Orbit Noise Generator

The Orbit Noise Generator acts as a radio node for generating a controllable noise source, an important parameter in defining signal-to-noise ratios during ORBIT experimental operations. Upwards of 100 ONGs will be deployed among ORBIT’s 400 primary radio nodes. ONG, whose block diagram is shown in Figure 1, consist of two printed circuit boards:

1. Baseband Board (BaBo) a USB enabled baseband processing board centered around Xilinx Spartan 3 FPGA and Analog Devices A/D and Cypress USB Controller.
2. Wireless Board (WiBo) which is a custom built WLAN radio transceiver board capable of half duplex (one-at-a-time receive-only or transmit-only) operation in one of three frequency bands, namely 4900-5300 MHz, 5400-5875 MHz or 2400-2500 MHz that correspond to the IEEE 802.11 a/b/g world-wide standards, respectively.