PDA500-4X Virtek 500 MHz Waveform Digitizer

The DynamicSignals / Signatec PDA500 Series 500 MHz Waveform Digitizers is a high speed waveform capturing system. With an analog bandwidth of DC to 500 MHz and a 500 MHz digitizer with 8-bit resolution, waveform frequencies up to 500 MHz can be captured. The PDA500 is manufacturered with 1 or 4 megabytes of on-board memory.

The PDA500 has two input channels and a multiplexer to select one of the two channels as the digitization source. A digitally controlled attenuator allows the input voltage range to be adjusted in 2 dB steps from 200mV p-p to 3.0V p-p. This gives the PDA500 fourteen input voltage settings.

Provisions are included to connect up to four PDA500 boards in a Master/Slave configuration. This allows the clock and trigger signals from the Master to drive the Slave, allowing synchronized data samples on multiple boards. Master/Slave connections are via a 26-conductor ribbon cable at the top of the board.

The PDA500 incorporates version 3 of the Signatec Auxiliary Bus (SAB). This bus provides a high speed connection to other high speed products such as signal processors or data storage devices. Both block transfers and packetized data transfers are supported. Packetized data transfers can be very effective in maximizing the utilization of bus bandwidth in systems incorporating 3 or more devices on the bus. Sustained transfers of 500 MB/s are possible.

External clock and trigger connections are provided via SMA connectors on the back bracket. Either may be set by the user to function as an input or as an output. It is also possible to mechanize the two connections as a trigger in / trigger out combination. The output trigger is precisely synchronized to the start of data acquisition so that if used as a trigger to a pulsed system, such as for ultrasound, any trigger-to-clock jitter is completely eliminated from the data record.

The PDA500 is equipped with multiple acquisition and trigger modes. For single event acquisitions, the PDA500 is equipped with a single shot mode allowing pre-trigger, normal, or delayed trigger storage. For multi-trigger acquisitions, segmented triggering is possible. Delayed and pre-trigger features may also be used when acquiring segmented data.