Design and implementation of high speed data acquisition card based on FPGA for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer

This paper develops a high speed data acquisition card (DAQ) based on FPGA for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MALDI TOF-MS). Time interleaved analog-to-digital conversion based on parallelism is an effective way to meet the requirement of the ultra-fast sampling rate up to 3 Gsps. Multi-waveform accumulation algorithm is used to obtain mass spectrum with a large peak value. In order to ensure the multi-waveform have the same start point, an algorithm which can make a trigger signal delayed precisely is developed. The solution of hardware realization has been put forward while some main modules have been expounded in detail. At last, the testing of the DAQ card is presented, and the testing result shows that, the acquisition card has high dynamic performance, and the time-jitter of waveforms is within 1 ns.