Boelink SDR Platform that combines the flexibility of Analog Device's AD9361 RF Agile Transceiver with the processing performance of NXP/Freescale B4860 Baseband SoC, is an ideal solution for public security industry, such as base station, electronic-fence, mobile phone radio signal detector, wireless signal shielding/blocking and so on. The excellent capabilities of bi-directional communications, long range, NLOS performance and mobile reception enable the SDR platform could be used for different scenarios. This SDR platform provides designers with a recommended starting point for new productors or feature designs, significantly reducing time to market and risk.

  Boelink has been added to ADI's RadioVerse^TM 3rd Party Reference Designs and Hardware.

  Boelink SDR platform is composed of RF and BB units; the system architecture is shown in the following figure.

Figure: Boelink SDR Platform Architecture

Overview

  Boelink AD9361 SDR Platform is an ideal solution for Public Security Industry, such as 4G base station, electronic-fence, 4G mobile phone radio signal detector and measurement, wireless signal shielding/blocking, etc.Boelink aims at delivering the best products for Public Security Industry, so we choose Analog Device's AD9361.

AD9361

• RF 2 × 2 transceiver with integrated 12-bit DACs and ADCs

• TX band: 47 MHz to 6.0 GHz

• RX band: 70 MHz to 6.0 GHz

• Supports TDD and FDD operation

• Tunable channel bandwidth: <200 kHz to 56 MHz

• Dual receivers: 6 differential or 12 single-ended inputs

• Superior receiver sensitivity with a noise figure of 2 dB at 800 MHz LO

• RX gain control
  

• Real-time monitor and control signals for manual gain

• Independent automatic gain control

• Dual transmitters: 4 differential outputs

• Highly linear broadband transmitter
  

• TX EVM: ≤−40 dB

• TX noise: ≤−157 dBm/Hz noise floor

• TX monitor: ≥66 dB dynamic range with 1 dB accuracy

• Integrated fractional-N synthesizers

• 2.4 Hz maximum local oscillator (LO) step size

• Multichip synchronization

• CMOS/LVDS digital interface

Boelink SDR Platform

  Boelink provide many types of RF Board Modules (based on Analog Device's AD9361 RF Agile Transceiver), which could be applied for different products. The following RF and BB modules combine as Boelink's common SDR platform.

l  TRX Board

    KPI

-         Frequency:            70MHz ~ 6GHz

-         Bandwidth:           1.4MHz ~ 56 MHz

-         Tx/Rx Number:      3T3R

-         Data Interface:      CPRI

-         Ext Interface:         PA's Tx/Rx Control interface

-         Power:                  12W (in Max.)

-         Voltage:               12V

-         Working Temp:     -40 ~ 65°C

-         Rx Sensitivity:        -172.2~-167.2dBm/Hz

-         Tx Power:             -80dBm ~ 10dBm（in AVG.）

    Functionality

-         Supports up to 3 bands 70MHz ~ 6GHz RF Transceiver

-         Supports up to 3 different carrier frequency per band simultaneously

-         Supports IQ data exchange with Baseband unit via CPRI interface

-         Supports Tx/Rx switch control interface for PA unit

-         Supports OTP (Over Temperature Protection), OCP (Over Current Protection) and OVP (Over Voltage Protection)

    Advantage:

-         SFF (Small Form Factor) design

-         OTP, OCP and OVP

-         High performance: Downlink EVM < 2%, Uplink Rx sensitivity around 165dBm/Hz

    Design Diagram

Figure: TRX Board Diagram

l  PA Board

    KPI

-         Frequency:           700MHz ~ 2.7GHz

-         RF Interface:         SMA

-         Ext Interface:         PA's Tx/Rx Control interface

-         Power:                  10/20/60W Customizable

-         Voltage:               5V and 28V

-         Working Temp:     -40 ~ 65°C

-         Efficiency:             25% ~ 35%

-         PAPR:                   7 ± 0.5dB

    Functionality

-         Supports 3GPP frequency bands customization: B1/B3/B5/B38/B39/B40/B41

-         Supports other frequency bands customization: 600M/1.8G Hz

-         Supports different power level customization: 1W/5W/10W/20W/60W

-         Supports Tx/Rx switch control interface from TRX unit

-         Supports OTP (Over Temperature Protection), OCP (Over Current Protection) and OVP (Over Voltage Protection)

 l  Baseband Board

    KPI

-         SoC:                     NXP B4860

-         DDR:                    2/4/8GB configurable

-         Data Interface:      CPRI

-         Power:                  20W (Typical)

-         Voltage:               12V

-         Working Temp:     -40 ~ 65°C

-         Clock source:        GPS/Beidou

-         Clock stability:      0.2PPM

-         Interface:              I2C/SPI/UART/GPIO/Eth

    Functionality

-         6 DSP Cores @ 1.8GHz

-         4 CPU Cores @ 1.2GHz with Dual Threads

-         Up to 8GB DDR @ 1866MHz

-         Supports IQ data exchange with TRX unit via CPRI interface

-         Supports GPS/Beidou synchronization

    Advantage:

-         SFF (Small Form Factor) design

-         Extremely high calculation performance

An Example of Boelink SDR platform Application

  Here is an example of Boelink SDR platform application in public security industry. 4G electronic-fence is a telephone signal detecting device used for intercepting mobile phone traffic and tracking location data of mobile phone users in a given range, which is very useful to public security department.

  There are many wide frequency bands been allocated to the China three operators (CMCC, CUT, CTC); the following table shows the 4G radio frequency resource allocation among them.

Table: China 4G frequency resource allocation for three operators

  The 4G electronic-fence which can cover all the frequency bands (shown in the table) of the China three operators above and has perfect RF performance will be more competitive when comparing with other competitors' products.

 Boelink's solution is to use a Six-Band RF module to simultaneously support 3 different carrier frequencies per band. The module includes 6 independent transceivers and 6 independent receivers.

  Each receive (RX) subsystem includes independent automatic gain control (AGC), DC offset correction, quadrature correction and digital filtering, thereby eliminates the need for these functions in the digital baseband. The AD9361 also has flexible manual gain modes that can be externally controlled. It has a very wide RF working band that has covered the whole bands of TDD and FDD LTE in China. 

 The module has an extremely long MTBF (mean time between failures) due to ADI Industrial-grade chips and professional reference design, which gives the electronic-fence a high stability.

  The KPI of electronic-fence is shown here:

-         Tx EVM:                            < -40dB

-         RX channel gain：             > 70 dB

-         TX noise floor：                < -167.2 dBm/Hz

-         TX power control range:    90 dB

-         channel isolation:              > 55 dB

-         Effective collect ratio:        ~99%

-         Working Range:                5m to 1000m

-         Mobile speed:                   <100km/h

Boelink Typical Products

  There are many products based on Boelink SDR Platform, especially the macro base stations. The following figures are the typical Boelink products, for example 4G large base station, small base station and micro base station. Thanks to the ADI AD936x series ICs, all the products are highly-integrated and showing perfect RF performance (referring to the RF KPI above).

    Figure: (1) Large Base Station        (2) Small Base Station        (3) Micro Base Station