PA72 Series - PA72 Series - PXI & PXIe  Generator & Digitizer platform.

The PA72 platform is a platform of flexibility. It consists of a base board and one or two daughter boards. In daughter boards there is choice from several different generators, digitizers, filters, and Flexible Digital I/O modules. Also custom daughter boards can easily be created. This allows you to configure a data acquisition card exactly tailored to your needs. The PA72 concept provides a flexible and cost effective solution for medium and high end analog functions.

Each daughter board is optimized for best signal performance. A PA72 daughter board typically has Differential In-/Outputs, Low THD, Low Noise and High Accuracy.

The base board contains a 2-channel high-stability and low-jitter PLL clock generator, trigger circuitry, and of course the PXI-bus interface. A digital voltmeter is available for self-calibration purposes (supported by the driver), and can also be used for custom development boards.

The base board is available with PXI bus interface (PA72) and PXI-Express bus interface (PA72e). Both baseboards accept the same daughter boards. The J2 connector is a small version (XJ4) to ensure both versions are hybrid-slot compatible.

PA72 Base board

The PA72 base board contains a clock generator, trigger circuitry, a digital voltmeter and the PXI bus interface. In the block diagram below, the base board functions are yellow and the daughter board functions are green.

The clock generator is a low jitter PLL clock that has less than 0.5ps jitter for low loop filter bandwidths. With higher loop filter bandwidths, frequency settling time can be less than 250ms.The main clock frequency ranges from 2kHz up to 945MHz with a resolution of less than 1 kHz. Each daughter board slot has its own clock divider.

Therefore the clock for each daughter board can be different while maintaining proper synchronization. The PLL clock generator features a high stability, low noise and low jitter 10MHz on-board reference clock with 1ppm frequency stability. In addition the PLL can be locked to the PXI backplane clock or to an external reference clock. The on-board clock source can also be bypassed by an external direct clock.

The trigger input supports edge and level triggering and positive and negative going trigger signals. The trigger source can be software, PXI Star trigger, PXI Trigger 0-6 (3-6 inverted), or external (front). Additionally, digitizer boards can be set to edge-trigger on the analog input signal.

PA72G16400 daughter board – 16-bit / 400Msps Arbitrary Waveform Generator

The PA72G16400 is a 16-bit arbitrary waveform generator, capable of generating waveforms at speeds up to 400Msps. The high resolution and the high sample rate allows generating signals with very low quantization noise levels. An onboard offset voltage source allows generating offset signals while maintaining optimal utilization of the DAC’s digital range. With the 8MWord of memory, there is lots of room for uploading several different patterns, allowing switching patterns with minimal bus communication.

PA72G14180 daughter board – 14-bit / 180Msps Arbitrary Waveform Generator

The PA72G14180 is a 14-bit arbitrary waveform generator, capable of generating waveforms at speeds up to 180Msps. An onboard offset voltage source allows generating offset signals while maintaining optimal utilization of the DAC’s digital range. With the 64MWord of memory, there is lots of room for uploading long complex waveforms. Also uploading of many different patterns is possible, allowing switching patterns with minimal bus communication.

PA72D16180A daughter board – 16-bit / 180Msps Digitizer

The PA72D16180A is a 16-bit digitizer, capable of capturing waveforms at speeds up to 180Msps. An onboard offset voltage source allows capturing offset signals while still using the optimal range for maximum ADC utilization. Two onboard filters allow suppression of out-of-band noise. The 64MWord onboard memory enables capturing very long waveforms, or sequentially capturing multiple signals with minimal intermediate bus communication.

PA72D14130 daughter board – 14-bit / 130Msps Digitizer

The PA72D14130 is a 14-bit digitizer, capable of capturing waveforms at speeds up to 130Msps. An onboard offset voltage source allows capturing offset signals while still using the optimal range for maximum ADC utilization. Two onboard filters allow suppression of out-of-band noise. The 64MWord onboard memory enables capturing very long waveforms, or sequentially capturing multiple signals with minimal intermediate bus communication.

PA72DIOS6016 daughter board – Multifunctional programmable Digital I/O

The PA72DIOS6016 is a multifunctional digital design core. The FPGA allows for implementing many different custom applications. The connector has 64 Input/Output pins which can be assigned as TTL I/O or as differential inputs. 128 MByte of DDR2 memory is available to the FPGA, and an onboard EEPROM allows for storing values in non-volatile memory. The I/O bank voltage can be FPGA-selected between 2.5 and 3.3 Volt.

PA72DIOS6100 daughter board – Multifunctional programmable Digital I/O

The PA72DIOS6100 is the larger equivalent of the PA72DIOS6016. It features a larger FPGA, and also allows differential output signals. The FPGA allows for implementing many different custom applications. The connector has 64 Input/Output pins which can be assigned as TTL or as differential pairs. 128 MByte of DDR2 memory is available to the FPGA, and an onboard EEPROM allows for storing values in non-volatile memory. The I/O bank voltage can be FPGA-selected between 1.2, 1.8, 2.5 and 3.3 Volt, allowing a wide range of electrical standards.

PA72BPF daughter board – Dual differential band pass filter

The PA72BPF daughter board is an additional filter board. It typically contains two selectable differential 3rd order elliptic band pass filters. These filter modules are tailored by Applicos to the customers’ requirements. The filters can be used to filter the output signal of the generator daughter boards to achieve an even better distortion and noise suppression.