VLSI Technology Insertion into a Data Acquisition System

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A previous NSF award (CES-8606118) examined the potential of recent advances in Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits (VLSI) to provide a low-cost high-technology device for measuring environmental loads and effects. Specifically, the objective was to (1) define the requirements for a data acquisition system to measure environmental loads and effects, and (2) to interact with researchers and producers of VLSI Circuits in order to design and construct a prototype VLSI Circuit to implement this data acquisition. This action is a specific outcome of that award, and it involves the GEOS (General Earthquake Observation System) technology developed by the U.S. Geological Survey to measure earthquake ground motions, including the strong ground motions of interest to earthquake engineers. The Research Triangle Institute (RTI) is working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) toward the development of a plan to introduce modern microelectronics technology in to the GEOS data acquisition system. The objectives are: 1) to study the hardware and software of the GEOS system, (2) identify the parts of the GEOS system that can be implemented with Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) using VLSI technology, (3) determine the impact of VLSI technology insertion on the system size, power requirements, reliability, and production costs, and (4) identify the performance enhancements that can be made using modern microelectronics technology and additional application areas that can be served by the enhanced system.