Patent ID: 7558157

Claim:
A data acquisition system comprising: a plurality of terminal nodes, each terminal node including: a substrate, a sensor disposed on said substrate that is adapted to sense an external event and transform the external event into an electrical signal, an analog to digital converter disposed on said substrate and coupled to said sensor for transforming the electrical signal into a digital signal, a chip-scale atomic clock disposed on said substrate for generating a time reference, a controller disposed on said substrate and coupled to said atomic clock and said analog to digital converter, wherein for each external event said controller is configured to (i) merge said digital signal and a time reference corresponding to an external event into a time-stamped data stream; and (ii) adjust the time-stamped data stream to compensate for a pre-determined time delay occurring between that external event and the merging step, and a transmitter coupled to said controller for transmitting the time-stamped data stream via wireless radio transmission or internet protocol to a remote central processor; and a remote central processor including a receiver for receiving the time-stamped data streams via wireless radio transmission or internet protocol from each terminal node, wherein said remote central processor is configured to synchronize, arrange or analyze the time-stamped data streams from the plurality of terminal nodes based upon the time reference of each time-stamped data stream.