Hello,
I would like to begin by stating that my background is in Physics/Astrophysics, with very little EE experience.
I am currently working on a project that requires us to count very fast (1.5 million times per second). The signal is digital and is sent through a BNC cable (0 or 5 V +/- some jitters). I am interested in constructing something that will take this signal and do one of the following:
# Output a binary file (0s and 1s), 1.5 million counts per second (into computer); or
# Output a time stamp of when an event occurred (into computer)
I expect that the first option is less data demanding because we expect to be close to saturation limit. The team I am on has purchased a module that does this for us, and it works great. However, it costs a few thousand and is quite bulky. Additionally, it has a lot of other functions that are useless for our purposes. We will also need about 100 of them, or construct a module that does what I have described above.
The issue is, coming from a more theoretical side of things, I am not familiar with many components that could be used to construct such a device, or what one would call it for that matter. My only experience thus far has been building a few GHz range Low Noise Amps (LNAs). I am looking for suggestions as to how I would approach this problem, and possibly where I would start. I am trying to keep the cost of such a device below 1k.
Thank you in advance.
Gena
I would like to begin by stating that my background is in Physics/Astrophysics, with very little EE experience.
I am currently working on a project that requires us to count very fast (1.5 million times per second). The signal is digital and is sent through a BNC cable (0 or 5 V +/- some jitters). I am interested in constructing something that will take this signal and do one of the following:
# Output a binary file (0s and 1s), 1.5 million counts per second (into computer); or
# Output a time stamp of when an event occurred (into computer)
I expect that the first option is less data demanding because we expect to be close to saturation limit. The team I am on has purchased a module that does this for us, and it works great. However, it costs a few thousand and is quite bulky. Additionally, it has a lot of other functions that are useless for our purposes. We will also need about 100 of them, or construct a module that does what I have described above.
The issue is, coming from a more theoretical side of things, I am not familiar with many components that could be used to construct such a device, or what one would call it for that matter. My only experience thus far has been building a few GHz range Low Noise Amps (LNAs). I am looking for suggestions as to how I would approach this problem, and possibly where I would start. I am trying to keep the cost of such a device below 1k.
Thank you in advance.
Gena
