Design and implementation of data acquisition system based on FPGA and USB interface in fourier-transform mass spectrometer

Mass spectrometer is an important tool to analyze biological macromolecules. With the development of technology, there are increasing demands for mass spectrometer. Fourier-transform Mass Spectrometer (FT-MS) has higher resolution and accuracy compared to other kinds of Mass spectrometer. High speed data acquisition system which is used to detect the output signal is one of the important components of FT-MS. Based on the high speed and high accuracy Analog-to-Digital Converter and FPGA, a design of a high speed and high accuracy acquisition system with USB interface is presented. The hardware and software design are introduced in detail. In this system, conversion rate can reach 12Msps and sampling accuracy is above 14 bits to meet the data acquisition needs of FT-MS. The result shows that a reliable high-speed data acquisition and transmission is achieved based on the system.