An embedded control and acquisition system for multichannel detectors

We present a pulse counting multichannel data acquisition system, character ized by the high number of high speed acquisition channels, and by the modu lar, embedded system architecture. The former leads to very fast acquisitio ns and allows to obtain sequences of snapshots, for the study of time depen dent phenomena. The latter, thanks to the integration of a CPU into the sys tem, provides high computational capabilities, so that the interfacing with the user computer is very simple and user friendly. Moreover, the user com puter is free from control and acquisition tasks: The system has been developed for one of the beamlines of the third generat ion synchrotron radiation sources ELETTRA, and because of the modular archi tecture can be useful in various other kinds of experiments where parallel acquisition, high data rates, and user friendliness are required. First exp erimental results on a double pass hemispherical electron analyser provided with a 96 channel detector confirm the validity of the approach. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.