Product category:
Board-Level Instruments
News Release from: Gage Applied Technologies | Subject: High-resolution digitisers
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 12 May 2005
FPGA-based averaging aids weak signal
acquisition
Gage Applied Technologies has developed new optional onboard signal averaging FPGA technology for its high-resolution digitisers.
Gage Applied Technologies has developed new optional onboard signal averaging FPGA technology for its high-resolution digitisers This new onboard signal averaging technology allows users to detect very small signals in noisy environments
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 1 Dec 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The signal averaging capability takes advantage of the onboard FPGA technology on select Gage 12 and 14bit digitisers and allows rapid signal averaging with absolutely no CPU loading on the host PC.
The process consists of making multiple acquisitions of a repetitive waveform and averaging all acquisitions together.
Any random noise is subsequently averaged to near zero, while the amplitude of the underlying repetitive signal remains unchanged.
As the signal averaging is performed onboard using the intelligent processing of the FPGA, the amount of data that needs to be transferred via the PCIbus to the PC may be reduced by a factor of 1000.
In fact, waveforms can be signal-averaged at a rate of greater than 100,000 waveforms per second for a data processing rate of 800Mbyte/s.
"Our new signal averaging technology provides a fast and efficient means for users to process data onboard the digitiser, and transfer only the data that is of interest to the PC for further analysis", said Eric Gillas, Gage General Manager.
"Customers can now choose to add the latest signal averaging technology or our previously announced finite impulse response (FIR) filter FPGA technology to one of our high-resolution digitisers".
"We will continue to offer new application specific FPGA technology onboard our digitisers in the future", Gillas added.
Signal averaging is a powerful method of improving the fidelity of noisy repetitive signals.
Using signal averaging, small signals can be extracted from a background of high amplitude noise, which may even be larger than the actual signal itself.
Applications for Gage's new signal averaging technology include: ultrasonic, radar or lidar testing, optical fibre testing, stimulus-response systems and network analysis.
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