We meant what we said about 'rapid.' This project involved wiring together off-the-shelf evaluation boards and adding software to quickly show a customer that his idea could work.

Have you ever driven through a tunnel and wondered how it was possible to receive radio stations under ground and even under water? The trick is electronics called a re-broadcast system. An outside antenna brings the over-the-air radio signals to circuitry that tunes 32 AM and 32 FM stations, and then re-broadcasts them inside the tunnel. It also provides the tunnel authority a means to send emergency announcements to the cars in the tunnel through the radios in each car. In the past a re-broadcast system was several huge racks of analog radio receivers. The proof of concept prototype we developed (shown below) does that job digitally.