An All-Programmable 16-nm RFSoC for Digital-RF Communications

Abstract

The Xilinx RFSoC is the first product to integrate cutting-edge RF data converters with an FPGA SoC. This breakthrough integration delivers a dramatic reduction in system power and footprint, while offering increased flexibility for wide-bandwidth communications applications. The RFSoC monolithically integrates a quad-core 1.5-GHz ARM Cortex-A53 application processor, dual-core Cortex-R5 real-time processing units, 4,000 FPGA DSP resources, and up to 16 digital-RF transmit and receive paths. Each RF transmit path includes a 14-bit, 6.4-GS/s RF-DAC and a flexible digital up conversion (DUC) chain. The RF receive channels contain 12-bit, 4-gigasamples per second (GS/s) RF-ADCs and a flexible digital down conversion (DDC) chain. All RF paths include a programmable complex digital mixer with numerically controlled oscillator (NCO), digital compensation of RF paths, on-chip RF-clock generation, and a flexible wideband interface to the FPGA fabric. The device is housed in a 40x40-mm, 1,517-pin ball grid array (BGA) package and is manufactured in a 16-nm Fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) process.