Generate 70MHz signal with 5 voltage levels

Community Projects
1

I’m working on my own communication protocol for a research project. As a start I want to emulate the Gigabit Ethernet protocol which has 2 properties:

– Uses at least 5 voltage levels to encode information

– Operates on a wavelength of ~70MHz+

I have a few questions:

  1. What are good FPGAs or programmable devices that operates and can generate and modulate 70MHz signals?

  2. Since GPIO pins only produce two voltage levels (0V and high), would a voltage translator be a good option to produce 5 different voltage levels? If not what are some techniques I can use to achieve this?

2

Have a look at the terASIC DE0-nano; complete, and low cost FPGA dev board.

Multi-level high speed stuff; might want to use an 8 bit DAC running at 200MSPS to synthesize a 70MHz signal, you will then have plenty of flexibility for design changes.

-Mark