A FAST MULTI-TIME-INTERVAL ANALYZER WITH REAL-TIME PROCESSING CAPABILITY

We report on the prototype of a new digital multi-time-interval analyz er (MTIA-1) based on a counter/memory architecture. The occurrence of multiple events with respect to a common start can be determined with a timing resolution of 4 ns. Incoming standard TTL or ECL pulses are p rocessed and stored immediately after their detection in a 4096 X 16 B it RAM. By virtue of this real-time histogramming concept, data acquis ition does not have to be interrupted during signal processing. The ma ximum repetition rate of events to be processed in real time can be in excess of 20 MHz. The MTIA-1 is designed for repetitive timing applic ations where multiple time intervals have to be processed with very hi gh speed. The analyzer accepts standard TTL or ECL pulses and has a ma ximum measurement range of 4096 channels. After the end of an individu al multi time interval measurement no additional time consuming postpr ocessing is needed for data transfer or data analysis. The article giv es an overview of the structure of the analyzer and its principle of o peration. We further present an example for an application where the M TIA-1 is used in fiberoptic distributed temperature sensing.