Firmware options enhance digitiser peak detection

Spectrum Systementwicklung Microelectronic has developed additional firmware options that the company said enable its high-speed M4i series digitiser cards to perform peak detection and output the corresponding statistical data. Using proven hardware-based data analysis and reduction technology, the M4i series cards claim to offer real-time sampling rates of up to 500MS/s with 14bit resolution and 250MS/s with 16bit resolution.

The firmware options boast ultra-fast performance being able to scan blocks of data and then extract a waveforms minimum, maximum, average, peak positions and trigger time stamp information. The analysis can be made on waveform block sizes from as small as 32 samples to as large as two gigasamples and, thanks to high-speed trigger circuitry with a dead time as low as 40 samples (80ns at 500MS/s), at rates of up to 5,000,000 events per second. The M4i series cards are available with two or four channels and use a fast PCIe bus to transfer acquired or processed data to a host PC at speeds of up to 3.4GB/s. The Ethernet/LXI based digitiserNETBOX DN2.44x series with two, four or eight channels and up to 500MS/s uses the same internal digitiser and can also be equipped with the Peak Detection and Block Statistics option.

The Peak Detection and Block Statistics functions target applications where users need to quickly characterise pulses or determine the time between them. Examples include radar, lidar, sonar, ultrasound, laser ranging, nuclear physics, power glitch monitoring and component testing.

The Peak Detection and Block Statistics option (-spstat) is available on the M4i.44xx series of PCIe high-speed digitisers as well as on the digitiserNETBOX DN2.44x series of Ethernet/LXI instruments.