Pentek has announced the 71660 four-channel data acquisition module. The device targets radar and communications applications. The four 200Msamples/s, 16bit data acquisition channels of the module deliver 90dB of spurious free dynamic range, allowing users to detect small signals of interest surrounded by large interferers. The channels operate from a common clock that can come from an external source or an on-board, programmable, crystal-controlled oscillator. An external clock can drive the ADCs directly as a sample clock or be used as a phase-lock reference for the internal oscillator. The device uses two sync and two gate/trigger signals for synchronising data acquisition channels across multiple modules. Four independent memory banks provide the device with a capacity of up 2Gbyte for applications requiring deep memory, or up to 32Mbyte for applications requiring fast random access. The memory can be configured to offer two banks of each type, giving users the flexibility to accommodate complex applications. Built-in functions of the memory controller include multi-channel ADC data capture, data streaming, and tagging of data streams with metadata packets that include time stamp information.
