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NI LabVIEW 20th Anniversary Edition Targets Communications Test

8th August 2006

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National Instruments, a global leader in virtual instrumentation, today announced LabVIEW 8.20, the 20th anniversary edition of the LabVIEW graphical system design platform for test, control and embedded system design development. NI LabVIEW 8.20 extends the popular LabVIEW graphical programming platform with communications design, simulation and test tools specifically tailored to the needs of telecom design and test engineers. LabVIEW 8.20 gives developers the ability to reuse their m-file scripts created with The MathWorks, Inc. MATLAB® software. For advanced design and test applications, LabVIEW 8.20 also introduces object-oriented programming structures and an XML-based reporting standard for test data management.

Open Communications Design and Test Platform

The LabVIEW 8.20 platform includes the new Modulation Toolkit, a flexible software-defined approach to communications system design and test that builds on the intuitive LabVIEW dataflow programming language. Examples included with the Modulation Toolkit for LabVIEW 8.20 demonstrate orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a communications technique to increase bandwidth and signal immunity that is being used in the latest IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi and 4G cellular applications. The Modulation Toolkit for LabVIEW 8.20 makes it possible to develop models to simulate communications systems and evaluate parameter and design decisions, as well as reuse and integrate this code with RF test equipment to perform signal measurements and bit-error rate tests (BERT) for complete product testing.

“New high-bandwidth buses, such as PCI Express, are giving virtual instrumentation and desktop computers the power to process enormous amounts of complex IF and RF data in communications applications,” said Dr. James Truchard, NI President, CEO and Cofounder. “With LabVIEW 8.20, engineers can intuitively develop design models and measurement applications through a graphical programming notation that naturally represents the data flow of communications systems.”

The introduction of LabVIEW 8.20 includes a significant new innovation called MathScript, a math-oriented textual programming language generally compatible with the m-file scripts created using MATLAB software.

With MathScript, engineers can reuse their existing m-file scripts created using the MATLAB software, or create new scripts with LabVIEW. By doing this, they can mix and match graphical and text-based approaches for generating stimulus signals or performing measurements on complex communications signals.