RF/IF Recorder

December 1, 2012

The Talon™ RTS 2709 ultrawideband RF/IF recorder from Pentek (Upper Saddle River, NJ) uses 12-bit, 3.6-GHz A/D converters and solid-state drive storage technology to achieve sustained recording rates up to 3.2 Gbytes per second. It can be configured as a one- or two-channel system, and can record sampled data packed as 8-bit or 16- bit wide consecutive samples. The recorder captures high-bandwidth RF/IF signals with frequencies up to 2.8 GHz. The built-in Windows® 7 Professional workstation with an Intel® Core™ i7 processor provides a platform that allows the user to install post-processing and analysis applications directly on the recorder. Signal viewing and analysis tools are provided as part of the SystemFlow recording software for monitoring signals prior to, during, and after a recording session.

The A/D converters digitize high-frequency signals at sample rates up to 3.6 GHz. It streams this digitized data to files created on the recorder’s built-in RAID array. These files include time stamping as well as recording parameters and optional GPS information. It is configured in a 4U 19” rack-mountable chassis, with hot-swappable data drives, front-panel USB ports, and I/O connectors on the rear panel. All chassis are connected via Gigabit Ethernet, and can be controlled from a single GUI either locally or from a remote PC.