Data Acquisition devices play a vital role in our ubiquitous industrial
control systems. This is due to the increasing need to gathered data to aid in
automatic decision-making process. Heterogenous analog data require
various configurations to be able to reconstruct input data properly. Often,
a single analog to digital conversion is used per acquisition channel, but
most frequently a multi-channel data acquisition device is used with a
constant sampling period for all channels. It is obvious that the dedicated
analog to digital converter per channel is expensive choice, especially if the
converter device is of high speed. Alternatively, a single analog to digital
converter is shared by multiple channels. However, sharing such analog to
digital conversion device requires the use of a real-time scheduling
algorithm.
In this paper, we firstly present a survey of current real-time multichannel
data acquisition sampling techniques. Then, we utilize synthetic signals
with different frequencies to study the Simultaneous Time Sampling
problem in multi-channel heterogenous data acquisition systems. This
problem causes failure of the schedule, thus lead to data loss, or data
corruption. Our aim is to compare the effectiveness of such scheduling
techniques in addressing such problem. Then, we conclude with a
recommendation for a possible solution that can reduce the failure rate of
multi-channel scheduling systems that are used for a single analog to digital
conversion device.