Abstract
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has pioneered an approach where low-cost consumer-grade electronics can be used as the basis of a highly reliable data acquisition architecture. One twenty-channel system based on this approach has been operating almost 4 years at ORNL. The architecture allows a mix-and-match level of configurability so the designer can select devices that best match the desired performance trade-offs. The most important device to be selected is the analog-to-digital converter. This paper explores the performance of several candidate audio recording devices that can be used as high-speed analog-to-digital converters for such measurement systems. Various performance metrics are explored including frequency response, noise floor, and synchronous sampling. Sample rates as high as 192 KHz are supported with 16 and 24-bit resolution. While most of the devices are dual-channel, there are multi-channel devices now available that will allow modal type of synchronous sampling. One such device was tested and is discussed is this paper.
