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Review of Scientific Instruments

Field-programmable gate array based arbitrary signal generator and oscilloscope for use in slow light and storage of light experiments

Stanko N. Nikolić, Viktor Batić, Bratimir M. Panic, Branislav M. Jelenkovic

Published Jun 1, 2013• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based device that simultaneously generates two arbitrary analog voltage signals with the maximum sample rate of 1.25 MHz and acquires two analog voltage signals with the maximum sample rate of 2.5 MHz. All signals are synchronized with internal FPGA clock. The personal computer application developed for controlling and communicating with FPGA chip provides the shaping of the output signals by mathematical expressions and real-time monitoring of the input signals. The main advantages of FPGA based digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital cards are high speed, rapid reconfigurability, friendly user interface, and low cost. We use this module in slow light and storage of light experiments performed in Rb buffer gas cell.

DOI
10.1063/1.4811147

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We present a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based device that simultaneously generates two arbitrary analog voltage signals with the maximum sample rate of 1.25 MHz and acquires two analog voltage signals with the maximum sample rate of 2.5 MHz. All signals are synchronized with internal FPGA clock. The personal computer application developed for controlling and communicating with FPGA chip provides the shaping of the output signals by mathematical expressions and real-time monitoring of the input signals. The main advantages of FPGA based digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital cards are high speed, rapid reconfigurability, friendly user interface, and low cost. We use this module in slow light and storage of light experiments performed in Rb buffer gas cell.
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A highly digital optical phase-locked loop (OPLL) is designed and implemented to generate phase-coherent lasers in quantum optics. All the controlling circuit in this OPLL are implemented in a single field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Pipeline and parallelism technology have been adapted in PID controller. Especially, an equivalent 3.5 GHz high speed clock and twisted ring counter have been integrated in the most crucial part. This OPLL has the narrow beat note line width below 1 Hz, residual mean-square phase error of 0.05 rad2and transition time of 100 μs under 10 MHz frequency step.
The Red Pitaya [1] is an affordable (<; 250 Euros) field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board with fast analog inputs and outputs (sampled at 125 MHz). This makes it useful for quantum optics experiments, in particular as a digital feedback controller for analog systems. Based on the open source software provided by the board manufacturer, we have created the software package PyRPL [2] (Python RedPitaya Lockbox) which implements many devices that are needed for optics experiments with the Red Pitaya. The user interface and all high-level functionalities are written in Python, but an essential part of the software is contained in a custom FPGA design written in the hardware description language (HDL) Verilog. The HDL part of PyRPL implements various digital signal processing (DSP) modules: a two-channel oscilloscope for measurement and diagnostics; two arbitrary function generators for waveform synthesis and noise generation; four proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers with up to fourth-order filters for feedback control; three demodulation modules for the generation of Pound-Drever-Hall-like error signals and the realization of narrow, phase-tunable band-pass filters; an infinite impulse response (IIR) filter able to realize transfer functions with up to 24 poles and 24 zeros; a network analyzer for the characterization of analog and digital systems and in-loop tuning of feedback parameters; a spectrum analyzer for the measurement and minimization of noise in closed-loop systems.
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