Digital Wave Generator

This blog demonstrates the working of Logic Analyzer instrument available in PSLab Desktop Application. It also includes a detailed description of the features available in the Logic Analyzer instrument. Also, it provides a step by step guide on how to work with the Logic Analyzer provided by PSLab which will be beneficial to first-time users. What is a Logic Analyzer? A Logic Analyzer is an electronic instrument used to capture and display digital signals with an added functionality of providing the time difference between different edges of different pulses. It is mainly used to observe the time relationship between different digital signals. An example of a standard Logic Analyzer available in the market is as shown in figure 1. Figure 1. Standard Logic Analyzer How to generate different digital pulses in PSLab? Logic Analyzer needs to be provided with some input of digital pulses among whom time relationship is to be found out. Digital pulses generated from different systems can be directly provided as input to the logic analyzer for analyzing. But PSLab provides a functionality to generate digital pulses up to some constrained frequency. Following are the steps to generate different digital waves in the PSLab desktop application : Go to Advanced Control Section of PSLab app. The screen should look like one as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2.  Advanced Control Section PSLab device provides generation of maximum four digital waves at once. In this example, I will proceed by utilizing all the four pins i.e. SQR1, SQR2, SQR3, SQR4 (where SQR = Acronym of square wave generator and the number next to it is the pin ID available on the PSLab device). Set the duty cycles for each of the pins as desired (try to keep all the duty cycles different from each other to understand the process of measurement easily). After setting it should look something like Figure 3. Figure 3. Configuring PWM NOTE: User can also set phase angle for different waves but I will proceed keeping all without any phase difference. Now set the frequency of the digital waves in the tab provided next to text Frequency and then press the SET button. This should generate desired digital waves when connected. How to analyze the generated waves in Logic Analyzer? Now go to the Experiments section and click on the Logic Analyzer instrument as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. Test and Measurement Page Now a screen as shown in Figure 5 should open which is the main screen for Logic Analyzer Instrument. Figure 5. Logic Analyzer Main Page On the right, you can see three buttons i.e Start, Plot Data and Raw Data. Below that selection for the number of channels is provided. And at last, the time measurement tool is provided which can measure the time difference between different edges of different digital waves. The graph at the center is the place where all the waves generated will be plotted. Now as we have generated four different waves, we need to navigate to…