PRIMES
BeamMonitor BM+ with LDS 2.98
77
Revision 01/2018 EN
22
Appendix
22.1
System control (option)
An optional connection to the system control is available. Please contact your PRIMES sales partner with
any questions.
22.2
Description of the MDF file format
The MDF file format is a simple ASCII-format which includes the main data of a beam measurement – the
spatial power density distribution. MDF stands for “Measurement Data Format”.
By means of this standardized format conversion problems between different evaluation programs are sup-
posed to be reduced and a safe data transmission, e.g. per e-mail, is supposed to be ensured.
An important factor contributing to the success of MDF is its ability to store measurement data very ef-
ficiently, i.e., memory space-saving and fast storage. Moreover, the read access to data in the file can also
be optimized. To do so, the file must, if necessary, be “sorted” once (for example, when opening it for the
first time). This enables indexed and thus faster access to the data.
MDF contains both the raw measurement data acquired during a measurement and metadata necessary
for interpreting the raw data. This includes, for example, information for converting the raw data into physical
values, or the ASAM-compliant signal name.
The files are arranged as follows:
Line
Contents
1
MDF100 (file identifier)
2
Number of image points: in x-direction in y-direction
3
Size of the measurement range: length in x (mm) length in y (mm)
4
Position along the beam axis: z-position (mm)
5
Transversal position of the center of the measurement range: x-pos y-pos (mm)
6
Amplification of the measuring signal: enhancement (dB)
7
Number of averages: number
8
Offset value displayed by the measuring device: offset-value
9
Wavelength-value
10
Power value
11
Focal length value
12
Date, time value
x
I
n the following lines the data can be found. There is a maximum of 80 characters per line.
x
x
Comments are inserted as additional lines, into the lines after the file identifier.
The comment lines each start with a semi-colon.
