Patent ID: 7772550

Claim:
An electronic drive system for signal generation, comprising: a mixed signal RF drive electronics board having: a control unit for generating a digital signal used for driving a mass spectrometer; a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) coupled with the control unit for converting the digital signal to an analog signal; an Analog Multiplying Cell (AMC) coupled with the DAC for scaling a final output signal amplitude based on a desired mass scanning range; a Radio Frequency Power Amplifier (RF PA) coupled with the AMC for driving the final output signal; an inductive element coupled with the RF PA and the mass spectrometer for amplification of the final output signal at a resonant frequency of the inductive element and a capacitance presented by the mass spectrometer; a closed loop feedback unit coupled with the control unit for continuous fine-tuning of the final output signal for accommodating environmental variation and system non-linearities; and an acquisition unit as part of the control unit for acquiring and collecting mass spectral data from mass spectrometer; wherein the control unit comprises a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA); and wherein: the FPGA includes front end logic, including: a serial interface that allows for communication from the FPGA to a host computing device; a command interface that receives and processes serial commands; a register interface for register setting and management; and a channel counter for counting pulses from a pre-amplifier and discriminator unit and continuously double buffering into a Random Access Memory (RAM) an accumulated mass spectrum; wherein the serial, command, and register interfaces and the channel counter are all in communicate with one another.