A New Multi-Channel RF Sampling Digital Back-end for Radio Astronomy

The recent introduction by Xilinx of its range of RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC) devices is resulting in a fundamental shift in the way digital back-ends for radio astronomy instruments are being architected. The bringing together of 8 or 16 multi-Giga-sample per second Analogue to Digital Converters (ADCs) with large and feature rich Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) fabric and quad-core ARM processors all on a single chip has opened up new possibilities in high-performance, power-efficient RF sampling digital systems for radio astronomy.