National Instruments PCI-1200 用户手册

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页码 100
Chapter 4
Theory of Operation
4-6
© National Instruments Corporation
Analog Input Circuitry
The analog input circuitry consists of two analog input multiplexers, 
multiplexer (mux) counter/gain select circuitry, a software-programmable 
gain amplifier, a 12-bit ADC, and a 16-bit sign-extended FIFO memory.
One of the input multiplexers has eight analog input channels (channels 0 
through 7). The other multiplexer is connected to channels 1, 3, 5, and 7 for 
differential mode. The input multiplexers provide input overvoltage 
protection of ±35 V powered on and ±25 V powered off.
The mux counters control the input multiplexers. The PCI-1200 can 
perform either single-channel data acquisition or multichannel scanned 
data acquisition. These two modes are software selectable. For 
single-channel data acquisition, you select the channel and gain before 
initiating data acquisition. These gain and multiplexer settings remain 
constant during the entire DAQ process. For multichannel scanned data 
acquisition, you select the highest numbered channel and gain before 
initiating data acquisition. Then the mux counter decrements from the 
highest numbered channel to channel 0 and repeats the process. Thus, you 
can scan any number of channels from two to eight. Notice that you use the 
same gain setting for all channels in the scan sequence.
The programmable-gain amplifier applies gain to the input signal, allowing 
an input analog signal to be amplified before being sampled and converted, 
thus increasing measurement resolution and accuracy. The instrumentation 
amplifier gain is software selectable. The PCI-1200 board provides gains of 
1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100.
The dither circuitry, when enabled, adds approximately 0.5 LSBrms of 
white Gaussian noise to the signal to be converted to the ADC. This 
addition is useful for applications involving averaging to increase the 
resolution of the PCI-1200 to more than 12 bits, as in calibration. In such 
applications, which are often lower frequency in nature, noise modulation 
is decreased and differential linearity is improved by the addition of the 
dither. For high-speed 12-bit applications not involving averaging, you 
should disable dither because it only adds noise. 
When taking DC measurements, such as when calibrating the board, enable 
dither and average about 1,000 points to take a single reading. This process 
removes the effects of 12-bit quantization and reduces measurement noise, 
resulting in improved resolution. Dither, or additive white noise, has the 
effect of forcing quantization noise to become a zero-mean random variable 
rather than a deterministic function of input. For more information on the 
effects of dither, see “Dither in Digital Audio” by John Vanderkooy and