rfel.

com

high speed real-time

digital signal processing

RF Engines Limited
RF Engines Limited (RFEL) is a UK based
electronic systems designer, providing high
specification signal processing solutions for
FPGAs, as well as receiver and complete
product solutions for the homeland security,
defence, communications and
instrumentation markets. Applications
include communications base stations,
satellite communications systems, test and
measurement instrumentation, and bespoke
wideband receivers/transceivers.

RF Engines Limited is an independent UK

company.

Core business Core Design Skills

Consultancy - studies and modelling to Digital IF and Baseband design. Novel IF

establish the most appropriate and Baseband designs, and specialist digital
architectures for specific tasks. signal processing designs for emerging
satellite and terrestrial communications
Product and Systems Design - off-the-shelf systems, military and government systems,
and complete turnkey firmware designs, and spectrum analysers.
and products incorporating those
techniques. Product realisation. Incorporation of front-
end and back-end design skills into
Manufacture - low volume production of complete digital receiver and transceiver
specialist products. products. Systems design embracing RF,
ADC, IF, Baseband, Channelisation/Signal
Support - guaranteed product performance, Conditioning, Post-processing functions,
supplemented as required with Applications processing.
comprehensive technical support.
RF Design. Innovative RF designs for new
and upgraded products and systems, for

Main markets commercial and military applications.

Innovative products and solutions for: Modelling. Detailed bit-true system

Wireless Communications simulations to guarantee product
Satellite Communications performance.
Defence Systems
Government Services Design Consultancy Services. Pre-cursor
Test & Instrumentation studies to define product specifications.
RF Engines Ltd (RFEL) was established in 1999 to advance the company's designs are
high-speed real-time digital signal processing technology.
relevant wherever high-speed,
Since that date, the company has grown rapidly and remained
highly complex signal
focussed on using leading-edge hardware and patented and

proprietary design techniques, to achieve the wide-band real-

processing and analysis are
time performance required by today's most advanced applicable
military, communications, spectrum analysis, and signal

detection applications.

The company has steadily expanded its capability and now The company has applied its patented and other advanced

includes in its portfolio a range of complex system-on-chip signal processing designs, combined with the latest high

designs, and also low volume, specialist hardware solutions. speed Field Programmable Gate array (FPGA) devices, to

The products supplied by the company range from basic provide miniaturised, off-the-shelf and specialist system

research, through to IP cores, customised designs and to low solutions offering top-end performance for the military,

volume manufacture of receiver and transmitter products for instrumentation and communications markets. The

Electronic Warfare (EW), governmental security and other company's products are supplied worldwide, and in the

applications. RFEL's products and services are supplied military market specifically, are relevant to airborne, land and

primarly to the leading companies in each of the markets. naval applications.

By way of example, the novel technology solutions offered by

RFEL are highly relevant to current and future EW (Electronic

Warfare) receiver programmes, where the channelisation

characteristics have to be simultaneously matched to widely

varying signal types, including weak signals, LPI (Low

Probability of Intercept) and frequency hoppers. The expertise

of the company is in the processing and analysis of the

received signals at the 'front-end' of digital electronic

systems. Put simply, the company's designs enable

simultaneous events within the broadband radio frequency

spectrum to be seen all of the time and in high definition. This

enables a very high probability of intercept against

simultaneous signals, however transient or fast moving

(including the fastest frequency hoppers).

Another major application area is in the design of satellite

communications monitoring systems, where the company

applies its signal channelisation capabilities to extract

multiple complex channels (in some cases, several thousand

channels) fro the wideband signal, and 'condition' the

individual channels to simplify the subsequent application.

 Typical contracts

Summarising some of the contract highlights, the company:

has been awarded several contracts with one of the main has carried out a number of research programmes for the

US defence companies for an airborne direction finding UK MOD and other government departments into specialist

system. RFEL provided the key enabling technology, which signal processing algorithms for advanced digital receivers.

allowed the US prime contractor to meet the bandwidth,

power, size and demanding technical specifications for this has carried out research and has implemented a complex

advanced direction finder system. The system is installed in synthesis/analysis bank on FPGA for the Australian DSTO

the latest rotary and fixed-wing defensive aids suites, (Defence Science and Technology Organisation)

providing increased sensitivity and probability of detection

and wider frequency range has completed a contract with the UK Government for a

major upgrade to a national monitoring system. This

has supplied several designs and technology which have particular UK government department proactively approached

been incorporated into a leading European land-based RFEL with a view to applying their extensive RF system and

direction finding system. The European defence contractor in unique signal processing skills to solve a difficult digital

question has utilised RFEL’s capability to produce a unique receiver upgrade.

high quality digital filter bank on FPGA design. The design

enables 6 wideband channels to be processed in an extremely has recently been awarded a major contract by another UK

efficient manner. The unique filter bank design will allow Government department for the design and supply of a

signal intercept and probability of detection specifications to wideband, low power, portable transceiver product. RFEL were

be dramatically improved. This improvement was enabled by successful in winning this important contract against strong

the high resolution and improved dynamic range offered by competition, and are responsible for the complete product

the Polphase DFT filter bank employed. realisation, from antenna through to signal characterisation.

