Blogs
PCI Express (PCIe) Data Streaming
All Gage PCI Express (PCIe) CompuScope Digitizers are capable of streaming acquired waveform data through the PCIe bus directly to the host PC RAM by utilizing the eXpert PCIe Data Streaming Firmware. By contrast, in standard Memory Mode operations the waveform data is first acquired to the digitizer card's onboard memory, acquisition is stopped, and then the data residing in onboard memory can be transferred to the host PC system. eXpert PCIe Data Streaming Mode operations provide two distinct advantages over standard Memory Mode. First, Streaming Mode may overcome the acquisition time limit imposed by the size volume of [...]
Ultrasonic Tissue Characterization
Ultrasonic Tissue Characterization Customer Case This customer's application is Ultrasonic Tissue Characterization. Their ultrasonic sensors transmit 16 signals. The customer's requirement is to capture 512 points on the 16 channels, average them together, and then store the data in a buffer, with the system running continuously. They would like to be able to update the average buffer and recapture data as fast as possible. They would then like to log the data to disk or process the data and display an image on the screen. Since the signals coming in from their ultrasonic sensors are very weak, the customer [...]
Digitizing Ultrasonic Signals
Digitizing Ultrasonic Signals Customer Case The customer has an ultrasonic signal that he wants to digitize with either 8 or 12-bit resolution. The sampling rate required for this application is a minimum of 16 MSPS (20 MSPS is acceptable). Finally, the data must be acquired for a full 10 seconds. The data is not coming in continuously: it is arriving in bursts one millisecond apart (PRF = 1 KHz). For each trigger the customer wants to capture approximately 200 us of data. Once this data is acquired, the customer wants it saved to the hard drive as a standard [...]
Digital Ultrasonic Array Data Capture
Digital Ultrasonic Array Data Capture Customer Case A customer possesses a commercial medical diagnostic ultrasonic system. The ultrasonic sensing head consists of an ultrasonic generator transducer and an 8' x 8' two-dimensional array of receiver transducers. The sensing head is pressed against the tissue under study and the generation transducer is periodically excited so that it emits a burst of ultrasonic energy. After each burst, the receiver array registers ultrasonic echoes reflected off tissue structures from each transducer element. In normal operation, digitized array data from each element is numerically processed and combined to construct a display image of [...]
Arbitrary Ultrasonic Generator
Arbitrary Ultrasonic Generator Customer Case Ultrasonic generation pulses must be varied to accommodate different types of ultrasonic transducers. General-purpose highly damped contact transducers are usually excited by a wideband, spike-like pulse that is provided by many common pulser/receiver units. Lightly damped transducers, used for example in high power generation, require a narrowband tone-burst excitation from a separate generator unit. Sometimes, even the same transducer will be excited differently, for instance, to study the dispersion of a material's ultrasonic attenuation or to characterize ultrasonic transducers. In order to construct a flexible ultrasonic generation unit, engineers have excited transducers with a [...]
Pipeline Testing
Pipeline Testing Customer Case The customer wants to test pipelines for corrosion and cracks. They intend to use a small robot which they can send into the pipeline. This robot's purpose is to test the pipe by ultrasound and magnetic field for cracks, corrosion and other damage. The customer is using 2 different types of transducers, one for ultrasound and one for the magnetic field. They are sending a pulse with a magnetic field generator, capturing the received signal, rotating the transducer 1/2 degree and then sending another pulse and capturing signal again. After a complete 360 degree rotation, [...]
Plasma Coating of Airplane Parts
Plasma Coating of Airplane Parts Customer Case The customer produces plasma coating for airplane parts. They need to count the number of plasma particles on these parts so that they can adjust the plasma torch to be less or more powerful in order to obtain the required thickness of plasma coating. Using a particle detector, they are able to measure temperature, speed and quantity of particles. These parameters are used as feedback to control the plasma coating process. GaGe Case Solution The customer requires a scope card that has both high-resolution and a fast sampling rate. At the time [...]
Gas Turbine Monitoring
Gas Turbine Monitoring Customer Case A customer who designs and develops turbo-machinery uses automated data-acquisition and reduction routines. The complete system can sequentially scan up to 144 pressures, 40 electrical signals, and 50 temperatures. It can also acquire and analyze dynamic pressure/vibration signals as well as the scanned steady-state data. They do precise pneumatic traversing for high-performance radial-flow stages. Using a computer-controlled data-acquisition system, the detailed internal pressures and temperatures can be acquired and processed. Laboratory data files are generated, which can be directly used to process the impeller-cover static pressure data. The data can also be automatically processed [...]
Avionics Bus Monitoring
Avionics Bus Monitoring Customer Case The requirement is to monitor anomalies on an avionics bus that controls systems aboard spacecrafts. The customer will know typical rise times, and therefore, will look for anomalous high-voltage pulses that may occur due to sunspots or cosmic rays. An A/D card with at least 12-bits of vertical resolution is required to capture anomalous glitches for characterization. The required sampling speed is 50 KHz, on two simultaneous channels that monitor two bus lines. The input signal bandwidth is typically 4 KHz. The customer would like to write his own data acquisition application programs in [...]
Nuclear Reactor Tube Testing
Nuclear Reactor Tube Testing Customer Case The customer needs to test specialized alloy tubing used to carry water within a nuclear reactor for possible damage. This tubing is located in a closed area where there is ambient radiation. Therefore, this test will be performed by a robot arm using ultrasonic non-destructive testing. They need to sample at 500 MHz on a single channel and save 2,000 samples for each acquisition at a Pulse Repeat Frequency (PRF) of 20 KHz. The ultrasonic transducer generates an ultrasound signal at 10 MHz. They must continuously capture a minimum of 500,000 records, which [...]