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Avnet Opens Registration for PicoZed SDR SpeedWay Design Workshop Series

AVT | October 22, 2015

Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), a leading global technology distributor, today announced that registration is now open for a series of global SpeedWay Design Workshops™ for wireless communications system designers and designers of FPGA-based systems including general purpose software-defined radio and instrumentation (spectrum analyzers, integrated RF test solutions).

The two-day SpeedWay Design Workshops will feature technical experts from Avnet, Analog Devices, Inc. and MathWorks, who will provide attendees with training and hands-on product experience designing wireless communications with the new Avnet PicoZed™ SDR Software-Defined Radio Development Kit. The kit includes the recently introduced PicoZed™ SDR Z7035/AD9361, a rugged, low-power, small footprint system-on-module (SOM) which combines the Analog Devices AD9361 integrated RF Agile Transceiver™ with the Xilinx Zynq^®-7000 Z-7035 All Programmable SoC, and is supported by robust simulation and code generation tools that integrate seamlessly with Xilinx Vivado^® Design Suite.

Using system-level design techniques, SpeedWay attendees will model the entire signal chain from RF to baseband with Analog Devices’ AD9361 RF Agile Transceiver and the Xilinx Zynq All-Programmable SoC. SpeedWay attendees will also be introduced to techniques to progress though the essential components of modern wireless communication systems design using MATLAB and Simulink for simulation, code generation and real-time data acquisition with over-the-air testing.

“A significant benefit of the PicoZed SDR SOM is that it enables engineers to start application-level development immediately with the same system-on-module that will be used in production, reducing the risk and time required to develop and deploy production SDR equipment,” said Luc Langlois, director, global technical marketing, Avnet Electronics Marketing. “This SpeedWay Design Workshop series will provide customers with practical experience using tools from Analog Devices, MathWorks and Xilinx to build software-defined radio systems with PicoZed SDR from concept to product deployment.”

“This SpeedWay will help military radio, cellular service providers, and competition grade HF transceiver designers understand and apply software designed radio techniques to their applications,” said Dave Babicz, director of global alliances for Analog Devices. “The workshop takes a hands-on approach to building a working QPSK receiver by covering the RF front end, digital signal processing, and baseband processing. Participants will learn by walking through software, hardware, operating systems, simulations and the entire transmit and receive paths.”

“The hands-on nature of this SpeedWay workshop should give attendees a real head start in their SDR design process,” said Noam Levine, partner manager, MathWorks. “Using model-based design with MATLAB and Simulink in conjunction with the PicoZed SDR SOM provides users a single design environment and workflow to take them from simulation to production, speeding development and reducing time to market.”

The PicoZed SDR SpeedWay workshops will be held in the following cities:

Baltimore, MD: Nov. 10-11, 2015
Rochester, NY: Nov. 17-18, 2015
United Kingdom: Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2015
Paris, FR: Dec. 3-4, 2015
Berlin, Germany: Dec. 8-9, 2015

For information on additional events coming in 2016 or to register for a SpeedWay Design Workshop, please click here.

Click to Tweet: @AvnetDesignWire demonstrates design techniques for wireless comms with new PicoZed SDR SpeedWay technical workshops http://bit.ly/1ll33LR

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About Avnet, Inc.

From components to cloud and design to disposal, Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT) accelerates the success of customers who build, sell and use technology globally by providing them with a comprehensive portfolio of innovative products, services and solutions. Avnet is a Fortune 500 company with revenues of $27.9 billion for the fiscal year 2015. For more information, visit www.avnet.com.