Radio LAN acquisition module (RLAM) : recent developments for high resolution data collection systems as implemented for the ONR sea ice mechanics experiment, spring 1994

Abstract

During a recent experiment (April 1994), for the ONR Sea Ice Mechanics Initiative (SIMI), a portable data acquisition system was assembled that included 2 new developments. The first consists of a board, designed for the ISA PC bus incorporating 8 - 24 bit sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ADC) channels with 20 bit rms dynamic range. Among the features are programmable bandwidth to 1500 Hz, low power dissipation, digital anti-alias filtering, and a "floating point" mode resulting in a 16 bit word. Secondly, since the telemetry of data at continuous rates in excess of 100K bytes/s was required, hardware & software were developed to use a wireless LAN to network 3 sites up to 5km distant from the data recording system. Details of the system along with test data are described.