Software tools speed comms testing

The new Modulation Toolkit 2.0 and Spectral Measurements Toolkit 2.0 from National Instruments give engineers tools to perform spectrum analysis, analogue modulation and digital modulation.

The new Modulation Toolkit 2.0 and Spectral Measurements Toolkit 2.0 from National Instruments give engineers tools to perform spectrum analysis, analogue modulation and digital modulation.

The toolkits complement the company's existing RF signal analyser hardware for use in communications applications.

The new Modulation Toolkit gives engineers LabView functions for rapid development of custom measurement applications that can generate, process and analyse common analogue and digital modulation formats such as FSK, PSK, QAM and MSK.

These modulation formats are part of the digital communication standards that are used in an increasing breadth of electronic products including GSM for mobile phones and 802.11 wireless Ethernet.

The toolkit is ideal for a variety of applications including testing RF components such as RF mixers and frequency synthesizers, as well as the test and design of communication devices.

The toolkit also helps in research and design of new and proprietary standards and in the area of software-defined radios.

The Modulation Toolkit can work with either real-world data or simulated signals, a capability that helps engineers simulate the behaviour of a device under test and then perform the same tests with real-world signals.

Engineers can use the toolkit to generate complex modulated signals before adding common signal impairments such as I/Q imbalance and quadrature skew to the results.

The toolkit also delivers key modulation measurements including error vector magnitude (EVM) and modulation error ratio (MER).

The new Spectral Measurements Toolkit empowers engineers with tools for spectrum analysis and analogue modulation functions.

The toolkit contains high-level common spectral measurements; averaged, zoom and continuous FFT functions; and common measurements such as peak power and frequency, adjacent channel power, power spectral density and occupied bandwidth.

These measurements address common communications and aerospace application requirements.

These two new toolkits work with National Instruments hardware including the RF signal analyser, high-speed digitisers, arbitrary waveform generators and S Series data acquisition, as well as with traditional instruments from third-party vendors.

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