A Low Cost, High Density Reconfigurable Recording Subsystem

Abstract

Modern test programs require an increase in sensor and bus data while at the same time seeking a decrease in the size and price of data acquisition components. Data archiving, which has been traditionally supplied via dedicated standalone hardware, is not exempt to this demand, but in many ways has not kept up with other instrumentation components in terms of flexibility, size, density and price. The archiving capabilities of a data acquisition system must be able to meet the changing needs of the customer. This paper presents a Solid State Drive (SSD) based data recorder implementation that can be easily reconfigured to address the requirements of different applications, including traditional PCM based systems and contemporary network based systems. The paper identifies the requirements, design challenges, trade-offs and risks in creating a low-cost, flexible data archiving subsystem that can be used in a standalone configuration or be directly integrated with a host data acquisition system.