At IMS 2026, everything RF visited the Analog Devices booth #23035 to explore the company’s latest RF, microwave, and software-defined system technologies. The demonstrations highlighted how Analog Devices is combining RF front ends, high-speed data converters, signal processing, and subsystem platforms to enable next-generation communications, GNSS, phased-array systems, and 6G development. We captured four demonstrations with the Analog Devices team that showed their latest innovations in adaptive beamforming, integrated SDR platforms and wideband RF front-end design.
Adaptive Beamforming with Quad Apollo Platform
Siddhartha Das, Systems Design and Applications Engineer, demonstrated an adaptive beamforming system using the Quad Apollo platform and a 4×4 phased-array antenna tile. In this demonstration, Das showed us a real-time adaptive beamforming setup where a guitar waveform and a jammer signal were transmitted from different directions. Using MUSIC and MVDR algorithms, the system identified the direction of arrival of both signals and created a spatial null to suppress interference, improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The use of an audio signal allowed visitors to hear the improvement caused by jammer suppression in real time.
At the core of this system is the Quad Apollo MxFE platform, a multi-channel direct RF sampling digital beamforming reference design. It integrates multiple synchronized transceivers to enable phase-coherent operation across up to 16 transmit and 16 receive channels, supporting advanced applications like radar, electronic warfare, and communications. The platform is built around Apollo MxFE technology, which combines high-speed RF ADCs and DACs with integrated DSP. It provides sampling rates up to 20 GSPS (ADC) and 28 GSPS (DAC), with direct RF sampling up to 18 GHz and instantaneous bandwidths up to 10 GHz.
SDR and Transceiver Platforms for GNSS and Communications
Senior Product Marketing Manager Matt Hazel demonstrated a series of software-defined radio platforms from Analog Devices, showing how they can improve performance in GNSS and wireless communication systems. The demonstration began with the AD9310 Polaris, where four synchronized receive channels are used to capture GNSS signals and are phase-aligned to enable beam steering and null steering, improving signal reception and rejecting interference in challenging or GPS-denied environments. AD9310 Polaris is a four-channel, 12-bit SDR platform for GNSS systems. It operates from 900 MHz to 1.7 GHz and supports phase-aligned multi-channel reception, enabling beam steering and null steering to improve performance in GPS-denied environments.
He then moved to the Nevis integrated transceiver, where the focus was on how modulation and demodulation of DMR data packets was being performed directly on the device using its built-in processing core, while communicating with a Raspberry Pi, illustrating system simplification and reduced power consumption. Nevis is a next-generation narrowband transceiver that integrates both RF functionality and an embedded processing subsystem. This allows application-level processing like DMR modulation and demodulation to run directly on the device, reducing system complexity and power consumption. Nevis is designed for applications such as land mobile radio (LMR), DMR, and IoT communications.
The final part of the demonstration featured the Navassa transceiver, operating in a phase-aligned, frequency-hopping configuration. This system illustrates how multiple synchronized transceivers can form a frequency-agile array. The ADRV9002 is a dual-channel transceiver operating from 30 MHz to 6 GHz, supporting fast frequency hopping, multichip synchronization, and bandwidths up to 40 MHz.
Wideband RF Front-End for Direct Sampling Receivers
Senior Application Engineer Gokhan Karaova demonstrated a 2 GHz to 18 GHz signal conditioning front end for direct RF sampling architectures. The demonstration focused on a receive-side RF front-end designed for use with Apollo-based direct sampling systems. The solution combines multiple RF components into a single signal-conditioning chain, achieving a noise figure of approximately 2.5 dB, gain of around 46 dB, and more than 70 dB signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR).
The signal chain begins with the ADL8201 RF limiter, which protects downstream components by handling high input power levels up to 37 dBm continuous wave or more than 44 dBm pulsed, with insertion loss as low as 0.7 dB. Signal routing is handled by the ADRF5060 SP3T switch, which operates from 100 MHz to 20 GHz and offers low insertion loss and high isolation, enabling flexible selection between signal paths and bypass operation.
Amplification is provided by two LNAs:
For gain control, the design uses digital step attenuators such as the HMC939A, a 5-bit attenuator with up to 31 dB range and operation to 33 GHz. The front end also integrates wideband filter banks covering up to 26.5 GHz, enabling flexible frequency selection and interference rejection. Combined, this architecture demonstrates how Analog Devices enables high-performance RF front ends for direct sampling receivers.
Complete RF, Microwave, and Subsystem Ecosystem
In addition to individual demos, Analog Devices presented technologies spanning RF front-end control products, RF ICs, digitization platforms, and system-level subsystems. These solutions cover the entire signal chain from antenna to digital processing across frequencies extending from DC to beyond 100 GHz.
The company highlighted its digitization platforms, including Apollo MxFE, which combines high-speed data converters with integrated DSP and supports direct RF sampling up to 18 GHz. Subsystem-level solutions were also showcased, including VPX-based platforms like the ADSY1100, a modular RF digitizer card that integrates multiple transmit and receive channels, FPGA processing, and tunable RF front ends in a standard form factor for defense applications.
For high-frequency systems, Analog Devices demonstrated its millimeter-wave (mmWave) portfolio, which supports 5G and emerging 6G applications with integrated beamforming ICs and converters operating across bands such as 24 GHz to 48 GHz. Live demonstrations across the booth showed capabilities such as interference mitigation, null steering, carrier management, and over-the-air communications, highlighting how ADI integrates RF hardware with software-defined processing to enable advanced wireless and defense systems.
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