04-11-2018, 10:54 AM
Buying from grey market suppliers is always risky. When a part is obsolete and otherwise unavailable it may be the only way, otherwise it's totally caveat emptor.
If you buy from a franchised distributor or one of the majors (RS, Farnell, Mouser, Digikey) then you should be getting genuine parts even if you're paying rather more.
The modulator chips are already grey market only and there's no good substitiute. Of course you can make a single channel modulator using traditional methods. Several published designs. But it's not multichannel.
The most likely approach in the future will be direct synthesis of the RF output using cheap computing power. This has already been demonstrated. It's akin to software defined radio.
If you buy from a franchised distributor or one of the majors (RS, Farnell, Mouser, Digikey) then you should be getting genuine parts even if you're paying rather more.
The modulator chips are already grey market only and there's no good substitiute. Of course you can make a single channel modulator using traditional methods. Several published designs. But it's not multichannel.
The most likely approach in the future will be direct synthesis of the RF output using cheap computing power. This has already been demonstrated. It's akin to software defined radio.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv