News and New Products

12-bit, 400M-sample/sec PCI ADC board offers 78-dB SFDR, memory expansion to 4 million points

By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, 8/21/2003

The 12-bit-resolution Acqiris model DP310 PCI digitizer board ($9490) combines 300-MHz –3-dB bandwidth, a sampling rate of 400M samples/sec (plus 5% over range to 420M samples/sec), 78-dB SFDR (spurious-free dynamic range), optional memory depth to 4M samples, and standard memory depth to 64k samples (Picture). A high-resolution sampling-rate ad-justment allows you to set the internal sampling-clock frequency with a resolution of 0.25% of the lower end of your selected 2-to-1 adjustment range. If you need to more precisely set the sampling rate, you can connect an external sampling clock to a coaxial connector on the board's panel. Don't be put off by the DP310's bandwidth, which exceeds the Nyquist fre-quency at the board's maximum sampling rate. The purpose of the extra bandwidth is to per-mit intentional undersampling of the input signal—a handy feature for demodulating wideband information in communication systems.

For applications requiring less impressive performance than that of the DP310, the manufacturer offers the DP308 a nominally 200M-sample/sec (210M with over range), 100-MHz-bandwidth unit, for $6990 and the DP306, a 100M (105M)-sample/sec, 50-MHz unit for $4490. Both of the lower-cost units provide memory depth of 32k samples, optionally expand-able to 2M samples. Expansion-memory pricing begin at $990.

Acqiris USA, 1-877-227-4747, www.acqiris.com.