Design of data acquisition system for artillery unit

Abstract

Data acquisition involves gathering signals that measure real world physical conditions from measurement sources and then modify it into different format for storage purpose. Typically a Data acquisition system converts physical signals which are analog in nature into digital form which is to be manipulated by a computer. In this work a multi channel data acquisition system is developed to acquire the data from Artillery unit in real time environment. More importance is given on the accuracy of the data captured and speed of operation of the developed data acquisition system. Micro controller based hardware system is developed to generate prototype signals similar to the signal generated by the artillery unit. This is required to simulate firing pulses of the artillery unit in the laboratory to test the data acquisition system off line before implementing it in the real time environment. The driver software is programmed to implement sixteen channel data acquisition system. The front end is designed in a simplified manner from the user point of view where several buttons with different nomenclature are placed for the corresponding operation of data. The capability of storage of data, retrieving the stored data in a graphical format for back analysis and instant calculation of different timing parameters during the data acquisition process made the overall system into a powerful and efficient tool. In addition to that another feature is implemented in this system where, the quest for a particular segment of stored data can be done instantly without putting any effort and necessary information can be obtained from that segment. Further analysis of stored data is done where presence of error in the signal is detected. The data gets corrupted by noise during the process of firing which makes it difficult to detect the presence of error in the signal. Hence at the outset, the signal enhancement method is implemented to the data followed by which, the error detection method is applied to find out the presence of error.