Francesco Lamonaca, Domenico Luca Carnì, Domenico Grimaldi
New hardware interface to synchronize stand-alone measurement instruments

The Measurement Instruments (MIs) connected by Hardware Interface (HI) to the node of the Distributed Measurement System (DMS) can coordinate their operations by synchronized trigger signals sent from the HIs to MIs. In the research it is taken into consideration the case that the HIs cannot be connected to DMS and, then, the MIs are standalone. With this aim a new architecture of HI is proposed for the synchronous triggering of the MI. The proposed architecture avoids the random effects of concurrency of the software processes running on PC, and reduces the random causes of delay to detect the trigger condition. From the analysis of the HI the model of the synchronization time delay is pointed out, including the opening time of the hardware components. This model permits to evaluate the effects of each cause affecting the execution of the trigger command.

Domenico Capriglione, Luigi Ferrigno, Antonio Del Giudice, Giorgio Graditi, Vincenzo Paciello, Antonio Pietrosanto
Performance analysis of WM-Bus-based synchronization protocols in Sensor Networks

Smart metering wireless sensor networks need to refer to a common time scale for several reasons. As examples: (i) in power quality, some measures at different nodes of the network are senseless if not synchronized; (ii) in security, in case of lack of synch, a replay attack could result successful; (iii) in billing, different times of the day can be charged differently. Generally, the synchronization can be reached in many ways, in this paper the authors make a comparison between different synchronization techniques considering a communication protocol specifically designed for measures with wireless sensors: the Wireless Metering bus.

Anatoliy Platonov, Konrad Jędrzejewski
Performance and Information Characteristics of Optimized Flash and Adaptive Cyclic A/D Converters

The paper presents the results of studies on the performance of flash analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and adaptive cyclic ADC (AC ADC), their information characteristics and probability of saturation. Currently, these parameters are not used as the performance criteria in A/D conversion theory and applications, and their introduction would extend possibilities of designing both ADCs and utilizing them systems. There is also presented original approach to the improvement of ADCs performance under additional condition guaranteeing that probability of their saturation does not exceed a given confidence level.

Pasquale Arpaia, Carlo Baccigalupi, Miguel Cerqueira Bastos, Michele Martino
Design of an Ultra-Low Noise Analogue Front-End for Fast Voltage Pulses Measurement

A 15MS/s, 10 ppm repeatable acquisition system to characterize 3 μs rise-time trapezoidal voltage pulses is proposed. The system is based mainly on a low-noise, 5MHz bandwidth analog front-end. In this paper, the requirements, the concept and physical design are illustrated. Simulation results aimed at assessing the circuit performance are presented. An experimental case study on the characterization of a pulsed power supply for the klystrons modulators of the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) under study at CERN is reported. In particular, the experimental metrological characterization of the prototype in terms of bandwidth and noise is presented.

Tamás Virosztek, István Kollár
ADC Testing in Standardized and Non-standardized Ways, Using a Unified Framework

Several test methods are available to examine static and dynamic properties of analog-todigital converters (ADCs). The most robust and straightforward ones are codified in international standards released by the IEEE, or by the IEC. These methods have been improved based on ideas proposed in scientific papers published in the field of ADC testing. However, there are algorithms and test techniques that are not yet standardized, but could be very useful to achieve more information concerning the device under test. These are predominantly amendments of the standard methods, elaborated to increase the accuracy, robustness, computation demand, etc. Nevertheless, it is important to be able to test ADCs strictly according to the standards, and it can also be important to use methods that go beyond the standardized ones in some aspects. This paper presents an idea to harmonize standard and nonstandard ADC test methods in a single software tool on widely used platforms.