System Design

In our system design, we actually use the PXI system for Radio Frequency
(RF) and Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW)
software. PXI is known as PCL extensions for Instrumentation. This system is
designed in various software language as per various test and measurement and
automation need. Basically, PXI system have three parts which is chassis,
controller and peripheral modules.

For PXI system, we choose the NI-PXI5671 and NI-PXI5660 to generate RF

signal. The NI-PXI5671 can make the signal generation ability become flexible. It
has 3-slot RF vector signal generator that can delivers signal generation in
between 250 kHz to 2.7GHz.It also can modulates standard modulation formats
such as AM, PM, ASK, FSK, MSK, GMSK, PSK, QPSK, PAM AND QAM. The NIPXI5660 is used to make an analysis and verify the signals. The PXI-5660 can
provides the frequency characteristics over its operating range of 9 kHz to 2.7
GHz. It also can provide a typical noise density in range <-140 dBm/Hz and over
80 dB as spurious-free dynamic range. Typical phase noise is <-94 dBc/Hz at 10
kHz offset.

Figure 1 NI-PXI5671

LabVIEW is a software that helps engineer to transfer their ideas into

virtual so that they can test their ideas before implement it into their real project.
LabVIEW works on computer running such as windows, Mac OS or Linux. This
software is very flexible because it is software-based. It can be used anywhere at
any time and can be modify. LabVIEW can increase the productivity by orders of
magnitude. The different between LabVIEW and any conventional programming
language is LabVIEW can complete the programs within the hours compare to
the conventional programming language that takes weeks or months.
The program in LabVIEW is portable because you can write and load it at
any operating system without changing a thing in most application. LabVIEW has
extensive libraries of function and subroutines to help you with most
programming task. This actually make the engineers job become easy. It also
contains application-specific libraries of code for data acquisition (DAQ), General
Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB), and a serial instrument control, data analysis, data
presentation, data storage and communication over the internet. The analysis
library contains a multiple of useful functions, including signal generation; signal
processing, filters, windows, statistics, regression, linear algebra and array
arithmetic.