SC5306B Operating & Programming Manual Rev 1.2
i
SC5306B
1 MHz to 3.9 GHz RF Downconverter Core Module with USB and RS232/SPI Operating & Programming Manual
© 2015-2020 SignalCore, Inc.
[email protected]
Page 1: ...SC5306B Operating Programming Manual Rev 1 2 i SC5306B 1 MHz to 3 9 GHz RF Downconverter Core Module with USB and RS232 SPI Operating Programming Manual 2015 2020 SignalCore Inc support signalcore com...
Page 2: ...ring the SC5306B 4 Signal Connections 5 Communication and Supply Connection 6 Mini USB Connection 7 Reset Button Pin Hole 7 Indicator LEDs 7 SC5306B Theory of Operation 8 Overview 8 Signal Path Descri...
Page 3: ...a into the User EEPROM Space 20 Setting the Phase of the IF Signal 20 Querying the SC5306B Writing USB Request Registers Directly 21 Reading Device Status Data 21 Reading Temperature Data 22 Reading C...
Page 4: ...Programming the SC5306B Serial Peripheral Interface 52 The SPI Communication Connector 52 The SC5306B SPI Architecture 52 SPI Clock Rates and Modes 53 Writing Configuration Data via the SPI Bus 55 Re...
Page 5: ...elated to this document or the information contained in it EXCEPT AS SPECIFIED HEREIN SIGNALCORE INCORPORATED MAKES NO WARRANTIES EXPRESS OR IMPLIED AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANT...
Page 6: ...e information and data provided by our component suppliers and may not have been independently verified through other means For products sold into China we also comply with the Administrative Measure...
Page 7: ...ION INSTALLATION ERRORS SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS MALFUNCTIONS OR FAILURES OF ELECTRONIC MONITORING OR CONTROL DEVICES TRANSIENT FAILURES OF ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS HARDWARE AND OR SOFTW...
Page 8: ...ge ESD Under certain conditions an ESD event can instantly and permanently damage several of the components found in SignalCore products Therefore to avoid damage when handling any SignalCore hardware...
Page 9: ...etely evaporated Excess liquid alcohol trapped inside the connector may take several days to fully evaporate and may degrade measurement performance until fully evaporated Tighten all SMA connections...
Page 10: ...ions of this I O connector are listed below Table 1 Communication IO connector pin definitions PIN Description PIN Description 1 3 12V Supply rail 21 Device Active 2 4 10 16 20 24 28 GND 22 Device Sta...
Page 11: ...al indication of important modes There are two redundant pairs of LED indicators on the device two to the left of the micro D connector and two on the opposite side of the module The LED closest to th...
Page 12: ...nput ranges from 1 MHz to 3 9 GHz and the IF output is fixed at 70 MHz When the input frequency is lower than the intermediate frequency the device technically behaves as an upconverter The SC5306B up...
Page 13: ...er paths with different bandwidths or between one filter and one bypass no filter path Filters in the first and second IF stages are not as selective as the final IF filter but they ensure good isolat...
Page 14: ...Filter IF1_Atten 0 30 dB IF3 Atten1 0 30 dB IF3 Atten2 0 30 dB 675 MHz Filter IF3 FL 0 ESD RF In 1 MHz 3900 MHz IF Out 70 MHz Ref In 10 MHz Ref Out 10 100 MHz 3 9 GHz Three Stage Downconverter Nom In...
Page 15: ...uator will attenuate both the IF1 signal and the LO1 leakage making the device respond more linearly As always the compromise is that the SNR will degrade The LO1 leakage signal will appear as DC when...
Page 16: ...au out to several tens of MHz which is a common phenomenon with VCO based synthesizers is not acceptable for many applications Another reason for a hybrid tuning architecture is to reduce the phase sp...
Page 17: ...ference through the ref out port The output reference frequency is selectable for either 10 MHz or 100 MHz output By default routing of the reference signal to the ref out port is disabled It can be e...
Page 18: ...DDS mode Setting the SC5306B to Achieve Best Dynamic Range The SC5306B is designed to achieve high dynamic range It is designed as a receiver for signal analyzers which require the ability to handle l...
Page 19: ...te with the IF signal to produce third order spurious products The level of the leakage is equivalent to a typical 25 dBm RF signal at the mixer The user should set 5 dB to 10 dB of attenuation when o...
Page 20: ...s dynamic linked library sc5306B dll or Linux shared library libsc5306B so For more information on the libusb driver visit www libusb org For the Windows platform libusb 1 0 relies on WinUSB at the ke...
Page 21: ...he next section Reading the Device Registers Directly Valid data is only available to be read back after writing one of the query registers With the exception of registers 0x24 GET_CAL_EEPROM_BULK and...
