Compact Event Timing Module/Time Interval Counter Applications

Temperature measurement in the scientific world would be a neat application.

This could improve the statistic on temperature measurements for climate scientists. They would get proper timestamps for their data and a much better resolution in their measurements.

Looking forward to hear from you and others what they think.

Tsk. Tsk!

Climate is measured in decades, centuries, if not millennium.

Who cares what the temperature is at midnight on any particular date?

I always wondered how the statistic is tweaked made. Are they taking the high noon values of every day to get us the trend or are they just using the peaks regardless when it is?

I believe we can get around this ambiguity by having set time steps with multiple readings almost real time data to get piece of mind that we know exactly whats going on.

I would employ this first in my office to see what the impact on the statistic is with different settings.

In a chaotic system (office with air condition for example ) what are the chances that trends range to a certain value rather than trending up or down.

Lyn while I fully agree with you that decades and centuries should be our base line I am thinking that with a average of 0.1 deg C of a raise per year (global temperature I think that is) we need to employ high resolution measurements to come to a correct conclusion. Otherwise I think we wasting our time in climatology if we cannot consider the midnight temperature or any other day temperature in (h)our measurements.

The point I want to make is we need a high resolution with maximum safety given by the timestamps.

We have far more resolution than we need to measure temperature.

Adding a pico-second time stamp to an event that happens over a 24 hour period is senseless.

You are probably right. All we might need is a more spacial distribution of the measurements. Funny that OP did consider the option tough.

Thank you for replies, we have already evaluated possibility of meteorological application, but came to a conclusion that such high resolution of 3-8 ps as we are ready to offer is not needed at the moment, because different events (wind, temperature, rain) are measured once per 0.25-1 seconds to 1-3 minutes. That's why there was no further interest when we tried it out earlier.

Other idea concerning meteorology was seismic event measurement, where we also couldn't get enough information, maybe you have an idea regarding that, whether high resolution can be crucial at seismology?

We are also looking at medical/measurement equipment for analyses, where time-of-flight (ToF) technique is used, for example - positron emission tomography (PET), mass spectrometry, time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC). Some ideas appear regarding time synchronization activities, for experiments at time transfer through optical fibers (TTTOF) application.

Can you please share your ideas regarding those applications, or maybe seeing these a thought may come of the other ones?

Thank you!

We have TOF application and TDR application. We do use 5ps optical pulses in Raman Resonance Spectroscopy. Write to my email given to you in a message. Dr. Shyam

I think watching the polar ice caps melt is evidence enough for global warming....I know when my freezer thaws out, there's a problem....

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sea_ice.php

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/thick-melt.html

Usually its the door stuck open. Isn't it?

Only see one cap melting.

Ok, so are there honorarium or pf for inputs and discussion? I'll do it for $100 dollars a session and freebeer. ;) if you be kind.

Wow, nice project. Like kulas said, mine is only for free beer. This is applicable generally on variables with unit per time basis or rate like Bottles of beer per second Bitch per second Boys per minute Kg per hour Volume per time At a very precise or approaching greater resolution and infinitisimal difference, one downfall and great next big thing to improve by the way are transducers or field signal processor responses( i/o). Those are the limits of your device- definitely that side needs improvement too. Where is the beer?

These signals supposed to be optical infrared and microwave region. 3ps time bin means sampling clock of 330GHz or higher. Your counting register/frequency counter has to work at this speed to store time interval information.

Dear Dr. Shyam,

We have 3ps RMS single shot resolution (which means that we can calculate arrival time of pulse with only 3ps error as maximum) and 50ns dead time between two adjacent events. We use 100 Mhz sampling clock and can synchronize it with 10Mhz external reference like GPS.

As we are an engineering company with academic background and as event timing technology is an adaptable application, we can elaborate appropriate solution if that falls within our expertise, and if we know specific problem and need for signal processing electronics.

3ps pulse may have 1ps rise time. which corresponds to 333 GHz frequency band of the signal. I am not sure if any amplifier I know that may respond to this and also do not know which logic can be used to sample digital information. It must be some dedicated chip.