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What to consider when selecting a digitizer for Thomson Scattering

  • ​​Thomson scattering systems often consist of several hundred channels commissioned over several stages. It is therefore beneficial to use modular instruments to create a compact yet scalable solution that easily can be expanded over time to host more measurement channels. 
  • High dynamic range is required to accurately measure pulse characteristics and determine plasma density
  • High analog bandwidth and sampling rate is required to match the performance of the detectors and to provide high spatial resolution
  • High board-level channel density helps keep the overall size down and total number of required boards reasonable
  • A flexible and accurate trigger input is crucial to ensure that it shares a common time reference with the laser
  • S​ynchronization capabilities is required for accurate multi-channel data capture and form factors such as MTCA and PXIe helps keep external cabling reasonable since triggers and clocks are distributed in the backplane
  • The on-board memory need to be sufficient to store the entire scattered waveform
  • Data throughput needs to be high enough so that waveforms from all channels can be transferred to a central processing unit in the time slot between consecutive triggers
  • An open on-board FPGA offers a future-proof solution where calculations can be performed in real-time to achieve data reduction and therefore lower the data throughput requirements​

Commonly used products and features

Our Thomson scattering customers typically use ADQ14DC-4C in MTCA or PXIe form factor. It is a quad-channel, 14-bit, 1 GS/s digitizer with 700 MHz analog input bandwidth that provide an excellent match with commonly used detectors. It offers highly accurate backplane trigger and synchronization capabilities in order to support massive multi-channel data capture while keeping external cabling to a minimum.

Furthermore, it hosts 2 Gbyte on-board data memory capable of storing very long pulses and supports a native data transfer rate of 3.2 Gbyte/s which can be extended even more through optional firmware upgrades. The customer can also gain access to the on-board Xilinx Kintex 7 K325T FPGA if custom real-time processing is required. The optional firmware and development kits can be purchased separately at any time and upgrades can be done in place without any need for system disassembly or significant downtime.​

Further R​ead/ Next Step

​Da​isy Chain Trigger Mechanism
​

In high-speed, multi-digitizer systems, distributing trigger signals with precision is critical to maintaining synchronization and data integrity. Traditional methods of splitting trigger signals often introduce timing mismatches and jitter, especially at gigahertz sampling rates.

To overcome these limitations, our systems implement a Daisy Chain Trigger Mechanism. In this configuration, a single primary digitizer receives the external trigger and then propagates it digitally to subsequent digitizers in a chain. This approach eliminates the fan-out problem and ensures consistent timing across all devices, achieving trigger timing precision better than 50 picoseconds even in large-scale systems.

By combining this mechanism with a shared 10 MHz reference clock distributed to all boards, we maintain a unified time base and enable synchronized data acquisition across hundreds of channels. This is essential for applications requiring ultra-precise timing, such as radar, fusion diagnostics, and high-energy physics experiments.

For a deeper dive into our synchronization and triggering technologies, visit our Multi-Channel Data Acquisition page.​​

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"The combination of 14 bits dynamic range and 1 GS/s sampling rate is taking the performance of digitizers for TS system to an unprecedented performance level compared to the normally used 10 or 12 bit ADC."

READ MORE ABOUT ADQ14 IN "THE THOMSON SCATTERING SYSTEM AT WENDELSTEIN 7-X", PAGE 4, "DATA ACQUISITION". ​


Resolution [b​its] Cha​nnel Count​​​​ Sampling rate [GSPS] FPGA​ ​Interf​ace
Hardware options​​​​
ADQ14DC​ 14
 ​4
 2
 Xilinx K325T
 PCIe​​​ ​​, PXIe, USB3.0, MTCA.4, 10 GbE​
ADQ8-8C​ 10
 ​8
 1
 Xilinx K325T
 PXIe, MTCA.4​
A​DQ8-4X 10
 ​4 or 2
 2 or 4
 Xilinx K325T
 PXIe, MTCA.4​​