One Gigasample per Second Transient Recorder: A Performance Demonstration

The performance demonstrated by a one gigasample per second (1Gs/s) transient recorder currently in advanced development portends an important new instrument for recording single transient data. A Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) is used to sample a continuous analog signal. Samples acquired at the full sampling rate (1Gs/s) are temporarily stored in the CCD, then read out at a slow rate (e.g., 250Ks/s) into a conventional analog-to-digital converter prior to storage in nonvolatile, digital memory. Enhanced circuitry and techniques developed over the past three years have yielded higher performance than originally anticipated. Accordingly, the target specification shown in Table 1 has been revised to reflect higher expectations.