The Control Logic And Software Design In Data Acquisition System For A Novel Patch-Clamp

The data acquisition and control interface, by connecting the patch-clamp system, perfusion system, or the [Ca2+] detecting system with the computer system, realizes the communication of the data and the control commands. It's an important part of the patch-clamp system.To fulfill the requirement of the cell electrophysiology research and to make the patch-clamp system easily to use, a multi-channel data acquisition and control interface based on the USB2.0 (Universal Serial Bus 2.0) and FPGA technology are discussed in this thesis. It can substitute the traditional ISA card and PCI card with a lot of advantages, such as fixing easily and has a strong anti-jamming ability. The transmission speed of this data acquisition and control interface can achieve 17.8MByte/s. Furthermore, by using the FPGA technology, this data acquisition system has accomplished the synchronization of data acquisition and signal output, and it comprises 8 analog input channels and 4 analog output channels, which can run simultaneously and independently. The sampling frequency is changeable in the range of 1kHz to 350kHz. In addition, two FIFO memory witch has double clock domains are integrated by using the block RAM resource of the FPGA, improving the stability and integration of this system. It is an advanced data acquisition and control interface for the new generation automatic patch clamp system.Here the architecture and the key technology of this data acquisition and control interface are presented, with the focus on the design of logic, firmware, testing application and the operation class in the succeeding chapter.