A 32-Channel High-Speed Simultaneously Sampling Data Acquisition System

The system is intended for recording data in the multichannel diagnostic sections of experimental plasma facilities. It contains eight four-channel modules that record the shapes of single pulse signals, a controller module of the system bus of the crate, a fiber-optic communication line, and an interface card for connection to the ISA bus of a personal computer. The recording modules are based on 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with a sampling frequency of up to 50 MHz, ensuring a conversion accuracy equal to the least significant bit in a band of the input signal of up to 20 MHz. The ADC samples are fixed in 32-Kword/channel buffer storage units with a page organization. The current values of the amplitude of the input signals in all of the recording channels are measured simultaneously with a time jitter of no more than 0.2 ns. The software selects an amplitude conversion scale and a zero offset voltage value for each recording channel, as well as the current value of the sampling frequency for all the channels.