Page 22: ...0 RF_PREAMPLIFIER_SETTING 0x12 7 0 Open Open Open Open Open Open Open Enable 0x00 RF_MODE_SETTING 0x13 7 0 Open Open Open Open Open Fast Tune Enable 0x00 IF_FILTER_SELECT 0x15 7 0 Open Open Open Open...
Page 23: ..._MODE_SETTING 0x13 register has one data byte that provides two tuning modes for the device Fast Tune and Fine Tune By default the Fast Tune mode is disabled Normal mode Asserting high bit 3 of the da...
Page 24: ...F_INVERT_SETTING 0x1D is used This register contains one data byte Setting bit 0 high will enable inversion Storing Data into the User EEPROM Space There is an on board 16k byte EEPROM available to th...
Page 25: ...0 Open Open Open Open Open Open Open Open 0x00 Read Byte 1 Read Byte 0 Open Open Sign 7 0 0x00 15 8 0x00 Read Byte 1 Read Byte 0 Open Open Open Open Open Open Open Open 7 0 0x00 15 8 0x00 Read Byte 1...
Page 26: ...e value represented in the raw data is contained in the next 13 bits 12 0 To obtain the temperature ADC code the raw data should be masked logically ANDed with 0x1FFF and the polarity should be masked...
Page 27: ...our bytes with the least significant byte stored in the lower address After the data are read back they need to be un flattened back to their original type Since the four bytes constitutes the four by...
Page 28: ...the calibration EEPROM map of the SC5306B indicating how and where board information and calibration data are stored Since there are only 16k bytes on the EEPROM SignalCore recommends that all data b...
Page 29: ...his is a float 32 value containing the firmware revision LO Hardware Revision 0x30 This is a float 32 value containing the local oscillator hardware revision SC Hardware Revision 0x34 This is a float...
Page 30: ...129 134 IF Invert Gain Correction 0x788 This is a float that contains the change in IF gain when the device is switched to invert the IF spectrum The default gain in the IF is the non inverted mode ga...
Page 31: ...it code obtained from the EEPROM at starting address 0x54 or with another value by writing the REFERENCE_DAC register 0x17 Gain Correction The SC5306B has seven dynamic variables that affect its gain...
Page 32: ...function of frequency interpolation is required to provide the best estimated values A natural cubic Spline interpolation is suggested for 0 0 and 0 The important input parameters for a cubic spline...
Page 33: ...can be written as 0 1 0 2 2 0 2 Equation 5 Using Equation 5 and the temperature coefficients of Table 6 we obtain the following Table 12 Calculated gain changes at the measured frequency points Freque...
Page 34: ...function with the uncorrected amplitude spectrum Add the two values if dealing in decibels Additionally determine a fitted polynomial function for the phase error and add values derived from this fun...
Page 35: ...library differs slightly due to the unique requirements of the LabVIEW programming environment e g LabVIEW already provides standard math functions for curve fitting with spline interpolation sc5306B...
Page 36: ...1 30 dB define IFRESPONSEPARAM 3 frequency amplitude phase define IFRESPONSEFREQ 51 frequency points over the bandwidth define TEMPCOPARAM 3 frequency coeff 1 coeff 2 define TEMPCOFREQ 8 frequency poi...
Page 37: ...0ResponseCal IF filter 0 response calibration float ifFil1ResponseCal IF filter 1 response calibration float tempCoeff temperature coefficients float rfCalTemp temperature T0 at which calibration was...
Page 38: ...able bool ifBandSelect bool preampEnable bool standbyEnable bool pxiClkEnable deviceStatus_t typedef struct ifResponseCorrect_t float ampCorrect float phaseCorrect ifResponseCorrect_t typedef struct l...
Page 39: ...e host computer and returns an array containing their resource IDs The user can use this information to open the device s See sc5306B_OpenDevice function for information on how to open a device Functi...
Page 40: ...uld rarely be used Example To set the RF attenuator value to 10 dB int status sc5306B_RegWrite devHandle 0x11 0x020A Declaring char serialNumberList deviceHandle devHandle int devicesFound int i statu...
Page 41: ...atus of the device Function sc5306B_InitDevice Definition int sc5306B_InitDevice deviceHandle devHandle bool Mode Return The status of the function Input deviceHandle devHandle handle to the opened de...
Page 42: ...iption sc5306B_SetAttenuator sets the value of the designated attenuator Function sc5306B_SetPreamp Definition int sc5306B_SetPreamp deviceHandle devHandle bool preampStatus Return The status of the f...
