January 25, 2011 – Pentek announced Model RTS 2706 multi-channel real-time recording and playback instrument based on the company’s Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA modules. Housed in a 4U rack-mountable enclosure, the RTS 2706 utilizes 16-bit 200 MHz A/Ds and 16-bit 800 MHz D/As with as many as 20 hot swappable SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives configurable as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) Levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 or 50.
The RTS 2706 instrument includes COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) features that can be selected by the customer to suit the application.These flexible, customer-selectable features include A/D channel count, DDC (digital down converter) capabilities, D/A and DUC (digital upconverter) resources for the real-time reproduction of recorded signals, storage drive capacity and GPS time stamping and positioning.
The net result of this flexibility is a turn-key, high-bandwidth recording and playback instrument suitable for a wide range of applications, including with all the benefits of a COTS system including faster delivery and value pricing.As an example, the RTS 2706 in a four-channel configuration, provides sustained recording rates of up to 1600 MB/sec.The RTS 2706 supports GPS (Global Positioning System) for GPS time and position stamping of recorded data. The RTS 2706 allows synchronization across all channels and operates under a single GUI (Graphical User Interface) virtual instrument that is scalable to meet any recording requirement.The RTS 2706 is Pentek's first high-bandwidth digital recorder to utilize the Windows 7 Professional operating system.
By using this operating system, the instrument is able to handle as many as twenty, one Terabyte drives in a RAID configuration, recording data in NTFS (New Technology File System) format to eliminate the need for data conversion that can take as long as the recording itself.Users have a variety of options for transferring data recorded on the RTS 2706 to other systems for additional processing or archiving. The instrument’s SATA drives are hot swappable, allowing them to be removed and inserted in another system for immediate access. Users can also offload data via two gigabit Ethernet ports, six USB 2.0 ports or two eSATA ports.
Additionally, data can be copied to optical disk using the instrument’s built-in 8X double layer DVD±R/RW drive.
Software Provides Full Analysis Capability
As with all Pentek recording instruments, the RTS 2706 has full software support with Pentek’s SystemFlow package. The software provides a GUI for easy instrument setup and control and can save user profiles for single-click configuration. The software also includes a Signal Viewer, which provides virtual instruments such as a spectrum analyzer and an oscilloscope for real-time viewing of data before, during and after recording.
Pricing and Availability
The RTS 2706 is priced based on configuration, starting at $44,995 USD. Delivery is 10 to 12 weeks ARO.
