Optimised DMA-based data acquisition on a MSP430 Ultra-Low- Power Microcontroller focused on intelligent sensor networks

DAQ (Data AcQuisition) Systems for portable applications are mostly battery driven devices which underlie strong restrictions concerning the data rate due to the limited energy resources. In this article we present an ef- fective DMA-based (Direct Memory Access) concept for data acquisition maintaining substantial computational power for e. g. online digital signal processing and wireless IEEE 802.15.4 based communication. Implemented on the Ultra-Low-Power Microcontroller MSP430 sample rates up to 96 kHz have been realised for single chan- nel DAQ. The development was done within the project 'intelligent Sensor and Actuator Network for Life sci- ence Application' (iSANLA).