SCE
Familiy
Via Rocca di Papa, 21 –00179 Roma, Italy
Email: info@geb-enterprise.com - Web: www.geb-enterprise.com

Smart Customizable Equipment
A Compact, cheaper and performant solution to a custom equipment

Overview
The GEB Enterprise Smart Customizable Equipment (SCE) is a platform that
was designed to host equipments that requires high speed I/O, digital
managements on a FPGA, presentations and communications via a standard
PC in a small space. The appication fileld shall be:
• Recording and playback of radar, sonar, Video, IR sensors signals
• Measurement and verification of non-standard protocols
• RF or micro wave mux/demux switches
• Simulators of non-standard protocols
• Simuation of situation with injection of simulated pattern in real environment
This kind of equipments are generally composed of two parts:
• A custom part, in the field of knowledge and application of the customer
• A standard part that realizes the graphical human interface (GUI) and the communication using standard
protocols.
Often it is also required the capability of local control through a local control panels with a remote control by
TCP-IP on ethernet or by USB. Finally, the equipment is usually integrated in a rack with other ones, it must not
need the requirement (caused by the use of an integrated Windows PC) to request a shutdown sequence, it
must be possible to switch off the entire rack without turning off one by one all the subsystem that compose it.
Similar devices are often made by a PXI subsystem, using a 4U enclosure, a PC, standard boards, one or
more FPGA boards that will be able to handles the non-common signals and protocols. Many times the FPGA
card can't directly manage the application's signals,
due the electrical levels, the impedances, the
frequencies mismatch, causing a needing of custom
interface logic. That last logic will be normally
placed in the same PXI enclosure or in a separate
case such as a 1U-3U Sub Rack.
The final result will be that the equipment takes
almost 6 rack unities, excluding monitor keyboard
and mouse, with a cost of several thousand of Euro
spent to buy the standard PXI components (PC,
case, I/O boards, FPGA board, Power Supply, etc..).
These expensive parts will be over dimensioned
and, in a large part, unused. The user continues to
have a lot of problems such as to make the custom
interface logic (board or sub rack), that involves to
make some mechanical panels to carrier connectors
and to make the connection to the FPGA board,
often made by rather long cables, these cables can
bring out signal integrity issues.
The Smart Customizable Equipment makes available in small space at low cost a modular solution. It mainly
consists of an industrial fanless PC (SBC) and one mini PCIe I/O interface card (GEB PCIem), based on Altera
FPGA, hosted in a 2U rack case. The industrial PC is equipped in the basic version, with a Intel CPU Atom
D2550 Dual Core 1.86GHz, 2Giga DDRIII, a Solid State Disk 16Gbytes size, a 5 inches 800x480 touch screen
LCD. The SCE also provides some standard interfaces such as HDMI (Reserved to an external optional monitor),
2x1Gbit Ethernet, 2xUSB2, 2xRS232, 2xRS485 (See table on next page).
The case has free space to host a custom interface board. It’s designed to have extreme flexibility and
modularity through the use of preformed, small, panels that allow, that allows an easily placing of the interface
connectors (DSUB, mini-DSUB, HEADER (IDC), COAX , SMB, SMA, MCX75, etc). The Seven 32bits Embedded
Operating System, fully compatible with 32bits Standard Seven, has been customized to allow the system to be
turned off "like a lightbulb", ie without performing the normal procedures required to shoot down a Windows
OS. Further removal of agreed programs and parts of the operating system allow you to use the device as a
standard intrument and not a PC. The Mini PCIe card (PCIEm-15-IO) using an Altera CycloneIV GX FPGA