a Spyverter R2 which translates DC to 60MHz to 120MHz to 180MHz and as long as your signal levels are lower than 10dBm you could use it for RX or TX.
the bigger problem might be trying to program this. From what Iv seen NXP will not give out any documentation/support and all you get are fixed function blobs.
“S” is the biggest part of SDR, without good software the best hardware in the world is useless.
Yes, the VSPA DSP is under very strict NDAs. What a shame, I was going to buy this.
Not going below 10 mhz is the deal breaker for me, my main interest in listening is shortwave & medium wave, if it went down to 500 khz i would have bought 2 of them
The beautify of the system is its modularity. Different daughterboards can be designed for different tasks. We have a HAM daughterboard planed, which will go down to 1.8 MHz, according to feedback we got from other users. Should we go down to DC?
Down to DC would be great for vlf experimenters. Maybe mod the mixer a bit.
Go down to DC for RX + add band-pass filters for shortwave, 6m, 2m, 70cm and 23cm ham bands (to suppress TX harmonics) + PA for shortwave/vhf/uhf to allow at least 1-2W of output power + have good Linux support and it will be instant buy for me. 🙂
You’d buy two 600 dollar SDRs capable of massive amounts of bandwidth just to listen below 10Mhz? Am I missing something? Why not just pay an extra $50 or so and have another SDR plugged in dedicated to that range.
+1
+1 for an enclosure
Saying “VSPA DSP processor” just looks wrong to me.
VSPA (Vector Signal Processing Accelerator)
DSP (Digital Signal Processing)
There might have a problem selling these, with a requirement for signed legally binding documentation (covering re-export and disposal), before each sale can happen.
Plug “site:bis.doc.gov category 3” into your search engine of choice.
quote is from 2023-02-24 Export Administration Regulations Bureau of Industry and Security
Commerce Control List Supplement No. 1 to Part 774 CATEGORY 3 – ELECTRONICS
“a.5.a. ADCs having any of the following:
a.5.a.1. A resolution of 8 bit or more, but less than 10 bit, with a “sample rate” greater than 1.3
Giga Samples Per Second (GSPS);
a.5.a.2. A resolution of 10 bit or more, but less than 12 bit, with a “sample rate” greater than 600
Mega Samples Per Second (MSPS);
a.5.a.3. A resolution of 12 bit or more, but less than 14 bit, with a “sample rate” greater than 400
MSPS;
a.5.a.4. A resolution of 14 bit or more, but less than 16 bit, with a “sample rate” greater than 250
MSPS; or
a.5.a.5. A resolution of 16 bit or more with a “sample rate” greater than 65 MSPS;”
> a.5.a.3. A resolution of 12 bit or more, but less than 14 bit, with a “sample rate” greater than 400
I don’t see a problem. It’s 8x 12-bit ADCs with a sample rate of 153 MHz max. You can digitise 600+ MHz of bandwidth in real time, but that’s via 4x different ADC pairs.
It would depend on which of the technical notes is applicable to the RFNM :
“3. For “multiple channel ADCs”, the “sample rate” is not aggregated and the “sample rate” is the maximum rate of any single channel.
4. For “interleaved ADCs” or for “multiple channel ADCs” that are specified to have an interleaved mode of operation, the “sample rates” are aggregated and the “sample rate” is the maximum combined total rate of all of the interleaved channels.”
I think the board is great, but do not want you to suffer legal problems.
Yikes seems like not much thought was given to export compliance. Would suck if it couldn’t leave the country or worse
It’s already planned! Here is a mockup: https://imgur.com/a/mqVHRTS
looks good, but needs still a enclosure for the shielded PCB. Please provide a full Enclosure for a “ready to use” SDR.
you will sell more units when you offer a “ready-to-use” Software Defined Radio with enclosure, instead of a bare PCB board…612 MHz Real Time Bandwith with preselectors is amazing !
please provide a shielded enclosure for the PCB