• fits into a 19 inch industrial rack
• 8 or up to 32 RF inputs for one RF output
• 2U height
• integrated power supply: 12 V DC
• mechanical structure of the chassis: up to eight application specific Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMCs) connected via integrated backplane
• all interface connectors at the front
• cooling by two hot-swap replaceable fan modules on both sides of the chassis

 

1. Interconnection board (ICB):

implements functions of the µTCA Carrier Hub (MCH) with interfaces: 2x PCIe, 2x LXI, JTAG, RS-232, DVI, management USB, management ETH, USB and 2x ETH. A fast PCIe bus is used for the data transfer between COM Express module and AMC application boards. This high performance combination supports the implementation of low-latency control algorithms, real-time data processing and dedicated RF system diagnostics tools.

2. RF acquisition modules:

double width mid-size AMC modules can process up to 8 RF inputs. The Libera LLRF system is configurable and can host from one to maximum four such modules. A Libera LLRF receiver module includes a calibration system and a LO distribution. The high performance FPGA mounted on the board is used for hardware control and digital signal processing.

3. Vector modulator module:

single width mid-size AMC module with two RF inputs and two RF outputs. The two inputs can be used in feedback. One of the two RF outputs is used for the drive signal generation. The other can be used for different purposes (pilot signal, reference for the longitudinal feedback). The high performance FPGA mounted on the board is used for hardware control and digital signal processing.

 

4. Timing module:

single width mid-size AMC module. Generates a low jitter local oscillator (LO) signal and a suitable sampling clock for the down-conversion and acquisition processes.

 

5. Optional single width mid-size AMC modules

provide the possibility to add additional features to the Libera LLRF system.


The Libera LLRF system architecture is based on PCIe implemented on AMC standards. It is a user-friendly network-attached device that has a powerful computational interconnect board (ICB) managing a number of satellite boards.