Agilent puts fast digitiser in AXIe format

EDN Europe, 05 Dec 2011

Agilent Technologies has introduced the high-speed M9703A digitiser, an eight-channel, 12-bit instrument that complies with the AXIe open standard, for applications such as measurements in large-scale applied physics applications. The M9703A digitiser is capable of use in large-scale system configurations that place 40 channels within a single 4U Agilent M9505A AXIe chassis ,or 80 channels into 8U of rack-mount space, giving it twice the channel density of comparable solutions. This makes the new digitiser suited for challenging experiments in particle physics, nuclear fusion, hydrodynamics and microwave radio astronomy. The M9703A is a single-slot AXIe module with four- or eight-channel acquisition capability running at 1 GSa/sec to 3.2 GSa/sec.
It can provide more than 1 GHz of instantaneous analogue bandwidth, and the instrument enables long acquisitions with on-board memory of up to 4 GB. To ensure high throughput, the digitiser module provides a four-lane (x4) PCI Express Gen 2 backplane, enabling sustained data transfer rates of up to 1 GByte/sec. Using four on-board Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs, the M9703A also optimises measurement throughput and supports future implementations of high-performance data processing.

The M9703A digitiser is compliant with the AXIe and AdvancedTCA standards; designed to benefit from fast data interfaces, the module can be plugged into AXIe or AdvancedTCA chassis slots. Agilent adds that it simplifies the creation of very dense data acquisition systems that include a large number of high-speed synchronous channels with wide dynamic range. The M9703A provides excellent measurement fidelity from DC to 1 GHz with up to 9.4 effective bits, 66 dBc spurious-free dynamic range and 59 dB signal-to-noise ratio.
The M9703A AXIe digitiser extends Agilent’s portfolio of AXIe based products, and high-speed digitisers modules, which also includes solutions in the CompactPCI format. To ease module integration into systems containing Agilent CompactPCI digitiser modules, the M9703A includes a comprehensive set of module drivers and a soft-front-panel graphical interface that also support other Agilent high-speed digitiser products.
AXIe is a standard based on AdvancedTCA with extensions for instrumentation and test. The mission of the AXIe Consortium is to provide an open standard that creates a robust ecosystem of components, products and systems for general-purpose instrumentation and semiconductor test. AXIe leverages existing standards from PXI, LXI and IVI. AXIe promises high scalability and performance that will address a range of platforms, including benchtop measurements, rack-and-stack modular, and ATE systems. Additional details are available at www.axiestandard.org.