1. Overview

The purpose of acquiring data on the state of a physical system is to provide information on the temporal evolution of various physical quantities. The latter are carefully chosen according to the purpose, for example, to control an industrial process or to study the ageing of a control device.

The actual measurements are carried out by sensors, the input interfaces between the physical world and the electronic system (figure 1 ). Downstream of the sensors, the associated measurement chains ensure the proper conditioning of their respective sensors (power supply, gain, etc.) and perform the necessary processing of the raw measurement signals (filtering, linearization, etc.). In addition, if the electronic system also needs to act or react on its environment, it will need a second interface,...