SENSOR ACQUISITION & RECORDING

Adaptive Methods’ Sensor Integration Group develops front-end interfaces to collect and format data from physical sensors and legacy data busses for the U.S. Navy. Both custom and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware are used to tap the data sources and bring the raw information into symmetric multi-processor (SMP) servers for formatting.

The Sensor Integration Group designs and builds interfaces to a variety of sources in including analog sensors, parallel and serial digital data busses, legacy NTDS systems, ATM, FDDI, and Ethernet networks. For many applications, Adaptive Methods designs custom hardware and integrates it with available COTS hardware. In some cases, Adaptive Methods consults with manufacturers on design of new COTS hardware to meet specific requirements.

The Sensor Integration Group draws on many disciplines including digital and analog hardware design, software engineering, signal processing and analysis, operating systems, networking, and communications theory.

SOFTWARE

A core strength of the Sensor Integration Group is a common software product, the Multi-Input Data Acquisition System (MIDAS) which can simultaneously communicate with each interface. The software leverages the symmetric multi-processor capabilities and is highly multithreaded -- thus capable of handling several I/O and processing tasks simultaneously. Multiple tasks can run independent of one another or coordinate for increased acquisition capacity or parallel processing. The software can be synchronized across multiple servers for additional capacity or remote acquisition capabilities. MIDAS is supported under both the Windows and Linux platforms.

The PC Test Set 2000 is an engineering software tool for the Windows platform designed to acquire and process multi-channel data and provide display and analysis tools. Designed for use in conjunction with acoustic sonar systems, the PC Test Set acquires raw data from a telemetry source and transforms it into the time, spectral, or spatial domains. The data is calibrated and displayed for the user who can use the built-in tools to analyze the data. In addition the Test Set has automated tools to inform technicians of the health of the sonar system.

HARDWARE

Distributed, multi-channel synchronized Analog-to-Digital converter system.

This flexible system can theoretically sample analog data simultaneously from an unlimited number of channels. Multiple PCI-based ADC cards are spread across multiple servers. Adaptive Methods consulted with a COTS PCI manufacturer, General Standards, to develop one of the leading PCI-based 24-bit acquisition boards on the market. The system has been implemented to acquire 576 channels of data from a SQS-53C hull mounted sonar array for the U.S. Navy, as well as other smaller applications.

Distributed, multiple bus digital receiver

Adaptive Methods developed the capability to receive data from an arbitrarily large digital data bus and applied it to tap four 20-bit busses from a legacy Navy ASW sonar processor.

We designed and built a custom interface to synchronize 4 PCI-based digital acquisition cards to a common clock and frame format. Due to the distributed, multi-tasking design, the system is able to receive and process data at up to 96MB/sec.

Serial acquisition with arbitrary frame format

Adaptive Methods developed an interface to a PCI-based serial capture card to acquire data from a serial data stream. Frame synchronization is handled entirely in software eliminating the need for any custom hardware for specific applications. The system was deployed to receive towed-sonar array telemetry for the U.S. Navy.