Analog Data Acquisition - Flexibility or Performance?

• Main Author: Buckley, David
• Other Authors: Curtiss-Wright Controls Avionics & Electronics
• Language: en_US
• Published: International Foundation for Telemetering 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/581446

ITC/USA 2012 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Eighth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 22-25, 2012 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California === When acquiring data from analog sources there has always been inherent trade-offs between accuracy, bandwidth, channel count and flexibility. Depending on the sensor type and application one or more of these attributes will be more important than the others. Having a catalog of acquisition cards each one optimized to a particular attribute has allowed the FTI engineer to select the optimal balance for his application. Today, there is increasing pressure on designers and manufacturers to provide a one size fits all approach, with very high accuracy, bandwidth, channel count and flexibility all in one card. This paper discusses the trade-offs between dedicated and generic hardware and concludes that although a generic card can have very high specifications, end users need to be aware that there are significant advantages to using dedicated hardware that may outweigh the flexibility benefits of a generic solution.