A flash ADC system with fast data compression for a balloon-borne experiment

A multichannel flash ADC (analog to digital converter) system is developed for a balloon-borne experiment where flash ADCs installed in individual channels output samples of signals at the rate of 30 MHz. The system incorporates zero suppression and data compression. The samples from the converter are put to the zero suppression on a real-time basis and then submitted to the data compression. The data compression reduces the event data in a size further, so that the data of as many events as possible can be recorded on a storage device installed on the balloon-borne apparatus. A zero-suppression circuit is implemented in each channel. A data-compression module in the system begins to scan all the channels, performing compression, after the converter completes sampling. Special care is taken to keep the power consumption of the system within a moderate level.<>