Ultra Wideband Recorder Dual Channel 1GHz 8-bit Analog Input Recording System

The Vortex Ultra Wideband (UWB) Data Recorder is an application targeted pre-programmed recorder. This application of the Vortex Data Recorder offers real-time permanent recording of high speed data at sustained rates up to 2GigaSamples per second (GSPS) utilizing COTS (Commercial-off-the-shelf) components. A cPCI Pentium based Single Board Computer, 2GSPS digitizer, RAID or SBOD storage devices, high-speed Serial FPDP (sFPDP) PMC modules on Vortex Open Data Recorders and source code allow the Vortex UWB Data Recording System to provide speed, flexibility and scalability to high-performance sensor applications.

The Pentium Single Board Computer (SBC) provides the human interface that controls the UWB Recording System using the web-based GUI. The configuration, test and verification of the recording system is performed from the web-based GUI, including configuration of the digitizer, storage formatting, disk integrity check, disk speed test, disk grouping, recording allocation, data viewer, error report log, accessing help information and links for getting support. The SBC controls a GPS PMC card providing the external trigger to the digitizer, time stamps the trigger event and tracks the GPS position of the recorder at 10Hz during the recording process. A SAN Access Kit with Fibre Channel PMC allows the SBC to record the GPS time and position to each recording as well as performs a quick merge of the recorded data stream for immediate post-run analysis of data collection. This feature is useful for observing and validating signal integrity and using LabVIEW, the operator can view the signal like an oscilloscope (time domain) or spectrum (frequency domain).

The Vortex UWB utilizes a third party digitizer that offers the best in the market signal fidelity due to the patented signal conditioning performed in the front-end of the digitizer. The digitizer is equipped with a dual or single-channel 8-bit BNC 50 Ω analog interface and samples an analog bandwidth of up to 1GHz. This digitizer is particularly suited when direct sampling techniques are used. Firmware allows sampling and transfer of all acquired data with no dead-time and no loss of data at rates of up to 2GSPS. The front panel MMCX connectors provide access for an external clock or 10MHz reference signal, a trigger output and two additional I/O digital control lines for monitoring or modifying the digitzer’s status and configuration. The channel inputs feature a front-end amplifier chip with programmable gain amplifier with on-chip filtering. This enables pre-ADC signal conditioning and amplification, essential for high performance high-speed data conversion systems. The digitizer’s Xilinx^® Virtex^®–II Pro FPGA utilizes an IP core that stripes the data out 12 RocketIO™ ports at rates up to 180MB/s per link under the sFPDP streaming data protocol directly to the optical data links.

The 2GB/s data stream is striped out up to 12 sFPDP ports and is routed to the appropriate number of recording engines. Each recording engine provides 4 sFPDP input ports. This configuration is ideally suited for modular and scalable use of recording engines to achieve the desired bandwidth from 380 Megasamples per second (MSPS) up to the full 2GSPS. The recording engines output each sFPDP stream over a single Fibre Channel link to the SAN.

The data on each Fibre Channel link is striped across a RAID0 disk group. Use of Fibre Channel yields unprecedented flexibility and scalability in storage architecture. The duration of the recording session is only limited by the number of disks attached. A 3U rackmount SBOD system provides 6.4 TeraBytes (TB) of storage. With the addition of Fibre Channel Fabric Switches, the amount of storage is limitless. The recorded data is accessible from the GUI in a browser style interface where all storage management and recording functions are performed. The available disks in the system can be organized in several disk groups where a recording file system can reside. This feature makes it very easy to handle large amounts of storage and the system can scale to any capacity.

An Application User Interface (API) can also be provided for custom control applications as well as for custom access and analysis of the recorded data.

Ultra Wideband Recorder Targeted Recorder
The Ultra-Wideband Targeted Recorder is a ready to run application complete with all hardware and software required. Based on a few parameters, the appropriate storage requirements, number of ports, and number or recorders can be determined. The quantity and configuration of the hardware is dependant upon the following parameters:

• Number of Analog Channels
  
• Maximum Sampling Rate per Channel (up to 2GS/s)
  
• Storage Capacity and Disk Group Requirements

The source code for the Ultra-Wideband Recorder is provided with the Application Kit. With the source code for the application, additions and modifications can be made to the application. VMETRO’s Application Group can also make custom changes to application kits based on customer requests for an additional fee.