High-Rate Transient Sampling with Pre-ADC Activity Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current data acquisition systems face challenges in efficiently handling high sampling rates and achieving precise timing accuracy in applications like particle accelerator experiments and Lidar, where data of interest is sparse and occurs for short durations, leading to increased implementation complexity and power requirements.
Innovation Solution
The system employs an array of sampling circuits, analog storage cells, and an activity detector to temporarily store samples at gigahertz rates, identifying non-zero data before converting it to the digital domain, reducing the conversion rate and storage requirements by focusing on regions of interest, and utilizing time-interleaved sampling arrays and a Dynamic Window Selector to optimize data processing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If high sampling rates (gigahertz range) are used to capture short-duration collision artifacts, then timing accuracy is improved, but power consumption and implementation complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by using a preliminary quantizer to process and identify non-zero samples before they enter the main ADC pipeline. This pre-processing step marks relevant samples with timing information, allowing the system to operate at lower effective rates for the main conversion process while maintaining the ability to capture gigahertz-range events with picosecond precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the data acquisition process into multiple stages: a first quantizer for initial sample processing and non-zero detection, followed by selective ADC conversion only for marked samples. This segmentation allows different parts of the system to operate at different effective rates, reducing overall complexity while preserving timing accuracy for critical events.
2Measurement precision
If high sampling rates are used to capture short-duration collision artifacts, then timing accuracy is improved, but power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial action by having the main ADC process only the subset of samples that are marked as non-zero by the first quantizer, rather than converting every sampled point. This partial processing approach maintains timing accuracy for critical events while significantly reducing the average power consumption of the high-speed conversion path.
3Loss of information
If all sampled data is converted to digital domain at gigahertz rates, then no data is lost, but storage requirements and processing complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the relevant non-zero samples from the continuous data stream using the first quantizer and timing mark logic. By taking out only the samples that contain collision artifact information and discarding or bypassing the zero-valued samples, the system maintains data completeness for critical events while dramatically reducing digital storage and processing requirements.
4Measurement precision
If high sampling rates are used, then short-duration collision artifacts are captured accurately, but system cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the expensive high-speed conversion resources into selective use only when needed, rather than continuously operating at full gigahertz rates. The first quantizer acts as a gatekeeper that enables the expensive ADC path only for relevant samples, making the high-precision timing capability affordable by reducing the average operational burden on expensive components.
Data Source
AI summary
Diverse applications in particle physics experiments and emerging technologies such as Lidar are driving performance increase and cost reduction in giga-hertz sampling-rate high-resolution data conversion. In applications such as these, critical aspects of the data may occur only during relatively short nanosecond portions of observation periods lasting microseconds. Data acquisition architectures that key in on regions of the data containing activity, digitize the data, and provide info to accurately measure the position of the data in time relative to a time reference are described. These architectures may facilitate system implementation and reduce overall system cost.