A proof-of-concept of the use of a fully digital radiofrequency (RF) electronics for the design of dedicated Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) systems at low-field (0.1 T) is presented. This digital electronics is based on the use of three key elements: a Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) for pulse generation, a Software Defined Radio (SDR) for a digital receiving of NMR signals and a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) for system control and for the generation of the gradient signals (pulse programmer). The SDR includes a direct analog-to-digital conversion and a Digital Down Conversion (digital quadrature demodulation, decimation filtering, processing gain…). The various aspects of the concept and of the realization are addressed with some details. These include both hardware design and software considerations. One of the underlying ideas is to enable such NMR systems to “enjoy” from existing advanced technology that have been realized in other research areas, especially in telecommunication domain. Another goal is to make these systems easy to build and replicate so as to help research groups in realizing dedicated NMR desktops for a large palette of new applications. We also would like to give readers an idea of the current trends in this field. The performances of the developed electronics are discussed throughout the paper. First FID (Free Induction Decay) signals are also presented. Some development perspectives of our work in the area of low-field NMR/MRI will be finally addressed.
The design and performances of a high dynamic range DC-AC current sensor utilizing Giant Magneto-Impedance (GMI) are presented. The sensor is based on a GMI element with negative feedback. The sensing element is a 30 μm diameter GMI Co-based amorphous wire. It is curled to a toroidal core of 2 cm diameter. A bias magnetic field of about 650 A/m is applied to the GMI element to obtain an asymmetric GMI effect. A strong negative feedback is introduced to ensure linearity in a wide dynamic range. Analog conditioning electronics was fully developed. This includes a square wave oscillator based on an inverter trigger; a peak detector and a high gain amplifier with zero adjust. The GMI element is driven at a 3 MHz frequency and 5 mA peak-to-peak current. The closed-loop operations are investigated and the performances of the sensor are presented. DC current measurements are performed. The sensor exhibits good sensitivity and very good linearity, free from hysteresis, in a wide dynamic range of ±40 A. The sensitivity is about 0.24 V/A and the linearity error is about 0.02% of the full scale (FS). The hysteresis error is smaller than the measurement accuracy. AC current measurements using the developed sensor have also been successfully achieved. The sensor bandwidth in closed-loop was about 1.7 kHz
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