Product category:
Sensors and Data Acquisition
News Release from: Dataquest Solutions | Subject: Spectrum M2i.4038
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 02 April 2008
Card provides 50Msample/s radar
monitoring
A radar pulse can be recorded at the same time as the azimuth on every clock pulse, which at 50Msample/s is a 20ns repeat period.
Dataquest Solutions has released the Spectrum M2i.4038 for engineers who need a PC-based radar signal and antenna position capture card It incorporates a 50Msample/s signal capture module coupled with a digital input module
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 20 Aug 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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The card has three inputs available into the analogue section:signal input, external clock and external trigger.
The card incorporates a high-resolution 14bit A/D convertor with excellent dynamic properties to ensure accurate radar signal recording.
Sample clocking can be externally supplied from the user's own equipment, or generated internally by the card's own clock engine using a low-jitter onboard oscillator.
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The trigger input connection also allows full control of the sampling window and an option of each trigger to being time stamped.
On the digital side of the M2i.4038 the azimuth encoder counter connection is very straightforward, with two lines, one for the encoder pulse signal and the other for a reset.
The card's pulse counter provides 16 bits of resolution, offering capacity to record up to 65536 pulses per rotation.
The M2i.4038 can also acquire data in parallel at 16bit.
This digital port wide capture can be used for antenna elevation as well as azimuth, though each would have to share the 16 bits.
It is always possible to use a second separate digital I/O card from the Spectrum series to do the azimuth and elevation captures, as all cards have the capability for clock and/or trigger synchronisation and are available in models up to 64 bits wide.
The radar card can be used in two ways.
In the special multiple record option the trigger, either externally derived or from the arrival of the radar pulse, starts a recording window of finite length digitising the pulse and simultaneously recording the azimuth position.
Using this mode of operation allows breaks in the recording at times when data is not required, reducing file sizes and bandwidth required for data transfer to the PC.
The second method is continuous, with a radar pulse recorded simultaneously with azimuth on every clock pulse, which at 50Msample/s is a 20ns repeat period.
The card can be equipped with up to 4Gbyte of on-board memory to cope with the large amounts of data, or by choosing either the PCI 33/66MHz (PCI-X) or PCI-Express interface model, continuous data can real-time streamed to PC RAM, its potential capacity now greatly extended in the new 64bit Windows and Linux environments.
The radar card is also available in a lower cost M2i.4028 20Msample/s version.
The existing Spectrum drivers are used for programming the board, so while there are no specific displays or post processing algorithms for radar applications, the flexibility of the code drivers allows the programmer to build and design an application to exactly meet requirements and a standard set of standard programming examples are provided to illustrate the boards main signal capture functions.
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