Multi-Channel Data Acquisition System with Absolute Time Synchronization

Abstract: A low-cost, stand-alone Global-Positioning-System-time-synchronized data acquisition system is described. The constructed prototype allows recoding up to four analog signals with a 16-bit resolution in variable ranges and a maximum sampling rate of 1000 S/s. Additionally, two digital readouts of external sensors can be acquired. A complete data set is stored on a Secure Digital (SD) card or transmitted to a computer using Universal Serial Bus (USB). The estimated time accuracy of the data acquisition is better than 0.2 {\mu}s. The device is envisioned for the use in a global distributed sensor network (the Global Network of Optical Magnetometers for Exotic physics - GNOME), whose aim is to search for new particles and interactions.