Applications Information
App Notes
Technical Briefs
LabView
Programming Manuals
Recommended Reading
Troubleshooting/Repairs
Other
Avtech Application Notes
AN-1A ~ AV-1010, AV-1011 and AV-1015 Pulse Generator Applications
AN-3A ~ Choosing & Using Pulsed Constant-Current Sources, and Blue Diode Considerations
TB1 ~ How to Connect Loads to your Pulsed Constant Current Generator for Optimum Performance
TB2 ~ How to Deliver a Fast 2 Amp Pulse to a Diode in a Probing Station
TB4 ~ How Can I Calibrate the Timebase of my Avtech Pulse Generator?
TB5 ~ How Can I Calibrate the Amplitude and Offset of my Pulse Generator?
TB7 - Typical Waveforms for the AV-1011-B with a Current-Boosting Transformer
TB9 - How Can I Measure the Reverse Recovery Time of Power Rectifiers?
TB10 - Connecting a Load to an AV-LZ Low-Impedance Transmission Line
TB12 ~ What Effect Does Impedance Mismatching Have on High-Speed Pulse Generators?
TB13 ~ How Is the Center Frequency of a Monocycle Waveform Measured?
TB14 ~ Using the AVO-5-C-P or AVO-5-B-P with a Mismatched Load
TB16 ~ The Importance of Minimizing Parasitic Inductance in Forward Recovery Measurement Systems
The most recent Programming Manual for "-B" instruments is available online. Models with the "-B" suffix are programmable via the IEEE-488.2 GPIB and RS-232 interfaces. The manual is in Adobe PDF format.
Avtech Application Notes and Technical Briefs. Please read these first!
"High-Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic" . This book offers some excellent advice on general lab techniques, and on high-speed measurement techniques appropriate for use with many Avtech pulsers. Chapter 1, "Fundamentals", chapter 3, "Measurement Techniques", and chapter 4, "Transmission Lines", are the most useful for the pulse generator users. Despite the name of the book, it is very useful to analog engineers.
"High Frequency Measurements and Noise in Electronic Circuits". This book offers an excellent discussion of measurement techiques, particularly oscilloscope probing and current probes.
For those learning LabView, we suggest:
Journal Papers that Describe the Use of Avtech Equipment
A 2 MeV, 100 mA electron accelerator for a small laboratory enviroment
C. E. Clayton and K. A. Marsh, Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 64, no. 3, p.728, March 1993.A small, high performance electron linear accelerator is described. It is a modified version of a commercially available portable x-ray source. The 9.3 GHz rf linac and beamline deliver a 3 ns train of approximately 15 ps pulses with a peak current, limited by beam loading of the rf structure, of more than 100 mA and a beam energy of around 2 MeV with a 5% full width at half maximum energy spread. The beam emittance is 6pi mm mrad and the final spot size is 250 um diam for f/10 focusing.
A Distributed Force-Sensing Optical Fiber Using Forward Time Division Multiplexing
Marcos Kleinerman and Peter W. Kelleher, SPIE vol. 1586 Distributed and Multiplexed Fiber Optic Sensors (1991), p. 67.A new optical fiber capable of sensing distributed forces along its continuous length comprises a small central core and a non-contiguous second ligt-guiding region of longer optical path length. When interrogated with sufficiently short light pulses launched into the central core at the fiber launch end, mechanical forces acting at different points along the fiber cause the deflection of a fraction of the intensity of the interrogating light pulses propogating alog the fiber at each point from the central core to the second light-guiding region, where they generate positive pulsed light signals reaching the fiber distal end separated in the tie domain from the interrogating light pulses and from the signals generated at other sensing points along the fiber, and with an intensity several orders of magnitude stronger than that of Rayleigh-backcatter signals. In addition to its potential use as a distributed force sensor, the fiber could serve as a telecommunications line allowing the non-invasive coupling of information at many points, simultaneously or in arbitrary sequences, without the need for time-sharing protocols.
A pulsed alkali-ion gun for time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry
Steven M. Hues, Richard J. Colton, Jeffrey R. Wyatt, and J. Albert Schultz, Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 60, no. 7, p.1239, July 1989.A pulsed alkali-ion gun for use in time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) has been constructed and tested. The ion pulses are formed by rastering a continuos ion beam from a thermionic emitter source across a 0.13-mm slit. The pulses consist of 100-1000 alkali ions having a full-width-at-half-maximum temporal distribution of less than 2.4ns and a spot size of approximately 1x2 mm. In addition, the angular beam divergence of this ion gun is less than 0.5 degrees, making it also suitable for TOF ion scattering and direct-recoil spectroscopy. The ion gun has been used to obtain a series of cluster ion spectra which show a mass resolution of about 2000 and a mass range of nearly 9000 amu.
Pulsed 500-MHz arbitrary waveform generator
R. J. Adler and K. O. Busby, Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 59, no. 4, p.646, April 1988.Unipolar and bipolar arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) are described. Starting from a single 2-ns-wide pulse, a train of 2-ns-wide, variable amplitude pulses are formed by splitting the initial pulse into multiple, equal amplitude pulses and then delaying and attenuating each of these pulses separately. By choosing the proper attenuation (pulse amplitudes) and adding the train of pulses together, an arbitrary unipolar waveform can be constructed. With the addition of a second pulse generator of opposite polarity, an arbitrary bipolar waveform can be generated.
