Architectural considerations for a generic multi-port digital interface

The goal of the project reported here was to develop a digital instrumentation interface that was sufficiently generic to facilitate use on various projects without a major redesign or hardware modification and that could support both synchronous and asynchronous operation. The subject system comprised two asynchronous digital sources and a block of analog parameters. The resulting telemetry system uses attributes of both synchronous and asynchronous techniques to assure reliable data collection and transmission. The overall design is completely modular, which is essential when providing completely decoupled data ports to mutually asynchronous systems. The modular design permits stand-alone operation with only part of all the ports operational.