Page 43: ...ables disables fast tuning and sets the step resolution of the downconverter Function sc5306B_SetIfFilterPath Definition int sc5306B_SetIfFilterPath deviceHandle devHandle bool ifFilterPath Return The...
Page 44: ...t dacValue 16 bit value for the reference DAC Description sc5306B_SetReferenceDac set the value of the DAC that tunes the internal reference TXCO The user may choose to override the value stored in me...
Page 45: ...andle unsigned int memAdd unsigned char byteData Return The status of the function Input deviceHandle devHandle handle to the opened device unsigned int memAdd memory address to write to unsigned char...
Page 46: ...mory address Output unsigned char byteData the read byte data Description sc5306B_ReadCalEeprom reads back a byte from the memory address of the calibration EEPROM Function sc5306B_ReadUserEeprom Defi...
Page 47: ...6B_GetRawCalData Definition int sc5306B_GetRawCalData deviceHandle devHandle unsigned char rawCalDataArray Return The status of the function Input deviceHandle devHandle handle to the opened device Ou...
Page 48: ...tion Example See code block example for sc5306B_ConvertRawCalData Function sc5306B_ConvertRawCalData Definition int sc5306B_ConvertRawCalData unsigned char rawCalData deviceAttribute_t deviceAttribute...
Page 49: ...at calData ifAttenCal float calloc IFATTENUATOR sizeof float for i 0 i IFATTENUATOR i calData ifAttenCal i float calloc IFATTENCALVALUE sizeof float calData ifFil0ResponseCal float calloc IFRESPONSEPA...
Page 50: ...ion data for the device Output attenuator_t attenuator attenuation settings for RF IF1 and final IF3 attenuators Description sc5306B_CalcAutoAttenuation returns the set of attenuation settings for all...
Page 51: ...r the device Output float conversionGain calculated calibrate conversion gain for current settings Description sc5306B_CalcGain calculates the calibrated gain based on the current user settings Declar...
Page 52: ...ter of the digitized signal is 30 MHz 1 5 MHz After performing digital spectral inversion and performing an FFT take the subset of frequency components from 28 5MHz to 31 5 MHz and subtract 30 MHz to...
Page 53: ...in the set Output double yInterpolant the return set of interpolants Description Returns the spline interpolants of the input parameters Function sc5306B_SplineInterp Definition int sc5306B_SplineInt...
Page 54: ...t power up or on hardware reset of the device through pin 23 of the communication I O connector This pin is defaulted to logic high which set the baud rate at 57600 Pulling this pin to logic low will...
Page 55: ...its instruction it will return 1 byte back to the host Querying this return byte ensures that the prior configuration command has been successfully executed and the device is ready for the next regis...
Page 56: ...output from master 27 MISO Master Input Slave Output output from slave 28 GND Signal Ground 29 MOSI Master Output Slave Input output from master 30 SRDY Indicates on high when SPI is ready The SC5306B...
Page 57: ...umber of data bytes transferred is 4 The most significant byte MSB of the data is sent immediately after the register address byte The CS pin must be asserted low for a minimum period of 1 before data...
Page 58: ...selectable modes of SPI operation available on the device Leaving pin 23 of the communication I O connector open or pulled high 3 3V mode 1 is enabled at power up or upon device reset Jumping the pin...
Page 59: ...Bytes Bit 7 Bit 6 Bit 5 Bit 4 Bit 3 Bit 2 Bit 1 Bit 0 Default INITIALIZE 0x01 7 0 Open Open Open Open Open Open Open Mode 0x00 SET_SYSTEM_ACTIVE 0x02 7 0 Open Open Open Open Open Open Open Enable SYS...
Page 60: ...00 15 8 0x00 7 0 0x00 15 8 0x00 FETCH_USER_EEPROM 0x22 EEPROM Address 7 0 EEPROM Address 15 8 FETCH_CAL_EEPROM 0x20 Data Byte 0 Data Byte 1 SPI_OUTPUT_BUFFER 0x1A EEPROM Address 7 0 EEPROM Address 15...
Page 61: ...shows the valid data bytes associated with the querying register Table 18 Valid returned data bytes Register Address Reg Code Byte 1 Byte 0 GET TEMPERATURE 0x19 Valid Valid GET DEVICE STATUS 0x18 Vali...
Page 62: ...intains a calibration data archive of all units shipped Archiving this data is important should a customer need to reload calibration data into their device for any reason SignalCore also uses the arc...
Page 63: ...SC5306B Operating Programming Manual Rev 1 2 59 R E V I S I O N N O T E S Rev 1 0 Original document Rev 1 1 Address Removed Rev 1 2 Updates for clarity...