has been selected by a European defence/government has supplied a department of the French Government with

prime contractor to provide the key front end signal one of RFELs hardware demonstrator systems configured

processing technology for an adaptive 1600 channel satellite with a patented PFT algorithm, to characterise short duration

receiver system. The requirement was to dramatically reduce pulse type signals. This work proved very successful and led

the cost, size and power requirements. This critical to a project to undertake research to enhance the signal

component for their flagship product, reduced the system processing further. The project has special focus on providing

size from multiple 19in rack units into a single card solution. fast detection and frequency measurement on a wide variety

This prime contractor chose RFEL above in-house and existing of signal types, and includes the design and manufacture of a

partner companies. hardware prototype Frequency Measurement System

incorporating advanced signal processing.

 has been successful in winning several UK government

advanced technology development awards, and has recently

won the European Electronics Industry Award as the ‘Start-Up

of the Year’, and the ‘Best New Product’ awards at the

prestigious International Signal Processing Conference in the

U.S. for the last three years. RFEL has recently won the

‘Embedded System Design of the Year’ at the 2006 European

were commissioned by one of the world’s leading digitiser
Electronic Awards for its latest ChannelCore64 multiple
companies to research very high speed channeliser designs.
channeliser product
This research has led to architectural designs for real-time

channel banks that will cover spectral bandwidths in excess

has supplied an extremely wide-band (1GHz instantaneous)
of 2GHz.
real-time spectrometer design for a leading Radio Astronomy

institute in Europe.
has completed a contract with a European

government/defence prime contractor for the supply of an

has recently completed high specification FFT designs for
adaptive (reconfigurable) channeliser design for the
the two largest mobile communications companies, for their
extraction of 130 channels of different carrier types,
3GPP LTE OFDM based development programmes.
bandwidths and rates from a wideband of 75 MHz.

has current PV / in-house developments which include

work on reconfigurable digital receivers and advanced high

speed analogue to digital conversion (14Bits at 2GSps) using

This list is by no means exhaustive, but provides just a
off the shelf analogue to digital converter technology and
flavour of RFEL's products and services.
advanced FPGA based signal processing

has completed a contract with a US communications

company, for a multi-channel filter bank, for a cellular

beamforming design in a government application.

has supplied 4 major test equipment manufactures with

specialist designs for their Spectral Analysis and specialised

RF Measurement instruments.
 RFEL Capability

RFEL offers world-class optimisation skills in both signal

processing system architecture and FPGA implementation,
and the overall system design capabilities to incorporate
these into complete product solutions.

The primary factors that have led our clients to contract

RFEL, have been to benefit from:

the top-end/state-of-the-art DSP on FPGA performance an in-depth understanding of the performance trade-

that RFEL offers. offs for each type of technique, including:

Dynamic range

patented DSP designs (including the PFT, which enables Impulse/Transient response

real-time simultaneous monitoring of wide and narrow Selectivity

band channels to intercept simultaneous Filter shape

communications, pulsed radar and/or LPI signals). DSP vs FPGA implementation

Power usage

the performance guarantee offered by RFEL's extensive Phase and amplitude accuracy, in the minimum silicon.

system level design simulation and modelling. (RFEL has developed a number of tools that allow it to

complete this type of analysis/research in a speedy and

the latest technology (available in most cases off-the- cost effective manner.)

shelf), miniaturised to exploit leading-edge hardware and

firmware developments. an in-depth understanding of the system issues that

affect the performance of the digital filtering section,

low power consumption implementations. including:

Pre-Analogue filter selection

low cost implementations. Analogue to digital conversion performance trade offs

Use of dither noise to increase dynamic range

novel signal processing architectures. Filter design to achieve optimum performance against
cost effective and silicon efficient implementations.

a key understanding of the main signal analysis

techniques (FFT, Polyphase DFT, mixed radix, PFT etc).

world-class FPGA design skills

Knowing what architecture to use is one aspect of the

design but implementing it in an efficient manner

using cutting-edge devices and development tools is

not a straightforward task. RFEL has successfully

implemented a range of high-speed front-end filtering

solutions along with ancillary processing blocks. RFEL

has also built high specification demonstration

receivers (hardware) incorporating these high-speed

designs. RFEL has provided services to three

commercial test equipment manufacturers where The information provided in this brochure, along with the

board design consultancy is included in the contract. extensive range of white papers and information included

on the web site (www.rfel.com), is evidence of the

world-class system design skills contribution RFEL can make to major development

A comprehensive understanding of overall system programmes.

requirements and the ability to design and build

complete, complex, wideband, low-power transceiver Precise details of contract and system architectures

products incorporating the highest performance DSP discussed in this document are generally covered by non-

techniques. disclosure agreement with individual customers. However,

RFEL would be pleased to meet to provide an in-depth

presentation of their technology and to discuss future

system needs.

www.rfel.com
rfel.com

RF Engines Limited (RFEL) is a UK based

electronic systems designer, providing high
specification signal processing solutions
for FPGAs, as well as receiver and complete
product solutions for the homeland
security, defence, communications and
instrumentation markets. Applications
include communications base stations,
satellite communications systems, test and
measurement instrumentation, and
bespoke wideband receivers/transceivers.

RF Engines Limited

Innovation Centre

St Cross Business Park

Newport telephone +44(0) 1983 550330

Isle of Wight fax +44(0)1983 550340
PO30 5WB email info @ rfel.com
United Kingdom web www.rfel.com