MONOLITHIC, LOW-COST TRANSIENT RECORDER WITH AUTOMATIC GAIN RANGING (AGR)

Q-DOT proposes to develop an innovative, monolithic recorder for acquiring pressure v. Time history of the event. The signal range of 1mV to 1 V p-p is spanned with automatic gain ranging (AGR) which provide one of eight base-2 gains to optimize the 9-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The AGR and ADC together span a 16-bit range, easing setup. Performance is attained without elaborate calibration or extensive postacquisition correction. A static two-point calibration references gain and offset. Sampling rates range from 100 Ks/s to 10Ms/s and can be synchronously switched during acquisition to optimize the 128K sample memory. Power consumption is estimated at 180mW during acquisition at 10 Ms/s, 8mW during readout, and 250mW during idle. The AGR recorder chip may be deployed within the transducer body (for optimum shielding), near the transducer in a shielded module, or in a conventional instrumentation module (e.g., CAMAC, VXI, etc.). Chip production cost is estimated at roughly $200.