General Description - RFI RX1317-3408-31 Series User Manual

Receiver Multicoupler User's Manual

1. General Description

Overview
The RX series Receiver Multicouplers (RxMux) are full-featured, high performance active receiver multicouplers
designed to distribute a signal from a single antenna signal to multiple receivers without loss and providing isolation
between the RF outputs. In a typical installation the RxMux will be fed from a receive antenna via a frequency
selective band pass filter selected for the particular application and its passband and selectivity performance
requirements.
The RFI RxMux design is based on a low-noise, high-IP3 quadrature amplifier that uses two parallel active amplifier
circuits for redundancy. This design technology allows continued operation, with minimal performance degradation, if
either of the active amplifier signal paths becomes faulty - providing increased resiliency to faults with the networks
receive system and a resulting higher operational availability.
The Rx sub-system gain can be manually set using switches on the back panel. The gain and various other parameters
(including fault status) can be configured and monitored using a text-based Command Line Interface (CLI) via the USB
interface.
If selected, firmware version 1.1 and above offers an innovative Auto Gain feature that will increase the gain of the
serviceable side of the balanced quadrature amplifier by 6dB if one of its RF paths becomes faulty, restoring the
system's gain to its configured value. If 6dB of available amplifier gain is not available above the currently-configured
gain value, then the Auto Gain feature will apply the maximum available remaining gain to restore as much of the
configured gain value as is achievable – at all times providing the best available system performance until normal
operation can be restored. When in this Auto Gain mode of operation, the amplifiers' fault state is continually
monitored and if either amplifier's fault clears, the RxMux will restore itself to normal gain operation. Auto Gain
operation is configured via the CLI.
Front and rear panel LED indicators show the status of power, faults, and USB or switch gain control.
Alarm relay contacts are provided that can be monitored to provide an indication of a fault condition. DC-operation is
standard, that may be sourced from an existing power supply, or from an optional external power supply for AC-operation if
desired.
An optional Expansion Multicoupler can be added to expand the number of outputs from 8 to 16, each with equal gain. If
more outputs are required, then further Expansion Multicouplers can be added to provide up to 128 outputs.
Figure 1 - RxMux Block Diagram
Diversity Receive and Dual-Receiver Systems
Diversity receive and dual-receiver requirements systems can be implemented by using multiple RxMux units (i.e.
one on each receive signal path).
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