A 1.6-GHz Sub-Nyquist-Sampled Wideband Beamformer on an RFSoC

This paper presents how to simultaneously achieve elemental sub-Nyquist sampling and true-time-delay (TTD) beamforming using a contemporary RF system-on-a-chip (RFSoC) by outlining the development of a 1.6 GHz S-band phased array system implemented using a Xilinx 8-channel 4 GSPS RFSoC. RFSoCs integrate a high speed analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC) with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture on a singular device, enabling direct sampling of RF signals. Thus, the RFSoC is the only hardware in this beamformer apart from the antenna aperture. This enabling technology facilitates the development of compact all-digital arrays, which massively increases the available degrees of freedom in system control enabling a paradigm shift in industry and engineering communities. The efficacy of our modular approach is confirmed via our research testbed.