ABSTRACT
Buses and networks are the mechanisms for transferring the data between digital devices such as components, the data acquisition (DAQ) memory or controllers. A crucial aspect of digital communications is the standardization of the buses and networks. Once a standard is dened, a manufacturer can develop an instrument for that standard, and this instrument will be able to communicate with any other instrument or controllers developed for the same standard. For example, two widespread and general-purpose standards for communicating digital instruments are the RS-232-C for serial communications and General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) for parallel communications. Today, modern data acquisition devices more commonly take advantage of the standard buses and network interfaces available on commercial desktop and laptop PCs, such as Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), Universal Serial Bus (USB), or Ethernet.
