Signadyne designs and manufactures high-performance control, test and measurement equipment for industries such as aerospace and defence, electronics and telecom, and experimental science. Signadyne is highly specialised in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based hard real-time systems for very demanding applications.
Common applications include real-time control, fast prototyping, hardware-in-the-loop, software-defined-radio (SDR), signal processing, data acquisition, automated test equipment (ATE), and generic test and measurement.
Signadyne’s portfolio comprises PXI Express modular hardware and virtual instrumentation software. Signadyne introduced the concept of hard virtual instrumentation, which defines systems that can be hardware programmed without any knowledge in hardware description languages. Hard virtual instrumentation provides ultra-fast hard real-time processing and decision-making, complete robustness and easy programming.
FPGA-based PXIe analog outputs, signal generators and AWGs
Signadyne AOU series are the most powerful PXIe analog output modules on the market, with up to four channels at one giga-samples per second (GSPS) and 400MHz real-time bandwidth (BW) in only one PXIe slot.
The AOU series has built-in function generators to produce any standard waveform (sinusoidal, triangular, sawtooth, square and DC voltages) and ultra-flexible built-in arbitrary waveform generators with up to 1GB onboard RAM.
In addition, the output channels can be modulated in phase, frequency, amplitude or offset to generate any existing modulation such as FM, AM, FSK, ASK, PM, PSK, QAM, CDMA, FHSS, chirps and sweeps. The modulating signal can come from any of the embedded arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) or any of the output channels.
The AOU series is ideal for advanced telecommunications (signal generation, modulations and software-defined radio), digital control, hardware-in-the-loop, fast prototyping and automated test equipment (ATE).
All Signadyne modules are delivered with ready-to-use software front panels (Signadyne VirtualKnob), with programming libraries for nearly any programming language (C/C++, LabVIEW, etc.) They are compatible with Signadyne’s hard virtual instrumentation, including FPGA-based custom programming.
FPGA-based PXIe time-to-digital converters and counters
With its time-to-digital converter (TDC) series, Signadyne has introduced the first time-to-digital converters in PXIe in the market. These modules provide up to eight channels with a resolution of 160ps in one PXIe slot. The feature-rich TDC processing embedded units provide full time-stamping operation (not just start-stop delay), with integrated counters and gates. These modules perform delay-time histograms in real-time, as well as other processing features.
The TDC series is ideal for laser applications (LIDAR, laser distance/speed meters, etc.), experimental physics (particle/photon detectors, time-of-flight measurements and correlations), ultrasounds, and automated test equipment (ATE).
All Signadyne modules are delivered with ready-to-use software front panels (Signadyne VirtualKnob), with programming libraries for nearly any programming language (C/C++, LabVIEW, etc.), and they are compatible with Signadyne’s hard virtual instrumentation, including FPGA-based custom programming.
FPGA-based PXIe digital waveforms and digital I/O modules
Signadyne DIO series are ultra-compact ultra-fast digital I/O modules, with up to 64 channels at 1 Gbps embedded in only one PXIe slot. The DIO series provides comprehensive digital waveform generation and acquisition capabilities, advanced triggering, I/O flexible routing (configurable buses) and I/O selectable standards (from 5V to 1.2V).
The DIO series is ideal for digital control, triggering, sequencing (as digital delay generators), and automated test equipment (ATE).
All Signadyne modules are delivered with ready-to-use software front panels (Signadyne VirtualKnob), with programming libraries for nearly any programming language (C/C++, LabVIEW, etc.), and they are compatible with Signadyne’s hard virtual instrumentation, including FPGA-based custom programming.
Faster FGPA-based real-time processing with hard virtual instruments
Virtual instrumentation is the use of customisable software to create user-defined control, test and measurement systems, called virtual instruments (VIs). Signadyne’s exclusive technology extends this concept to hard virtual instruments (HVIs) by executing user-defined software by hardware. This results in hardware-programmable instruments with the following advantages:
- Ultra-fast hard real-time execution, processing and decision-making: Execution is hardware-timed and can be as low as 1ns, outperforming any real-time computer operating system
- Complete robustness: execution is performed by hardware, without operating system, and independently of the PC
- Off-the-shelf inter-module synchronisation and data exchange for ultra-fast control algorithms
- Full modularity and scalability
- Extremely easy hardware programming thanks to the user-friendly flowchart-style interface of Signadyne ProcessFlow
- Signadyne/user-defined FPGA-based processing: in addition to predefined Signadyne functions (FFTs, PIDs, FIRs, etc.), the user can also include custom FPGA-based functions implemented with MATLAB/Simulink or VHDL
All Signadyne hardware modules support hard virtual instrumentation technology, including FPGA-based custom processing.
PXI Express – ultra-fast, modular, compact and rugged platform for the defence industry
PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation) is a modular format that combines standard PC technology from the CompactPCI specification with integrated timing and triggering to deliver a high-performance rugged platform. PXI Express overcomes PXI by using the ultra-fast PCI Express communication bus, resulting in a 100X performance improvement compared with other modular architectures.
All Signadyne modules are also compatible with CompactPCI Express, although this standard has some limitations regarding inter-module synchronisation.