QDAC products and technology can be applied to a wide range of applications and markets and its architecture has the potential to become the defacto standard for data acquisition systems. Virtually everywhere there is a sensor, QDAC’s solutions can be applied.

QDAC solutions are ideally suited for the following markets and associated applications:

    • Aeronautical and Aerospace (aircraft systems control and navigation, space       based sensors, aircraft vibration suppression; engine turbine vibration       monitoring; space-based systems control)
    • Industrial Discrete Manufacturing (automotive assembly; robot control)
    • Industrial Processes (oil and gas refining; petrochemical processes)
    • Medical (diagnostic equipment)
    • Laboratories (calibration lab; commercial research labs; university labs)
    • Electric Utilities (power generation; transmission and distribution)
    • Resource exploration (land, ocean and airborne geophysical surveys)

Some specific Markets where QDAC technologies are ideally suited include the following:

A large number of commercial and academic research laboratories utilize data acquisition systems as a basic tool used for a multitude of research and development projects. Researchers rely on observations from experiments, made through a data acquisition system, to make new discoveries. These projects could include research into new medical diagnostics, advanced manufacturing processes, and resource exploration.

In addition to the need for more accurate and higher resolution data, limitations in the conventional solutions for data acquisition require users to reconfigure their systems for different applications and require various peripheral equipment to be added into the overall data acquisition system. QDAC products are able to work with many different types of applications without reconfiguration and have the necessary peripheral elements integrated directly within the products. Additionally, QDAC products provide industry leading resolution specifications enabling researchers to obtain more accurate data.
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Aerospace applications includes aircraft, satellite systems and space based systems that require inertial navigation, guidance and control, and vibration monitoring (eg. structural and aircraft engines). Aerospace applications have historically been at the forefront of technology advancement and are continuously demanding higher performance requirements.

Two key sensor types that are used in aerospace applications are accelerometers and rate gyros. Accelerometers and rate gyros are used to analyze how an object is moving and can sense very small changes in orientation and movement, including high frequency vibrations. However, as accelerometers move into more demanding applications requiring high speed sampling and high resolution data, inherent issues related to noise becomes more of a problem.

Additionally, advanced digital signal processing techniques are required to retrieve this data, making it difficult to engineer an appropriate data acquisition solution. QDAC technology is ideally suited for these applications since it incorporates the signal processing and intelligently determines the best data acquisition parameters that enable the retrieval of highly accurate data.

A particularly interesting application of QDAC technology is vibration control on the space station to examine the sensitivity to spacecraft vibration and its effect on on-board experiments. QDAC technologies help remove the unwanted effects of vibrations due to the micro-g disturbances from the earths gravitational pull. This allows the experiments to function properly enabling new scientific discoveries. This vibration analysis is also required for aircraft structural and engine monitoring.
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Resource Exploration applications relate to land, ocean, or airborne sensing for the identification of natural resource deposits, such as oil and gas, and minerals. Resource exploration applications utilize remote sensing technology, which is the small or large-scale acquisition of environmental data by using either recording or real-time sensing devices that are not in physical or intimate contact with the object. These devices, or sensors, are typically deployed from aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, buoys, or ships. The hallmark of remote sensing is that the data is collected in a “remote” fashion. One specific application of remote sensing where QDAC technology is ideally suited is for geophysical surveys which are used to identify natural resource deposits.

The key requirements drivers related to data acquisition in Resource Exploration applications revolve around the increased need for more accurate and higher resolution data from signal sources that typically have a low signal to noise ratio.
A low signal to noise ratio makes it difficult to obtain true and reliable data as the true data is hidden within the background noise of the data. This makes data interpretation particularly difficult. QDAC’s technology is able to overcome these difficulties and delivers increased resolution and accuracy of data using existing equipment and sensors to obtain new data not previously available. This results in the ability to identify new resource deposits that were previously “hidden” from existing surveying systems.

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