FPGAs are useful for signal processing as you can do many operations in parallel. FIR filter, FFT and CORDIC modules are available in the free development software from Xilinx. They are very good for processing wideband signals or digitizing an entire amateur band and then filtering the result. Unfortunately, the starter kit has only low-speed low-resolution ADCs and DACs.
73, John KD6OZH ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul L Schmidt, K9PS To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2008 00:19 UTC Subject: [digitalradio] Has anyone looked into FPGA-based digital modes? I've been thinking about getting an FPGA board to play with and see what it will do as far as hosting an HF modem, or at least the A/D and DSP portions of one. The board I'm considering has a Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGA and all of the peripheral hardware (A/D, D/A, VGA, ethernet, serial, etc.) one would probably need to do it. http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3EBOARD&Nav1=Products&Nav2=Programmable Anyone tried (or thought of trying) something like that? 73, Paul / K9PS
