Educational tools teach test basics

16th May 2016

Spectrum GmbH

Mick Elliott

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A number of academic tools that can be used to learn the basics of waveform generation, acquisition and analysis are being made available by Spectrum. The tools are freely available for download on the Spectrum website and are designed so that they can be used by teachers and other educators for structured learning classes or by students who wish to follow a self-tutorial style process.

The academic tools are also helpful for first time digitiser and AWG users wanting to learn the basics of these instruments.

At the heart of the academic tools is the SBench 6 software. SBench 6 is an advanced program that provides a graphical user interface for control of PC based instrumentation such as Digitisers and Arbitrary Waveform Generators (AWG's). SBench 6 is especially designed for the high speed instruments from Spectrum which cover the range from 100kS/s (100 kilo samples per second) up to 5GS/s thus being suitable for signal frequencies from a few kHz up to GHz range.

A key feature of SBench 6 is that it can operate with simulated demonstration hardware allowing the user to effectively manipulate virtual instruments, without the need to have real hardware.

The program not only enables simulated instrument control but it also allows data display, manipulation, analysis and documentation.

Installing the SBench 6 program on a PC effectively turns it into an easy-to-use virtual instrumentation platform.

The educational tools include the SBench 6 program, articles explaining its use, a step-by-step guide that shows the process for installing virtual hardware and a number of examples that demonstrate how to create, capture and analyse waveforms.

The examples are easy to follow and explain the different ways that signals can be generated, how to make basic measurements (such as waveform parameters) and how to perform analysis (such as spectral analysis with a Fast Fourier Transformation or FFT).