Distributed RF over White Rabbit (WR-DRF)
Project description
High Energy Physics applications require that a RF signal source is
distributed along the accelerator chain and its detectors. Current
implementations make use of dedicates links to transport the reference
signal with minimal jitter and latency. With the arrival of the White
Rabbit, which distributes timing over an Ethernet with sub nanosecond
accuracy and picosecond jitter, other solutions to distribute the RF
reference as come to mind.
Instead of using dedicated link to transport the RF reference, the
Distributed RF over White Rabbit (WR-DRF) project aims to distribute a
RF reference in a network where data, timing and the RF reference share
the same link. The project aims to achieve similar performance as the
current dedicated links, but in a more flexible and cost effective
solution.
Current solutions to transport the RF signals require high network
bandwidth, thus the reason to use dedicated links. The proposed solution
is based on the realizing a set of digital signal processing manoeuvres
to the RF signal so that only its phase is transmitted and thus a
relative low bandwidth is needed to transmit it. This technique is only
possible to be implemented due to the tight frequency and phase
synchronization between the WR nodes, in addition to its fixed packet
latency.
Project information
Planning
Status
Pedro Moreira - 11 April 2012