Time response and bandwidth in laboratory automation

In laboratory automation, the computer is used for a variety of tasks including data acquisition, data analysis, control, and report and graph generation. For automation to be successful, it is necessary to carefully generate system specifications and to proceed to an implementation design before becoming concerned about the actual computer. This forces the design team to consider the requirements to handle and process data without the constraints of a specific computer. For real-time applications, two key specifications are time response and bandwidth. In this paper, these quantities are defined, and their effect on the operation of a computer system is discussed. A detailed example of an actual system is then presented to illustrate how time response and bandwidth are handled.