A flash ADC system with fast data compression for a balloon-borne experiment

A multichannel flash analog-to-digital converter system was developed for a balloon-borne experiment where flash analog-to-digital converters, installed in individual channels sampled signals at the rate of 30 MHz. The system incorporated zero suppression and data compression. The samples from the converter were processed in the zero suppression circuit on a real-time basis and then submitted to data compression. The data compression reduced the event data size further, so that the data of as many events as possible could be recorded onto a storage device installed on the apparatus. A zero suppression circuit was implemented in each channel. A data compression module in the system begins to scan all the channels, performing compression, after the converter completes sampling. The system was powered by batteries and special attention was devoted to reduce power consumption of the system