Avnet Electronics Marketing, Xilinx and Analog Devices Release Two Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC/Analog Devices Software-Defined Radio Kits

PHOENIX—October 22, 2013 — Avnet Electronics Marketing, an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), today released two kits designed by Avnet experts, the Zynq®-7000 All Programmable SoC / AD9361 Software-Defined Radio Evaluation Kit and the Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC / AD9361 Software-Defined Radio Systems Development Kit. Targeted for software-defined radio, MIMO, public safety networks and general purpose data acquisition, these kits enable wireless communications from baseband to radio-frequency (RF).

In order to provide flexibility to designers with diverse baseband and RF performance goals, these kits introduce two Analog Devices, Inc. FPGA mezzanine cards (FMC), featuring ADI’s new AD9361, a high-performance, highly integrated RF agile transceiver. Both kits also include Xilinx Vivado® software, four Pulse 4G LTE blade antennas, and reference designs for Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC running Linux. Order entry is open, and these kits will begin shipping in November. For more information, visit www.em.avnet.com/adizynqsdr2 and www.em.avnet.com/adizynqsdr3.

“These latest-generation, software-defined radio kits are a great value for RF engineers looking for innovative, yet cost-competitive products,” said Luc Langlois, technology director, digital signal processing, Avnet Electronics Marketing. “These versatile development platforms leverage the combined analog and digital expertise of our partners, providing robust design flows to the communications system architect and multiple options to the RF engineer through enhanced integration of RF and baseband functionality.”

“The AD9361 integrated transceiver platform’s small footprint, programmability and power efficiency allows designers to create advanced SDR solutions that are smaller than a stick of chewing gum – including wearable applications,” said Dave Babicz, director, Global Alliances, Analog Devices. “The AD9361 ecosystem allows rapid prototyping of SDR designs with up to three times the noise performance of the competition and at reduced BOM costs.”

“The Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC / AD9361 Software Defined Radio System Development Kit provides a high-performance, power-efficient software programmable radio platform that supports the rapid evaluation and development of advanced SDR applications partitioned into analog, hardware and software,” says Tom Hill, senior manager, DSP platforms at Xilinx, Inc. “This kit is ideal for the wireless communications system architect. It combines the wide RF tuning range of 70 MHz to 6 GHz of the AD-FMComms3-EBZ FMC card with the Xilinx ZC706 development board featuring the Zynq-7000 XC7Z045 device that combines a dual 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processing system with programmable logic that delivers over 1000 GMACs of peak DSP processing performance.”

The Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC / AD9361 Software-Defined Radio Evaluation Kit (cost $1,495) combines Avnet’s ZedBoard with ADI’s FMCOMMS2-EBZ FMC card, optimized for RF performance in the 2400 – 2500 MHz region. The Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC / AD9361 Software-Defined Radio Systems Development Kit (cost $3,595) combines the Xilinx ZC706 Evaluation Kit with ADI’s AD-FMCOMMS3-EBZ, designed for general-purpose operation over a wide tuning range (70 MHz – 6 GHz). The complete kits include:

Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC / AD9361 Software-Defined Radio Evaluation Kit (cost $1,495):