A Reference Architecture of Data Acquisition and Signal Processing of a Distributed Fiber-Optic Sensor System

Distributed fiber-optic sensors require fast data acquisition. Large amount of sensors on the network require enormous area and bandwidth of memory on the devices. Besides, the data transmission scheme of distributed fiber-optic sensors introduces more complexity in signal processing. The chapter contributes an embedded solution to the problems confronted by the digital system of distributed fiber-optic sensor systems. A reference architecture is introduced in this chapter, which provides a template to resolve the problems with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. A datapath with a finite-state machine is implemented to control the analog-to-digital (A/D) converter and achieve specified algorithms; a soft-core processor is implemented to achieve functions of computation and human–machine interface. This architecture shrinks the size of memory and circuit board. The chapter also provides a detailed design to demonstrate customized instantiation of the architecture.