Improvements in the treatment of signals used for plasma diagnostics

Experimental fusion machines, such as the TJ-II as described here, are devices which require many sensors to study plasma formation and evolution, information that basically relies on the time behavior of the signals produced by those probes. The complexity inherent in this kind of experiments requires a powerful treatment for a great variety of electric inputs, both at analog and digital stages. Here, a VXI module that incorporates a digital filter to analyze signals whose spectral contributions are limited to 500 KHz, is presented. Its main features are commented, showing and discussing the substantial improvements in the enhancement of noise rejection and digitation resolution. The filter characteristics only can be modified by fetching new coefficients through software, thus making this approach particularly attractive for experimental data analysis.