Grenoble Electrical Engineering Lab (G2E-Lab), BP 46, Saint Martin d'Hères 38402, France.
Sensors (Basel). 2013 Nov 27;13(12):16245-62. doi: 10.3390/s131216245.
A proof-of-concept of the use of a fully digital radiofrequency (RF) electronics for the design of dedicated Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) systems at low-field (0.1 T) is presented. This digital electronics is based on the use of three key elements: a Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) for pulse generation, a Software Defined Radio (SDR) for a digital receiving of NMR signals and a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) for system control and for the generation of the gradient signals (pulse programmer). The SDR includes a direct analog-to-digital conversion and a Digital Down Conversion (digital quadrature demodulation, decimation filtering, processing gain…). The various aspects of the concept and of the realization are addressed with some details. These include both hardware design and software considerations. One of the underlying ideas is to enable such NMR systems to "enjoy" from existing advanced technology that have been realized in other research areas, especially in telecommunication domain. Another goal is to make these systems easy to build and replicate so as to help research groups in realizing dedicated NMR desktops for a large palette of new applications. We also would like to give readers an idea of the current trends in this field. The performances of the developed electronics are discussed throughout the paper. First FID (Free Induction Decay) signals are also presented. Some development perspectives of our work in the area of low-field NMR/MRI will be finally addressed.
提出了一种在低场(0.1 T)下使用全数字射频(RF)电子设计专用磁共振(NMR)系统的概念验证。这种数字电子基于三个关键元素的使用:直接数字合成器(DDS)用于脉冲生成,软件定义无线电(SDR)用于数字接收 NMR 信号,以及数字信号处理器(DSP)用于系统控制和梯度信号的生成(脉冲编程器)。SDR 包括直接模数转换和数字下变频(数字正交解调、抽取滤波、处理增益等)。该概念和实现的各个方面都有一些细节。这些包括硬件设计和软件考虑。其中一个基本思想是使这些 NMR 系统能够“受益于”已经在其他研究领域实现的现有先进技术,特别是在电信领域。另一个目标是使这些系统易于构建和复制,以帮助研究小组为各种新应用实现专用 NMR 台式系统。我们还希望让读者了解该领域的当前趋势。本文讨论了开发的电子设备的性能。首先还介绍了 FID(自由感应衰减)信号。最后还将介绍我们在低场 NMR/MRI 领域工作的一些发展前景。