Design And Implementation Of Virtual Communication Equipment Software Tester Based On LabVIEW Platform

With the development of the virtual instrument technology, especially in computer and network technologies, automatic testing technology has been applied more and more frequently in military testing field. Virtual instrument technology is the combination of computer technology and instrument measurement technology, it is more flexible and open thus can better satisfy the needs of battlefield measurement when compared with the traditional measurement instruments. Due to the contradiction of the weak equipment maintenance, support capabilities of the army and the fast development of communication-command equipments, a full-featured, highly integrated, portable communication signal tester is urgently required.A virtual communication equipment tester based on general computer platform is studied in this paper. Functions of data acquisition, network communication, user and system management are integrated in the tester. This paper mainly focuses on the design of the software, and the software design process of the communication device testing system is presented based on the study of the key technlogy, Labview development platform and virtual technology.A structured software development mode is employed, and then a full function system is implemented by dividing the system into various modules and designing them respectively. The modules of the system include user management module, monitoring module, network communication management module, equipment management module and system management module.The hardware platform of the system is an industrial laptop, and the digitizers of NI USB 5133 is applied as data acquisition hardware. Data acquisition(DAQ) device is the key of the tester. The USB5133 is with 100 MS / s real-time sampling rate and 50 MHz sampling bandwidth, which enable it to manage most of the signal sampling and data transmission tasks.The most popular virtual instrument development platform and famous graphical programming environment, the Labview is employed in this paper. The database tool, LabSQL which can access to different databases is also applied in database design.Compared with the traditional virtual instrument which is simply intergrated kinds of intruments, much more attentation has been paid to the design of the user interference(UI). Therefore, it is not only a communication device tester, but also a testing software system which is with friendly interference and powerful functions. Although only the basic measurement and management functions are designed in this system at this moment, it can be easily modified and updated according to the requirements of the users because the generality and reusability of the software modules are considered when they are designed. With the continuous extension of the Labview and more and more frequently applied in various complicated applications, the developer must pay more attention to improve the users’ operating experience and applicable fields. Due to more and more appearances of these virtual testing software which are with powerful functions and friendly user interference, the efficiency of the test and measurement would be greatly improved.