Design of a high-speed lightning signal acquisition system based on ZYNQ

In this paper, we introduce a high-speed lightning signal acquisition system based on ZYNQ, a system on a chip designed by Xilinx, which consists of two parts: FPGA and ARM processor. In this design, the lightning signal is converted into a digital signal through the analog-to-digital conversion chip AD9627. The sampling rate can reach 125MHz. A GPS module is applied to provide the UTC timestamp and the pulse per second (PPS) signal. The exact interval between sampling points can be obtained through the GPS PPS, and in combination with the UTC timestamp, the absolute time of each lightning data can be determined. This design allows the system to run automatically when the lightning signal reaches a set trigger voltage, and all triggered data will be stored in SD as a FATFS file. The data transfer and processing is implemented using the Verilog HDL in FPGA, and the following data storage is done in C language in the ARM processor. This design was completed in the official Xilinx software Vivado. The laboratory testing verified that the system design is stable and reliable.