Estimating acquisition loop time for time-critical real-time data acquisition applications for the purpose of selecting appropriate hardware and software

Abstract

Personal computers are being utilized more and more often for data acquisition and process control applications in industry. Currently, there are numerous software packages and off-the-shelf hardware available for setting up PC data acquisition systems. For the unconventional applications and in-house developed hardware which are not satisfied with available data acquisition software packages, there are many languages available for the developer. Because most data acquisition applications are inherently real-time applications and some even time-critical, it is necessary to know whether the program or the software package is faithful in performing the required operations in time. This article shows a method for evaluating the acquisition loop time for a given hardware and software package used and suggests methods for selecting an appropriate language and improving acquisition loop time.