Fast signal sources are preferably connected by shielded coaxial cables and connectors with matching impedance to digitizers to obtain best signal quality. Only with this type of connection one can avoid crosstalk and signal reflections with signals that have frequencies in the upper several hundred MHz area. When using PC based digitizers with their limited free space on the front plate and when also taking the standard demand for additional digital signals like clock, trigger or digital inputs into account, there are only a few connector solutions on the market that are suitable.
SMB and MMCX connections are an easy to use and space-saving solution, used by many manufacturers including Spectrum GmbH. All M3i series cards of Spectrum are equipped with these connectors offering one or two analog channels and sampling rates between 1 GS/s at 8 bit resolution up 400 MS/s at 14 bit resolution. In addition to this there are five connectors for supporting digital signals. Spectrum now offers a new option for the complete M3i range of PCI/PCI-X and PCI Express cards with professional screwed SMA connections.
This option is primary intended for OEM and industrial users but can be helpful also in the area of research and development. This international standard connection with a stable screw type coupling and a very good shielding allows a reliable connection of high frequency signals even in rough industry environment or vibrating installations. Customers who order the SMA option decide with their order which of the digital connections have to be soldered to the two available SMA connectors.
The standard signals clock in, clock out, trigger in, trigger out and multi purpose I/O are available for these connections. This choice can be made to match the requested application setup exactly. The fast digitizers are available in different versions with one or two channels, sampling rates from 100 MS/s up to 1 GS/s and resolutions between 8 bit and 14 bit. The standard version is already equipped with 256 MByte of on-board memory which can be extended up to 4 GByte.
Each installed analog channel has its own pre-amplifier offering a wide variety of input ranges between +/-50 mV (+/-200 mV) and +/-10 V and several software switchable settings like 50 ohm/1 MOhm or AC/DC coupling. The cards are delivered with drivers for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 as well as several Linux installations like OpenSuse, Fedora or Debian. 32 bit and 64 bit versions of all operating systems are natively supported by the Spectrum drivers.
