The application of minicomputers in laser atmospheric experiments

A minicomputer-based data acquisition and analysis system has been developed and applied to a variety of experiments involving the interactions between laser radiation and real and simulated atmospheres. This paper describes the system, its software, and main applications. System features include signal-analysis capability of both pulsed and continuous lasers, high data acquisition and computation rates, and real-time display of results. Basic system components include two minicomputers, four analog-to-digital converters, and a disk storage unit. One of the main applications of the system is as a dual-parameter analyzer in experiments to determine the transmission of laser energy in controlled atmospheres. Efforts to complete these experiments were unsuccessful until minicomputer capability was added. The resulting real-time computation and display enabled real-time calibration and experiment monitoring. Minicomputer system application on the difficult experiments has also proven successful.