We expect to open for orders on Crowd Supply during the first quarter of 2024. Keep an eye out for the announcement.
We are finalizing the design for the VXSDR 20-160, including a case suitable for benchtop use. The photo below shows the front and back of our initial version in a prototype case. Note that the case for the final design will be wider, and include inputs for external TX and RX local oscillators on the front panel.
The supply chain problems appear to have cleared up, and we are preparing for the launch of the VXSDR 20-160. We are backporting the analog improvements we developed for the VXSDR 20-600 to a revised analog board for the 160, which will provide better spur rejection and the ability to accept an external LO for multiboard synchronization. Stay tuned for updates on Crowd Supply availability.
The first VXSDR 20-600 boards will be back from assembly soon; the digital board with 40 gigabit Ethernet first, followed by the analog board with the RF section and 600 MSPS converters. After we complete checkout and functional testing, we will post performance results for the new radio here. As mentioned before, RF performance will be similar to the 160 MSPS version (with the tweaks discussed in the message below), with much larger bandwidth.
Sadly, our supply chain problems continue, and we don't see any improvement in availability for essential parts. For example, we are still waiting for a RF synthesizer order we placed in March 2022, which had a projected delivery time (then) of October 2022. We can build small quantities using our stock of parts, but only enough for our own research.
Looking forward, we're going to wait until we can get essential parts less than 60 days after placing an order, and we see the delay is steady or decreasing. Once we're sure of this, we will begin the process of making the VXSDR 20-160 available for order on Crowd Supply.
We regret the long delay for the VXSDR; it would have been great to make radios available a year ago, and we would have done that if we'd been able to build them in quantity. We are hopeful that the supply issues will improve during 2023, so that we can finally offer the VXSDR-20 to others.
We've almost completed the design for the VXSDR 20-160's bigger brother, the VXSDR 20-600, which will have the same RF performance with 600 MSPS transmit and receive and a 40 Gb Ethernet interface. More information will be posted here when we begin testing our first boards.
We've tweaked the VXSDR-20 RF design to replace an amp in the transmit chain that has repeatedly proven difficult for our board assembly vendors to place. The revised design will reduce the transmit power by 2 dB over some parts of the 5-20 GHz range, and by 6 dB at 22 GHz, but performance will otherwise remain the same. We've also revised the LO chains to allow the use of an external LO input for precise multiboard synch on both transmit and receive.
The supply chain issues which have prevented us from opening the VXSDR 20-160 for orders on Crowd Supply still continue. We have a small stockpile of the unavailable parts, which we are reserving for our R&D programs, and we have a standing order with a distributor that will allow us to take Crowd Supply orders once it's filled. We will let everyone know, here and through Crowd Supply, as soon as we have any reliable information on when that will happen.
We’re continuing to work on the software and test hardware and software performance, and that’s going well. Last week, we completed our first successful long test run -- 24 hours of simultaneous transmit and receive at 160 MSPS with no data overflows or underflows. We’re close to finalizing version 1.0 of the host API, and will open the GitHub repo for public access when we reach that point.
Like almost everyone who makes electronics now, we are struggling with parts availability. We’ve redesigned the current board to replace several minor parts that are unavailable, but there’s one major part that is difficult to replace. This is an issue that will probably take some time to resolve; we will post updates here and through CrowdSupply as we work on a solution.
The VXSDR-20 has been accepted to the Qorvo RF Accelerator on Crowd Supply! See the pre-launch page here, and subscribe for updates on the project.
We gave a lightning talk on the VXSDR-20 at the 2021 GNU Radio Conference; the slides are available here.