A Two-Stage Distributed Architecture for DAQ in Thousand-channel Physics Experiments

This manuscript presents a two-stage distributed architecture for DAQ (data acquisition) of thousand-channel large-area wire sensor networks for use in physics experiments. This architecture can be divided into two units, one for data concentration and recording, system control, and monitoring, and another for data sampling and transmission. The most prominent characteristics of this architecture include real-time capability, high-precision synchronous data sampling, and scalability. A prototype of this two-stage distributed architecture has been built. It can support up to 16 data sampling cables containing 1920 channels each. Sampling synchronization, data transmission, and storage were assessed via a customized simulator. Test results show that the sampling synchronization error between two channels 100 m apart was in the range of 1 ns. The maximum data rate reached up to 92.16 Mbps per cable, so the total data rate was about 1474 Mbps for 16 cables (30, 720 channels).