New Weather Radar Signal Processing Platform From Vaisala

Vaisala (Finland) introduces a new signal processing platform for its weather radar product family. Sigmet RVP900TM Digital Receiver and Signal Processor is now available for both new weather radar installations and upgrades for existing radars.

Vaisala’s Sigmet product line has a 28 year history of developing innovative, high-quality signal processing products to the weather radar community. The predecessor of the RVP900 was the first digital receiver/signal processor on the market to be based on open hardware and software architecture.

The RVP900 consolidates all of the earlier model’s hardware and functions into one single package. Computational power has been increased, allowing the use of multiple, advanced processing algorithmssimultaneously to improve output data. It can perform 38.4 billion multiply-accumulate cycles per second, and the flexibility in computer servers enables choosing the fastest processors and motherboards on the market.

Comprehensive digital IF and signal processing functions as well as PCI bus-less architecture with direct Ethernet linking provide further enhancements in terms of usability. All in all, the RVP900 has substantially improved capabilities for dynamic range, sensitivity, and sampling rate. It can be integrated into existing software or purchased with Vaisala’s IRIS software for Linux workstations.