Power Amplifier System and Waveform Generator

Bento Box Lite™

MaXentric’s Bento Box™ test platform family is the all-in-one course for a highly efficient PA system and a wideband, high-sampling rate waveform generator. MaXentric offers the Bento Box Lite™ arbitrary waveform generator for those who already have an existing RF lineup and don’t require the full capabilities of the Bento Box 4.0™ AWG.

At 12” x 8” x 6” and weighing less than 10 pounds, Bento Box Lite™ is half the size of the Bento Box 4.0™. It takes up less space on a testbench while providing amplifiers full envelope tracking capabilities.  With all software drivers provided in-box with pre-installed firmware, setup is easy and requires only SMA, USB, and Ethernet cables. Despite its unassuming design, this box comes equipped with the real-time MaXPAL™ digital pre-distortion capabilities MaXentric is known for and features an easy-to-use general interface. Bento Lite will enable any PA to exceed its base limits.

Get quote

Technical Overview

At its base, Bento Box Lite™ runs using matured, commercial-off-the-shelf components with a XilinxTM FPGA at its core. It is responsible for RF signal generation at 245.76 MSps across 100 MHz of bandwidth, and real-time envelope signal generation based on the uploaded I/Q signals.  As long as the signal has the appropriate sampling rate, Bento Lite can handle any modulation scheme. 

A simple Direct Conversion system is implemented, enabling a tunable RF frequency band from 300 MHz to 6 GHz, while eliminating the undesired RF and LO images that come with a superheterodyne conversion lineup. 

For proper envelope tracking operation, both the RF and Envelope signals must be in-sync as well as possible at the PA.  The GUI provides the user the capability to timely align the signals at the per-sample level. 

To provide ample digital pre-distortion execution, feedback into the ADC must be between a certain power range.  The GUI will provide feedback if this condition is met.  The user will also have full control over the number of iterations to be performed before stopping. 

Key Features

Minimal setup required.
Minimal unwanted spectral images at output.
Robust, mature platform using proven commercial-off-the-shelf Xilinx and Texas Instruments.
Lightweight form factor will not dominate benchtop space.
Operates using a lightweight user interface.
Previous customers include Air Force Research Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.