Introduction

RF Data Converter Interface User Guide (UG1309)

Document ID
UG1309
Release Date
2021-10-27
Revision
1.4 English

This document describes the RF Data Converter graphical user interface (GUI) used to drive and analyze the Zynq® UltraScale+™ RFSoC product family.

This general user interface is common to the RF Data Converter Evaluation Tool and the RF Analyzer Tool. It can be used to guide signal generation through RF-sampling digital-to-analog converters (RF-DACs), data capturing through RF-sampling analog-to-digital converters (RF-ADCs), and rapid data analysis using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and other standard RF data converter metrics. This document primarily focuses on the usage of the GUI.

For the hardware evaluation board and reference design of the Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC first generation, see the ZCU111 Evaluation Board User Guide (UG1271) and Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC RF Data Converter Evaluation Tool (ZCU111) User Guide (UG1287). For the Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC third generation, see the ZCU216 Evaluation Board User Guide (UG1390), Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC ZCU208 and ZCU216 RF Data Converter Evaluation Tool User Guide (UG1433) , and ZCU208 Evaluation Board User Guide (UG1410).

Use the Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC Product Tables and Product Selection Guide(XMP105) to identify the specific devices that support the different generations of the Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC family.

When this GUI is used as a component of the RF Analyzer, board control functions are not available. Board control functions, such as onboard clock configuration, are available with the RF Evaluation tool.

The highlights of the RF Data Converter user interface are:

  • Ability to control all RF-ADC and RF-DAC channels operating at the same time with a user-friendly graphical interface.
  • Ability to configure RFDC clocking subsystem on targeted hardware.
  • Direct API function access.
  • Save and restore of configurations and preferences that enables quick settings.
  • Synchronized data transmission and capturing enabled with multi-tile synchronization (MTS).
  • Import and export of data waveform with LVM (ASCII) and TDMS (binary) file format.
  • Data length of transmission and capturing of up to 64M samples (DDR mode).
  • Enable single or multi-channel views in frequency and time domains for RF analog signals.

The following table compares the features that this software GUI supports with the Evaluation Tool and RF Analyzer.

Table 1. Feature Support
Feature Evaluation Tool RF Analyzer
Communication interface Ethernet JTAG-UART
Board support ZCU111

ZCU208

ZCU216

Any Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC and Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC DFE device
Sample memory DDR memory and block RAM Block RAM only
External component support External PLL, RF-DAC Power supply (on ZCU111) None
Multi-tile synchronization (MTS) support Yes Yes
Multi-band support Yes Yes with pre-built bitstreams
Tile clock forwarding ZCU208

ZCU216

All devices greater or equal to third generation (ZU4x or greater)
RFDC data stream import/export from/to file Yes Yes
Configuration commands dump Yes Yes
RFDC samples record options On-chip or external DDR memory On-chip only