This article explores how signals are captured and converted from analog-to-digital or digital-to-analog in a lossless fashion. It discusses various considerations including selection of a suitable substrate for high frequency applications and achieving low impedance. The article also discusses how high data throughput Ethernet is implemented on FPGAs to enable packetization of IQ sample data. Lastly, the article explores how host or server systems with high data throughput capability are used to handle the huge amounts of data exchanged between the FPGA of a SDR and network interface cards (NICs) of a host system.
