Microwave and Radio-Frequency Technologies in Agriculture

25 Data Acquisition

Data Acquisition is simply the gathering of information about a system or process. It is a core tool to the understanding, control and management of systems or processes. Information such as temperature, pressure or flow is gathered by sensors that convert measurements into electrical signals. Sometimes only one sensor is needed, such as when recording local rainfall. Sometimes hundreds or even thousands of sensors are needed, such as when monitoring a complex industrial process. The signals from sensors are transferred by wire, optical fibre or wireless links to an instrument which conditions, amplifies, scales, processes, displays and stores the sensor signals. This is the Data Acquisition instrument.

In the past Data Acquisition ...