Hi,
I am considering using multiple PCI 5640R cards in the same case for a MIMO application. My motivation for using the 5640R for this application was that I could start out by using the 5640R for data aquisition only (ignore the FPGA) and test algorithms in LabVIEW (non-real-time), then eventually migrate the code back to the FPGA for real-time. I just have a few questions in advance:
1) Can multiple 5640R cards be easily synch'd? I assume a common clock could be fed into the CLK IN port on each card. Can that clock source come from one of the cards, or do I need a dedicated oscillator on the bench?
2) Am I right in assuming that the bandwidth bottleneck (when streaming sampled data) will be the PCI bus which must be shared between the cards? Will the reduction be linear in the number of cards, or much worse due to overhead for continuous real-time acquisition?
3) Is there any forseeable problems in using the 5640R? I'm surprised that I have not found more info on others using it for MIMO or synchronizing multiple cards. I know there are other hardware options, but any that give me decent bandwidth (say 2-5 MHz per each of 6 channels) and the advantage of slowly migrating to the FPGA?
Chris