Real-time frequency measurement based on parallel pipeline FFT for time-stretched acquisition system

Real-time frequency measurement for non-repetitive and statistically rare signals are challenging problems in the electronic measurement area, which places high demands on the bandwidth, sampling rate, data processing and transmission capabilities of the measurement system. The time-stretching sampling system overcomes the bandwidth limitation and sampling rate limitation of electronic digitizers, allowing continuous ultra-high-speed acquisition at refresh rates of billions of frames per second. However, processing the high sampling rate signals of hundreds of GHz is an extremely challenging task, which becomes the bottleneck of the real-time analysis for non-stationary signals. In this work, a real-time frequency measurement system is designed based on a parallel pipelined FFT structure. Tens of FFT channels are pipelined to process the incoming high sampling rate signals in sequence, and a simplified parabola fitting algorithm is implemented in the FFT channel to improve the frequency precision. The frequency results of these FFT channels are reorganized and finally uploaded to an industrial personal computer for visualization and offline data mining. A real-time transmission datapath is designed to provide a high throughput rate transmission, ensuring the frequency results are uploaded without interruption. Several experiments are performed to evaluate the designed real-time frequency measurement system, the input signal has a bandwidth of 4 GHz, and the repetition rate of frames is 22 MHz. Experimental results show that the frequency of the signal can be measured at a high sampling rate of 20 GSPS, and the frequency precision is better than 1 MHz.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figure

A Statistic-Based Calibration Method for TIADC System

Time-interleaved technique is widely used to increase the sampling rate of analog-to-digital converter (ADC). However, the channel mismatches degrade the performance of time-interleaved ADC (TIADC). Therefore, a statistic-based calibration method for TIADC is proposed in this paper. The average value of sampling points is utilized to calculate offset error, and the summation of sampling points is used to calculate gain error. After offset and gain error are obtained, they are calibrated by offset and gain adjustment elements in ADC. Timing skew is calibrated by an iterative method. The product of sampling points of two adjacent subchannels is used as a metric for calibration. The proposed method is employed to calibrate mismatches in a four-channel 5 GS/s TIADC system. Simulation results show that the proposed method can estimate mismatches accurately in a wide frequency range. It is also proved that an accurate estimation can be obtained even if the signal noise ratio (SNR) of input signal is 20 dB. Furthermore, the results obtained from a real four-channel 5 GS/s TIADC system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. We can see that the spectra spurs due to mismatches have been effectively eliminated after calibration

Information Entropy- and Average-Based High-Resolution Digital Storage Oscilloscope

Vertical resolution is an essential indicator of digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) and the key to improving resolution is to increase digitalizing bits and lower noise. Averaging is a typical method to improve signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the effective number of bits (ENOB). The existing averaging algorithm is apt to be restricted by the repetitiveness of signal and be influenced by gross error in quantization, and therefore its effect on restricting noise and improving resolution is limited. An information entropy-based data fusion and average-based decimation filtering algorithm, proceeding from improving average algorithm and in combination with relevant theories of information entropy, are proposed in this paper to improve the resolution of oscilloscope. For single acquiring signal, resolution is improved through eliminating gross error in quantization by utilizing the maximum entropy of sample data with further noise filtering via average-based decimation after data fusion of efficient sample data under the premise of oversampling. No subjective assumptions and constraints are added to the signal under test in the whole process without any impact on the analog bandwidth of oscilloscope under actual sampling rate

A seamless acquisition digital storage oscilloscope with three-dimensional waveform display

In traditional digital storage oscilloscope (DSO), sampled data need to be processed after each acquisition. During data processing, the acquisition is stopped and oscilloscope is blind to the input signal. Thus, this duration is called dead time. With the rapid development of modern electronic systems, the effect of infrequent events becomes significant. To capture these occasional events in shorter time, dead time in traditional DSO that causes the loss of measured signal needs to be reduced or even eliminated. In this paper, a seamless acquisition oscilloscope without dead time is proposed. In this oscilloscope, three-dimensional waveform mapping (TWM) technique, which converts sampled data to displayed waveform, is proposed. With this technique, not only the process speed is improved, but also the probability information of waveform is displayed with different brightness. Thus, a three-dimensional waveform is shown to the user. To reduce processing time further, parallel TWM which processes several sampled points simultaneously, and dual-port random access memory based pipelining technique which can process one sampling point in one clock period are proposed. Furthermore, two DDR3 (Double-Data-Rate Three Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) are used for storing sampled data alternately, thus the acquisition can continue during data processing. Therefore, the dead time of DSO is eliminated. In addition, a double-pulse test method is adopted to test the waveform capturing rate (WCR) of the oscilloscope and a combined pulse test method is employed to evaluate the oscilloscope's capture ability comprehensively. The experiment results show that the WCR of the designed oscilloscope is 6 250 000 wfms/s (waveforms per second), the highest value in all existing oscilloscopes. The testing results also prove that there is no dead time in our oscilloscope, thus realizing the seamless acquisition.Published versio

Surface Hydrophilic Modification for Chip of Centrifugal Microfluidic Immunoassay System

The surface of a centrifugal microfluidic immunoassay system chip such as polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is often hydrophobic, which leads to problems such as poor liquid transfer efficiency and easy-to-block siphon channels, leading to bad fluid control. Therefore, surface hydrophilic modification for such chips is necessary to improve the rapidity and sensitivity of the system. Chemical modification is commonly used, but there is little research on the hydrophilic effect of different concentrations of hydrophilic reagents. According to function requirements for different microchannels of the chip (some only need to ensure the liquid can flow into the next chamber, and some also need to ensure the function of “closing the door” during immunoassay incubation), we explored the best combination of hydrophilic reagent and concentration through experiments. Firstly, three hydrophilic reagents were used for modification. Secondly, the hydrophilic effects of different reagents and concentrations were explored by contact angle test, the influence of different modification methods on liquid transfer efficiency was characterized by residual liquid calculation in the chamber. Finally, the effect of different hydrophilic reagents on absorbance was also tested. By experimental results and comprehensively considering the stability of the modification effect and the function requirements, Tween-20 (2.0% v/v) was chosen as the modifying reagents of the first siphon valve and the second siphon valve, and TritonX-100 (2.0% v/v) was chosen for the third siphon valve, which effectively reduces the contact angle and improves the liquid transfer efficiency, leading to further improvement of the rapidity and sensitivity of the centrifugal microfluidic immunoassay system by efficient siphoning and high plasma separation efficiency (99%)

Multi-vertebrae variation potentially contribute to carcass length and weight of Kazakh sheep

Vertebrae variation is an important characteristic in mammals. The purpose of this study is to investigate vertebral variation and the association with carcass length and weight in Kazakh sheep. We examined thoracic (T) and lumbar (L) vertebral variation by splitting carcass on 468 Kazakh sheep. Seven kinds of vertebrae formations were discovered. The majority (74.14%) of sheep had 13 thoracic and 6 lumbar (T13L6), and other variations included T13L7 (12.34%), T14L6 (10.68%), T14L5 (1.28%), T12L6 (0.64%), T12L7 (0.21%) and T14L7 (0.21%). Moreover, carcass length of T13L7 and T14L6 sheep, possessing one more lumbar or thoracic vertebrae, respectively increased 2.22 cm and 2.93 cm compared with that of normal T13L6 sheep. Similarly, carcass weight of T13L7 and T14L6 sheep raised 1.68 kg and 1.90 kg, respectively, when compared with that of T13L6 sheep. Our results suggested that multi-vertebrae variation of Kazakh sheep could contribute to carcass length and weight