Evolution of the design of a second generation FireWire based data acquisition system

Abstract

Our laboratory has previously reported on the basic design concepts of an updated FireWire based data acquisition system for depth-of-interaction detector systems designed at the University of Washington. The new version of our data acquisition system leverages the capabilities of modern field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and puts almost all functions into the FPGA, including the FireWire elements, the embedded processor, and pulse timing and integration. The design is centered around an acquisition node board (ANB) that includes 64 serial ADC channels, one high speed parallel ADC, FireWire 1394b support, the FPGA, a serial command bus and signal lines to support a rough coincidence window implementation to reject singles events from being sent on the FireWire bus. Adapter boards convert detector signals into differential paired signals to connect to the ANB. In this paper we discuss many of the design details, including steps taken to minimize the number of layers in the printed circuit board and to avoid skewing of parallel signals and unwanted bandwidth limitations.

Resolution properties of a prototype continuous miniature crystal element (cMiCE) scanner

“…To address both of these issues we are currently designing a high-throughput data acquisition electronics board [30]. We have implemented both 2D and 3D SBP algorithms in our FPGA [31,32].…”

A Building Block for Nuclear Medicine Imaging Systems Data Acquisition

“…Due to the requirements for the statistical estimator for the cMiCE detector [6], the board also includes 380 Mbytes of static random access memory. As described in [3,8] the cards can be setup to serve several functions in a scanner system including serving as a master coincidence controller, an acquisition node taking data directly from detectors, or as a acquisition node that is taking data from other Phase II cards that are in turn connected to detectors (a modified star topology). This connectivity flexibility allows supporting different acquisition topologies.…”

“…JTAG connectors are provided for programming and testing. More details are included in [3,8]. Figure 4 depicts the top side and an "X-ray" view of the traces of the Phase II board.…”

“…As we developed our dMiCE and cMiCE detector concepts [1,2], we found that our existing electronics was inadequate to the task and launched a design effort we have termed our Phase II electronics [3]. Here we report on the implementation and evolution of the Phase II system as a basic building block for a wide variety of data acquisition tasks.…”