Development of a High-Speed Multi-Channel Analog Data Acquisitioning Architecture

As the measurement techniques in the space science community rapidly evolve, the demand for multi-channeled, high-speed, radiation tolerant data acquisitioning systems gets increasingly higher. The high volume and resolution of data, and the complexity of the in-situ processing and analysis requirements, have triggered the need for faster, smaller, and easily reconfigurable designs. In response to this demand, Southwest Research Institute has developed a high-speed, multi-channel, versatile data acquisitioning architecture. This new architecture can perform reconfigurable DSP algorithms and subsequent data processing on instrument analog input signals. The overall architecture and topology was developed as part of a SwRI science instrumentation trade study and then implemented on the NASA gamma-ray large area space telescope (GLAST) data processing unit (DPU). It can easily be reconfigured for other space missions and instrument applications. This paper presents an architectural view of the design and gives examples of its tremendous versatility. It also addresses the evolution of analog DSP data acquisition systems in general and emphasizes the advantages and tradeoffs between today's approaches versus older heritage methods