Appendix A
Technical Aspects
43
Technical Description
The PowerLab provides control and low-voltage power to front-ends
through a special expansion connector called the I
2
C (eye-squared-
sea) bus. Front-ends are also connected to the analog inputs of the
recording unit via a BNC-to-BNC cable. The overall operation of the
Bridge Amps can be better understood by referring to Figure A–1.
The digital control interface used to control filter settings, gain,
coupling, and zeroing circuits uses an I
2
C interface system, which
provides a 4-wire serial communication bus to the recording unit and
other front-ends. All control of the Bridge Amp is through this bus.
Also present on the I
2
C connector is a set of power supply rails
derived from the recording unit. The Bridge Amp has its own
on-board regulators to ensure a stable power supply.
The input stage consists of a low-drift instrumentation amplifier with
programmable gain (fully software-controlled). The gain of this stage
is combined with the gain of the recording unit to give a total gain of
up to 50 000 (at this amplification, 200 μV is full scale). From the input
amplifier, the signal is passed to a fixed fifth-order, low-pass, filter.
The filter allows a range of cutoff frequencies to be selected under
software control.
The excitation voltage output circuit is a complementary output stage,
derived from a stable internal voltage reference, capable of giving up
to ±10 volts (20 volts DC) excitation. The excitation voltage for each
channel is completely independent from other channels. The
transducer excitation voltage can be adjusted by connecting a resistor
between two pins on the plug that plugs into the Bridge Amp’s input
socket. This resistor is usually placed inside the transducer’s DIN
plug so that the transducer will always get the correct excitation
voltage when it is connected.
To remove any offsets caused by an attached transducer or signal
baseline, a DC offset circuit with a 16-bit DAC (digital-to-analog
converter). This is internally connected to the input stage. Transducer
offsets are zeroed by applying a corrective DC voltage to the input
stage via the DAC, under software control.
The DAC is only capable of producing corrective voltages in discrete
steps.
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