A State-of-the-Art Data Acquisition System

Abstract

Recent developments in manufacturing technology have afforded a new capability in miniaturized instrumentation systems. The advent of ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) technology has provided the tools to implement very sophisticated signal conditioning circuits in micro-miniature instrumentation. This paper discusses the development of the Automatic Gain Ranging Amplifier (AGRA) and its implementation in the Aydin Vector MMSC-800 instrumentation package. Also discussed is the miniaturization of a 1553 Bus monitor, IRIG-B Time Code reader/accumulator and the development of a helical scan miniature tape recording system capable of recording 2+ hours of 3.4 Mbps data. The paper concludes by giving applications for and benefits of using this new state-of-the-art instrumentation.