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Elcom PAN2000 FFT processor
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 Years ago I bought this ELCOM PAN-2000 FFT processor at an auction. This processor box was part of a PAN-2000 system that was designed for use of the Dutch Radio Monitoring Service (NL: Agentschap Telecom) and built by ELCOM GmbH in München (Germany). This PAN-2000 system was used since 1995 in a car/van for locating clandestine radio stations (radio pirates) and other sources of radio interference. This PAN-2000 system made it possible to locate signal sources using direction finding techniques. This PAN-2000 was the successor of the PAN-1000 system. The PAN-1000 system had it's own receiver design where the PAN-2000 used a modified commercially available Icom IC-9000 receiver since it's wise to use an great performing existing device instead of designing and building is yourself. The receiver can receive up to 2GHz.
There were only approximately 20 systems built around the 90's and I expect that a huge amount of money was spent for developing and building this system... Around the years 2005...2007 the PAN-2000 system was replaced by the PAN-3000 system.
The FFT processor cabinet was the central part if the system. The FFT processor takes the IF signal from the IC-9000 receiver and converts it into a frequency spectrum display using hardware-based FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) functions. The console was also connected to the FFT processor and display. The FFT processor controlled the IC-9000 receiver via the CI-V command interface. A nice design feature is that the communication between the FFT processor and condsole/display is via optical toslink wiring to prevent interference.
Unfortunately the previous owner sold the Icom IC-9000 and discarded the display, console and other cables... So it was impossible to get the system working again. Therefore I decided to 'disassemble the device as a study object, reuse the usable parts and keep the empty box for future projects...
The guys of CryptoMuseum did a fantastic job describing and collecting parts of this PAN-2000 system. So if you're interested in more information about this PAN-2000 system, my advice is to visit their virtual museum here: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/df/pan2000
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Source: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/df/pan2000/index.htm
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This IF board is the only analogue part of the FFT processor. This plug-in module is shielded to prevent intrusion of external signals. The 10,7 MHz intermediate frequency signal of the IC-9000 receiver is fed into this FFT board. This board samples the analoge signal into digital data that is fed to the FFT controller.
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CTRL: IF controller (2 boards)
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This IF (intermediate frequency) controller consists of two stacked cards. This controller controls the functions of the IF interface and the related A/D converter. This controller ensures that the correct band segment are sampled.
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CPU: Intel 386 processor board
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The Intel 386 cpu processor board is shown below. This computer controls the PAN-2000 system. This is a complete 16 bit 80386 IBM PC on a single board for industrial purposes.
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I/O: Optical interface with RCU and antenna selector
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This interface card was designed to connect (optically) to the display unit and console unit. The antenna selector relays in the shielded can are also visible for switching the desired IC-9000 input. Three antenna's can be selected. Also the four stage switchable attenuator can is shown.
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MEM: EPROM and CMOS RAM board
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This is the memory card for the 80386 CPU card. This card contains space for RAM modules and holds the EPROM's for the systems firmware.
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The FFT controller card samples the information from the IF card and converts this to infomation to the frequency domain. In other words, this card converts the IF information to a spectrum view. Nowadays a commercial ham radio receiver has this built in, bu back in the days this was rather spectacular.
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VIDEO: Video graphics controller (two boards)
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This video card delivers the desired graphical information for the display unit via the optical output. This results in displaying the graphics for the panoramic view. There are four optical outputs. The luminance, horizontal synchronisation, vertical synchronisation and pixel clock signals has it's own optical toslink cable.
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PSU Power supply unit (several boards and modules)
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