Modular instruments help engineers customize test requirements

The rapid development of technology today has forced engineers to face new and increasing challenges. For test engineers, the emergence of new technologies and standards has made it impossible for test solutions based on traditional instruments to meet new test requirements. Software-centric modular instruments provide engineers with greater flexibility in customizing test requirements.

Software-based modular instrument architecture
Traditional desktop instruments are usually limited in flexibility. For example, software processing and user interface are defined by the instrument vendor and can only be upgraded by the vendor by changing the firmware, which makes it difficult to add new functions or complete customized tests. Modular instrument systems with software as the core can give users more initiative and even apply independent intellectual property (IP) to the test system. Therefore, it is becoming the mainstream in the industry.

Figure 1 shows a modular instrument system with software at its core. It can be divided into two parts: modular hardware and flexible and powerful software. The software includes graphical development platforms such as LabVIEW, test management software such as TestStand, and a variety of driver software; as for modular hardware, users can choose from thousands of PXI/PXI Express-based modules on the market to build a test system that suits their needs.

Figure 1: Modular instrument system with software as the core

Software-defined radio platform meets future RF standards
Software-based modular test systems can give engineers greater flexibility, especially in some application areas where new standards and technologies are constantly emerging. For example, wireless communication testing. The software radio platform test system based on modular architecture launched by NI is such an example. Its latest 6.6GHz RF test platform is based on NI PXIe-5663 6.6GHz RF vector signal analyzer and NI PXIe-5673 6.6GHz RF vector signal generator. It is not only extremely flexible, but also uses LabVIEW to give full play to the advantages of high-performance multi-core processors, and can perform a variety of commonly used RF measurements at a faster speed than traditional instruments. Due to its software-defined architecture, engineers can develop and test various wireless protocols to meet the test requirements of emerging RF standards by simply reconfiguring the software using specific standard LabVIEW toolkits or writing dedicated modulation algorithms. At the same time, NI and system alliance providers also provide many LabVIEW toolkits for existing and emerging communication technologies. In 2009, they launched new WiMAX, GPS simulation, and WLAN test toolkits.

Figure 2 NI FlexRIO FPGA-based custom I/O design

FPGA-based modular structure brings hardware-level programmable software technology
Introducing FPGA into modular instruments provides engineers with more powerful tools for customizing test needs. This hardware-level programmable software technology can help engineers solve many problems that traditional methods could not solve before. The NI FlexRIO FPGA module introduces high-performance Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA chips, allowing engineers to program them using the LabVIEW FPGA module. With NI FlexRIO, engineers can add custom signal processing algorithms to PXI-based FPGA hardware. With these features of FlexRIO, engineers can use online processing, hardware-in-the-loop simulation, and protocol identification testing as needed when designing and testing many complex electronic devices.