The Development Status and Characteristics of Virtual Instrument Technology

 

　　The concept of virtual instrument system is a major breakthrough in the concept of traditional instruments. It is the product of the combination of computer system and instrument system technology. It uses the powerful functions of computer system and the corresponding hardware to greatly break through the limitations of traditional instruments in data processing, display, transmission, processing, etc., so that users can easily maintain, expand, upgrade, etc. 

　　Virtual instrument system can be widely used in various fields such as communication, automation, semiconductor, aviation, electronics, electricity, biochemical pharmaceutical, and industrial production. 

　　The existing virtual instrument system can be mainly divided into virtual instruments based on PC bus, virtual instruments based on VXI, and virtual instruments based on PXI according to the hardware working platform. Different application occasions have their own characteristics. 

　　Virtual instrument technology is to use high-performance modular hardware combined with efficient and flexible software to complete various test, measurement and automation applications. Flexible and efficient software can help you create a completely customized user interface, modular hardware can easily provide a full range of system integration, and standard hardware and software platforms can meet the needs of synchronization and timing applications. This is also the reason why NI has always led the development trend of the test and measurement industry for nearly 30 years. Only by having efficient software, modular I/O hardware, and software and hardware platforms for integration, can the four major advantages of virtual instrument technology, namely, high performance, strong scalability, short development time, and excellent integration, be fully utilized. 

　　The three major components of virtual instrument technology are, first of all, efficient software, which is the most important part of virtual instrument technology. Using the right software tools and by designing or calling specific program modules, engineers and scientists can efficiently create their own applications and friendly human-computer interaction interfaces. LabVIEW, the industry-standard graphical programming software provided by NI, can not only easily and conveniently complete the connection with various software and hardware, but also provide powerful subsequent data processing capabilities, set the data processing, conversion, storage methods, and display the results to users. In addition, NI provides more interactive measurement tools and higher-level system management software tools, such as SignalExpress, an interactive software that connects design and testing, LabWindows/CVI for traditional C language, and Measurement Studio for Microsoft Visual Studio, etc., which can meet customers' needs for high-performance applications. With powerful software, you can create intelligence and decision-making functions in instruments, thereby giving full play to the powerful advantages of virtual instrument technology in test applications. Secondly, modular I/O hardware. Faced with today's increasingly complex test and measurement applications, NI provides a full range of software and hardware solutions. Whether you use PCI, PXI, PCMCIA, USB or 1394 bus, NI can provide corresponding modular hardware products, ranging from data acquisition, signal conditioning, sound and vibration measurement, vision, motion, instrument control, distributed I/O to CAN interface and other industrial communications. NI's high-performance hardware products combined with flexible development software can create completely customized measurement systems for engineers responsible for testing and design to meet various unique application requirements. At present, NI has reached the speed of launching a hardware product every 2 working days, which has greatly broadened the user's choice: for example, NI's recently launched new generation of data acquisition equipment - the first 20 M series DAQ cards have set a new standard in the field of data acquisition. Finally, there is the software and hardware platform for integration. The PXI hardware platform designed for test tasks, which was first proposed by NI, has become the standard platform for today's test, measurement and automation applications. Its open architecture, flexibility and cost advantages of PC technology have brought a revolutionary reform to the measurement and automation industry. The PXI system alliance initiated by NI has now attracted 68 manufacturers, and the number of products under the alliance has surged to nearly a thousand. PXI is a modular instrument platform tailored for industrial data acquisition and automation applications. It has built-in high-end timing and triggering buses. With various modular I/O hardware and corresponding test and measurement development software, you can build a completely customized test and measurement solution. Whether facing simple data acquisition applications or high-end mixed signal synchronous acquisition, you can handle it with the help of PXI's high-performance hardware platform. This is the incomparable advantage that virtual instrument technology brings to you. 

　　At the same time, the four major advantages of virtual instrument technology 

　　1. High performance 

　　Virtual instrument technology is developed on the basis of PC technology, so it completely "inherits" the advantages of the latest commercial technology dominated by ready-made PC technology, including excellent processors and file I/O, so that you can perform complex analysis in real time while importing data to disk at high speed. In addition, the ever-developing Internet and faster and faster computer networks have made virtual instrument technology show its more powerful advantages. 

　　2. Strong scalability 

　　NI's software and hardware tools have enabled engineers and scientists to no longer be confined to current technologies. Thanks to the flexibility of NI software, you can improve your entire system with minimal hardware investment and very little or even no software upgrades by simply updating your computer or measurement hardware. When taking advantage of the latest technologies, you can integrate them into existing measurement equipment, ultimately accelerating the time to market with less cost. 

　　3. Less development time 

　　At both the driver and application levels, NI's efficient software architecture can be combined with the latest technologies in computers, instrumentation, and communications. NI designed this software architecture with the original intention of facilitating user operations, while also providing flexibility and powerful functions to enable you to easily configure, create, publish, maintain, and modify high-performance, low-cost measurement and control solutions. 

　　4. Seamless integration 

　　Virtual instrument technology is essentially an integrated hardware and software concept. As products become increasingly complex in function, engineers usually need to integrate multiple measurement devices to meet complete test requirements, and connecting and integrating these different devices always takes a lot of time. NI's virtual instrument software platform provides standard interfaces for all I/O devices, helping users easily integrate multiple measurement devices into a single system and reducing the complexity of the task. 

　　Virtual instrument technology continues to expand its functions and application scope. Now LabVIEW can not only develop test programs on PCs, but also design hardware on embedded processors and FPGAs. This technology will eventually provide such an independent environment that allows users to design test systems from defining hardware functions, as shown in Figure 3. Test engineers will be able to use appropriate functions for system-level design. When they need to define specialized measurement functions, they will also be able to use the same software tools to "fine-tune" to the appropriate level to define the measurement functions. For example, engineers can develop LabVIEW programs to use modular instruments to perform certain measurements, such as DC voltage and rise time. When engineers need to develop specialized measurements, they can also use LabVIEW to analyze the original measurement data to develop specialized measurements, such as peak detection. If in some cases they need to use some new hardware functions to implement measurements, such as customized triggers, they can use LabVIEW to define a trigger and filtering scheme and embed it into the FPGA on the instrument card. 

　　Virtual instrument technology has become a mainstream technology for test, industrial I/O and control and product design. As the functions and performance of virtual instrument technology have been continuously improved, it has now become the main alternative to traditional instruments in many applications. With the further update of PC, semiconductor and software functions, the future development of virtual instrument technology will provide an excellent model for the design of test systems and enable engineers to obtain powerful functions and flexibility in measurement and control.