A new firmware option has been created by Spectrum Instrumentation that allows the company’s high-speed M5i digitizer cards to perform on-board summation averaging. Averaging is a useful tool for reducing unwanted signal noise, while at the same time improving measurement resolution, dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The new option enables the M5i digitizers to perform the averaging function by utilizing advanced, on-board, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)
technology. Doing this creates a unique offering. The M5i series digitizers deliver real-time sampling at rates up to 6.4 GS/s with 12-bit resolution and they can stream all the acquired data directly over the PCIe bus at a record breaking 12.8 GB/s. This outstanding capability is then further enhanced by the new firmware option, which permits acquired signals to be averaged at an astonishing rate of 15 million events per second.
“This new option for the M5i series makes for one of the most powerful averaging systems available today,” said Spectrum’s Director of Technology, Oliver Rovini. “The FPGA-based processing allows ultrafast averaging, even on complex and long waveforms. In fact, there’s enough processing power available to average waveforms that contain as many as 1 MSample per acquisition.
The result is an averaging package that will be of interest to anybody working with high frequency signals or very narrow pulses that are low level or where signal details are being lost due to high amounts of noise. This includes applications such as mass spectrometry, lidar, radio astronomy, automation, radar, biomedicine,nuclear physics, communications, sonar and many more.”
