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Vijay
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System
Signal out
Most of the signals encountered in the science and engineering are analog in nature. That
is the signals are functions of a continuous variable, such as time or space, and usually
take on values in a continuous range. Such signals may be processed directly by
appropriate analog systems. In such a case we say the signal has been processed in analog
form.
Analog input signal
Analog
System
Signals, which are defined at discrete time instants, are called discrete-time signals. By
selecting values of analog signals at discrete time instants, or in other words by sampling
the analog signals we arrive at discrete-time signals. The following figure shows the
difference between continuous and discrete-time signals.
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Discretetime System
Output Signal
(Discrete)
A control system, as the name suggests is a system in which some physical quantity is
controlled by regulating an input. A control system is a combination of amplifiers,
transducers/sensors, and actuators, which collectively act on a process/system to maintain
some condition at a required value. Control system comprises of different systems and
signals as shown in the figure. Most of the control systems operate on the feedback basis,
as shown, and are called closed loop control systems.
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In the early days control systems were mostly analog in nature, since most of the real
world signals and systems are analog in nature. These systems were bulky, complex and
cumbersome both to design and to maintain. However with the development of digital
technology and the invention of Integrated circuits, the design of control systems became
easy and economical. Presently most control systems are microprocessor controlled,
primarily because of tremendous advancements in data handling capabilities.
Many applications also need a fast and even real-time decision-making with regard to the
control input. This requires a large amount of processing power and also high
computational speeds. The advent of Integrated chips and computers have provided a
very convenient solution to this. Since these require information to be present in the
digital form for processing, the measured or sensed signal has to be converted to a digital
form before a computer can process it. This necessitates the use of Analog to Digital
converters (ADCs). An ADC samples the analog signal at a specified rate and converts it
into digital information. This can be processed by the computer.
Analog signal
(From sensors)
ADC
Digital signal
Computer
The result of the above processing is still going to be in the digital form and hence
unsuitable unless we convert it back to analog form. The Digital to Analog Converters
(DACs) perform this function. They interpolate the digital information to give an analog
signal. This actuating signal can be given as a control input to the system under interest.
Computer
DAC
Digital
Information
Analog
Signal
System
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Hence the use of ADCs and DACs can provide the advantage of using the processing
power of computers and ICs on real world systems which are mostly analog in nature.
The control system architecture can therefore be schematically represented as below
ADCs and DACs present on the Data Acquisition board can be used for the purpose of
interfacing the analog domain with the digital domain. The computers in MEEN364 lab
are equipped with National Instruments PCI6024 Data Acquisition Boards. These
boards are designed to perform A/D and D/A conversion using 12-bit resolution. It has 8
differential analog input channels and two 12-bit analog output channels. A channel is a
term used to mean either an input or an output line. The input to the DAQ board is an
analog signal and so is the output. The process of collecting data using the analog input
channels is called Analog Input, and the process of getting signal out is called Analog
Ouput. Both these tasks can be performed using LabVIEW.
II. Analog Input Using LabVIEW
Finding the Data Acquisition VIs in LabVIEW
The FunctionsData Acquisition palette contains six subpalettes that contain the different
classes of DAQ VIs. The DAQ VIs are classified as follows:
Analog Input VIs
Analog Output VIs
Digital I/O VIs
Counter VIs
Calibration and Configuration VIs
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Signal Conditioning VIs
Figure 5-1 shows an example of a DAQ subpalette that contains all of the available levels
of DAQ VIs.
VI Parameter Conventions
In each LabVIEW DAQ VI front panel or Context Help window, the appearance of the
control and indicator labels denotes the importance of that parameter. Control and
indicator names shown in bold are required and must be wired to a node on the block
diagram for your application to run. Parameter names that appear in plain text are
optional and are not necessary for your program to run. You rarely need to use the
parameters with labels in square brackets ([ ]). Remember that these conventions apply
only to the information in the Context Help window and on the front panel. Default input
values appear in parentheses to the right of the parameter names. Figure 5-3 illustrates
these Context Help window parameter conventions for the AI Read One Scan VI. As the
window text for this VI indicates, you must wire the device (if you are not using channel
names), channels, error in, and iteration input parameters and the waveform data and
error out output parameters. To pass error information from one VI to another, connect
the error out cluster of the current VI to the error in cluster of the next VI. The
coupling &input config, input limits, output units, and number of AMUX boards
input parameters are optional.
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Using the Waveform Control
There are a number of LabVIEW VIs and primitives that accept, operate on, and/or return
waveforms. In addition, you can connect the waveform control wires directly to many
LabVIEW controls, including the graph, chart, numeric, and numeric array controls.
The block diagram in Figure 5-5 acquires a waveform from a channel on a data
acquisition device, sends it through a Butterworth filter, and plots the resulting waveform
on a graph.
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control a certain component, such as the dt component, create a front panel control and
wire it to the appropriate component in the Build Waveform function.
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Resolution
The number of represent an analog signal determines the resolution of the ADC. You can
compare the resolution on a DAQ device to the marks on a ruler. The more marks you
have, the more precise your measurements. Similarly, the higher the resolution, the
higher the number of divisions into which your system can break down the ADC range,
and therefore, the smaller the detectable change. A 3-bit ADC divides the range into 8
divisions. A binary or digital code between 000 and 111 represents each division. The
ADC translates each measurement of the analog signal to one of the digital divisions.
Figure 6-4 shows a sine wave digital image as obtained by a 3-bit ADC. Clearly, the
digital signal does not represent the original signal adequately, because the converter has
too few digital divisions to represent the varying voltages of the analog signal. By
increasing the resolution to 16 bits, however, the ADCs number of divisions increases
from 8 to 65,536 (2 ^16). The ADC now can obtain an extremely accurate representation
of the analog signal.
Device Range
Range refers to the minimum and maximum analog signal levels that the ADC can
digitize. Many DAQ devices feature selectable ranges, so you can match the ADC range
to that of the signal to take best advantage of the available resolution.
Signal Limit Settings
Limit settings are the maximum and minimum values of the signal you are measuring. A
more precise limit setting allows the ADC to use more digital divisions to represent the
signal. Using a 3-bit ADC and a device range setting of 0.00 to 10.00 V, With a
limitsettingof0 to 10 V, theADC uses only four of the eight divisions in the conversion.
But using a limit setting of 0 to 5 V, the ADC now has access to all eight digital
divisions. This makes the digital representation of the signal more accurate.
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