Architecture of EVT4 data acquisition system for electrical capacitance tomography

An EVT4 system for electrical capacitance tomography, which enables fast data acquisition and a high frame rate for dynamic process imaging, is presented. A hardware architecture based on distributed control logic and multi-gigabit transmission is proposed. The multi-channel system consists of front-end measurement boards, data read-out boards and a main board. The front-end analogue board is equipped with 4 transmitter-receiver channels, each with an individual ADC. Data transmission between the read-out and the main board is performed using SATA standard allowing high speed data transfer and modules synchronization. The system can be equipped with up to 8 front-end boards (up to 32 channels). The embedded software installed in the programmable logic devices ensures the flexibility of the system and offers the opportunity to explore different methods of capacitance measurement using different front-end boards. The control logic distributed between the read-out boards and the main board is presented. The system data throughput is discussed. The preliminary results of measurements using 2D tomographic sensor and image reconstruction were presented.