“Analysis and Design of an FPGA-Based Data Acquisition System Using an External High-Speed ADC”

Nowadays, the continuous advancement of embedded and biomedical electronics demands increasingly efficient and flexible data acquisition systems. In particular, the ability to accurately capture and analyze analog signals in real time is becoming essential for applications such as smart sensing, medical diagnostics, and IoT-enabled monitoring. To address these needs, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have emerged as a powerful platform for implementing high-speed and reconfigurable data processing architectures. This thesis presents the design and implementation of an FPGA-based analog-to-digital data acquisition system that interfaces a 10-bit AD9215 ADC with the Terasic DE2-115 development board. The system samples analog signals at 60 MHz (Clock Frequency), writes the digital data into on-board SRAM memory through a deterministic finite-state machine, and subsequently transfers the stored samples to MATLAB for time-domain and frequency-domain analysis. The complete signal chain comprising clock generation, ADC sampling, data buffering, and memory writing was designed and verified using Verilog HDL and Quartus II tools. Experimental results demonstrate the correct operation of the acquisition system and the accurate reconstruction of input waveforms. The MATLAB-based FFT analysis confirms the presence of the fundamental frequency and allows quantification of harmonic distortion, particularly the third harmonic component arising from front-end nonlinearities. The system therefore provides a reliable and flexible platform for characterizing ADC performance, evaluating signal quality, and validating data conversion concepts in real-time applications.