Based On The Design And Realization Of The Ivi Rf Signal Generator, Automatic Calibration System

As the establishment of VXI Plug & Play (VPP), the technical issues relevant to instrument driver, such as naming convention, development framework and soft-panel design format have been solved, making the instrument drivers from different manufacturers interchangeable. However, there are still some problems in the instrument programming and testing, for example, whether we can change the test software while replacing some obsolete instruments; whether we can transplant the testing code to different instruments; whether we can make a test package applicable for test system formed by different kinds of instruments.Interchangeable Virtual Instruments (IVI) is proposed according to these questions. IVI is a revolutionary standard for instrument driver software technology.IVI builds on the VPP specifications and incorporates new features that address issues such as system performance, developement flexibility, and instrument interchangeability.IVI drivers also take advantage of the power of the VISA I/O library defined by VPP to seamlessly communicatewith instruments across different I/O buses such as GPIB, VXI, PXI, Serial, Ethernet, and USB. Firstly this paper proposes the designs of the driver of radio-frequency signal generator, including the configuration files, the configuration tools, the designs of class driver and specific driver based on the analysis of the IVI technology. Secondly this paper gives an overview of the construction principle and architecture of Automatic Test System (ATS).On the basis of them,an ATS of radio-frequency signal generator is designed and its verification of the interchangeability is proved, which shows that the ATS of radio-frequency signal generator realizes the independence and interchangeability between the ATS and the physical instruments.