A Study of Test Methods for the Performance of a High-Speed Synchronous Data-Acquisition System

Astronomical radio signals are usually weak enough that they merely appear as slight enhancements over noise, and need to be integrated for rather long periods to be distinguished from noise. This imposes high standards on the performances of data-acquisition systems in radio astronomy. By analyzing data characteristics of radio astronomy we propose performance indices of a data-acquisition system. These indices are for three aspects, i.e. noise characteristics, power-spectrum characteristics, and synchronization characteristics. We further study methods of measuring these indices and establish a test platform based on the methods. We use the platform to test a practical data-acquisition system. Our test results show the effectiveness of the proposed indices and their measurement methods.