Laser Spectroscopy Customer Case An academic researcher is studying the attenuation properties of different materials inside Laser cavities for applications in Laser Spectroscopy. The Laser pulses are generated by one Laser, and are then transmitted by mirrors into another cavity filled with gaseous material. In the second cavity, the light pulses are continuously reflected by opposite mirrors and their intensities are measured by a transducer which converts them into decaying pulses of 30 nanosecond width. The decay takes about 40 microseconds to settle. The researcher is required to capture the decaying pulses and save the captured data onto the [...]

Laser Transient Absorption Spectroscopy Customer Case The customer's setup is a scientific application in which transient signals from a Laser Absorption Spectroscope are transferred to a computer. The laser power is modified in steps and the process is repeated. The measurement sensitivity is limited by noise generated by the current digitizer. The customer wants to capture and continuously average very small pulse responses. The lowest signal pulse height is 0.5 milliVolts and can range up to 2 mV. The duration of each response pulse is 1 to 10 microseconds. The Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF) is 10 Hz. The customer's [...]

Cable TV Testing Customer Case The customer is building a cable TV test instrument which will allow the service provider to monitor and troubleshoot the cable TV network. There are approximately 9,000 cable providers in North America and many more around the world who may become users of this equipment. The technique used to detect cable breaks is the classic pulse-echo method. A 12.5 MHz frequency chirp is fed into the cable and the resulting echo is digitized. The frequency content of the echo provides information on any malfunctions in the cable network. The echo signal is typically 200 [...]

High-Speed Digitization of Video Signals Customer Case The customer is involved in a radar experiment requiring 12-bit digitization of two incoming video signals of approximately 250 KHz bandwidth. In order to get good time resolution on these signals, it is desirable to sample them at rates of 2.5 MHz or higher. A sample rate of 5 MSPS would be ideal for the application, as it would over-sample by a factor of 20. These signals must be sampled continuously for 10 seconds. No breaks are allowed during this time - in other words, no data must be missed. During one [...]

Laser Measurement & Characterization of Flat Panel Displays Customer Case This customer's application involves the characterization of flat panel displays (used in laptop computers, computer game displays, etc.) via laser scanning. The laser is bounced off a number of mirrors and then through lenses, from which it is scattered. The scattered laser light must then be analyzed in order to determine the quality of the flat panel display. This laser measurement system is used not only by flat panel display industries, but also by disk drive manufacturers to analyze platter quality and, in the near future, for characterizing silicon [...]

Laser Signals Striking Silicon-Diode Target Customer Case The customer wants to capture the output of some silicon diodes looking at a laser target. The typical signal is anywhere from 20mv to 1V in amplitude and 0 to 15ns in length. There are up to 16 of these diodes that are looking at the same target. Each diode has a different filter so the post-trigger depth and amplitude-scale must be user-adjustable. Their main interest is to sample and digitize the signals for archiving, with later retrieval and plotting. Fancy software is not needed for display as the data is gathered [...]

Optical Scanning of Drive Media Customer Case The customer's application is optical scanning for drive testing. The goal is to identify burnt or damaged spots on the disk. The scanning system is generally used in Quality Control, Head-Disk Interaction and Failure Analysis. There is a need for continuous acquisition during the spiral scan. The speed of the disk is 10,000 RPM and the requirement is to capture 65,000 to 80,000 samples each revolution. A single channel is needed for the acquisition at 10 MegaSamples/second or greater. High vertical resolution will aid in measuring the properties and ultimately the degradation [...]

Disk Drive Track Scanning Customer Case The customer is trying to digitize an 83 millisecond long signal coming out of a disk mounted on a rotary motor. This corresponds to one full revolution of the disk. The analog signal coming out of the Device Under Test (DUT) is of approximately 2 MHz bandwidth. Currently, the customer is sampling at 10 MSPS and would like to increase the oversampling to get better time resolution. At present, they are using a CompuScope 225 - 1M, which has sufficient memory to digitize the entire revolution in on-board memory at the 10 MSPS [...]

Print Head Testing Customer Case The customer's task is to develop a system that is capable of driving and testing a prototype printhead. Because they work in R&D, requirements are constantly changing and therefore their optimal solution would be re-programmable - hence, their choice of the GaGe CompuGen 3250. The current version of the printhead requires two 16-bit data busses, as well as several control lines such as DataClock, Strobe, ModeSelection and End_of_Scanline. Thus, they have chosen a synchronous two CompuGen 3250 board system (Master/Slave) as the basis for their system. Their next iteration includes an improvement in system [...]