Make Simultaneous Data Acquisition Beneficial and Cost-Effective
by Tim Ludy, Product Marketing Manager, Data Translation

You must tackle a variety of selection criteria when choosing a data acquisition module or board. Speed, resolution, accuracy, and the number of channels needed are obvious considerations. In addition, there are different architectures to consider.

In particular, the analog-input architecture that you choose will affect how often input-channels are sampled, and the accuracy of the results.

Two Common Architectures

The two most common architectures in analog-input design are multiplexed analog-inputs and simultaneous analog-inputs. Multiplexed converters use one ADC for many channels. Simultaneous converters use an individual ADC for each channel.

...download complete article here (351 KB PDF)