A 1 GHz data acquisition system for repetitive waveforms

The development of a very-high-speed data-acquisition system and the supporting software are described. The system will replace an oscilloscope-mounted Polaroid camera for recording waveforms and a highly subjective manual interpretation process. To duplicate and exceed the resolution of the Polaroid-recorded waveform, the digital sampling rate is set to 1 GHz with the capability of collecting 4000 points per recorded waveform. The method chosen is the technique of equivalent-time sampling. The processing software is developed separately. It is required that the computer interpretation be consistent with the manual interpretation while also eliminating the discrepancies between different operators. The processing software is written to be independent of the acquisition procedure so that it can stand alone regardless of the method of acquisition. The design, testing with laboratory data. and processing of real data collected on the field are discussed