IZT Unveils Powerful RF Receiver with Adaptive Preselector
IZT R3500 provides flexible sensor solution for interception of RF signals
Erlangen – October 16, 2015 – IZT GmbH expands its industry leading RF receiver family, introducing the IZT R3500. The new RF receiver provides a high performance solution for the interception of RF signals. Instead of standard solutions with fixed filters, the R3500 offers a highly linear, flexible preselector with electronically configurable start- and stop frequencies.
Modern, automatic signal classifiers are able to simultaneously analyze several megahertz of spectrum for any signals of interest. The interception of the high frequency (RF) signals poses an exceptional challenge for the dynamic range of any receiver, especially when large and sensitive antenna systems are used. Management of the RF energy reaching the AD converter by means of an analogue preselector is essential.
Typically a bank of sub-octave filters is the standard approach for reducing the total signal power and second order intermodulation products. Due to its fixed center frequencies and bandwidths, a sub-octave preselector lacks the flexibility to deal with different receive scenarios. This comes at the expense of inflexible filter bandwidths. The IZT R3500 instead offers a highly linear, flexible preselector with different combinations of high-pass and low-pass filters.
The preselector implemented in the IZT R3500, allows the user to arbitrarily select a combination of one high-pass and one low-pass filter. These filters are then cascaded in the signal path electronically, but completely passively with no amplifiers in between. Within the input frequency range of 9 kHz to 40 MHz, a pool of high-pass filters with corner frequencies spaced in a ratio of approximately 1:1.26 can be selected. This limits the amount of incoming signal energy and provides highly effective protection against unwanted IP2 products. The user can freely cascade one out of 12 high-pass filters with one out of 13 low-pass filters. In a very large signal situation, they can be combined to resemble a highly selective sub-octave filter bank. For broadband, automatic signal search algorithms, a bandwidth of several megahertz may be best suited. In a low power RF environment, the filters can be switched off completely.
Like all receivers of the IZT R3000 series, the IZT R3500 supports up to four subchannels as IQ, complex FFT or PSD data over Ethernet. The sub-channels can be placed anywhere within 9 kHz and 40 MHz. Signal processing, data format and control interface of the IZT R3500 are fully compatible with the IZT R3000 series, giving current users of the IZT R3000 receivers an easy migration path.
The Ethernet-based signal distribution of the IZT R3500 can eliminate costly multi-coupler structures, which provide an analog interface between the antenna and a variable number of receivers. Instead, the IZT R3500 digitizes large parts of the RF spectrum in very high quality and the signal distribution is lossless and completely independent within the digital domain.
The IZT R3000 family of digital wideband receivers is particularly suitable for signal search and analysis, spectrum monitoring in line with ITU recommendations and communication intelligence. It allows to analyze and demodulate modern digital wideband signals as well as to track or intercept frequency agile systems over a wide range of bandwidths. The exceptional performance with outstanding receive characteristics and a 24 MHz real time bandwidth allow for handling of wideband signals while exceeding the performance of traditional narrowband receivers. The frequency range is specified with 9 kHz – 3 GHz (6 GHz / 18 GHz) while multichannel operation with up to four independent channels is supported.
