Outline:
RF Applications Development Detailed Course Outline
Day One
Chapter 1 - Hardware Architecture
- Introduction to PXI Architecture
- Introduction to PXI Express Architecture
- Overview of NI PXI RF platform
- RF Applications with NI RF platform
Chapter 2 - Understanding RF Measurement
Hardware
- Applications
- Vector Signal Analyzers and Spectrum Analyzers
- Vector Signal Generators and CW generators
Chapter 3 - Hardware Configuration
- Hardware Modules
- PXI-5661
- PXI-567x
- Measurement and Automation Explorer
- MAX configuration of PXI-5661
- MAX configuration of PXI-567x
- MAX Test Panels for PXI-5661 & PXI-567x
Chapter 4 - Analog Down Conversion and Up Conversion
- Architecture of PXI-5600 and PXI-5610
- Architecture of PXI-5600 down converter
- Architecture of PXI-5610 up converter
- 10 MHz Reference Clock
- NI-RFSA and NI-RFSG driver
- Programming the PXI-567x with NI-RFSG
- Programming the PXI-5661 with NI-RFSA
- PXI-5600 and PXI-5610 attenuation settings
- PXI-565x Continuous Wave Source
- Hardware architecture
- Programming with NI-RFSG
- Tuning Speed
- Modulation Capabilities
- Introduction to the Spectral Measurements Toolkit
- Toolkit Architecture
- Zoom FFT algorithms
- Programming with SMT
Day Two
Chapter 5 - Digital Down Conversion, Digital Up
Conversion, Digitizers and Sources
- Digital down conversion and up conversion
- PXI-5142 Digitizer and PXI-5441 Arbitrary
Waveform Generator
- IF Bandwidth
- Digital IF Equalization
- Hardware versus Software re-sampling
- Speed and memory concerns for IF hardware
- NI RF hardware summary
Chapter 6 - Communications and Modulation
- Modulation Toolkit Overview
- Palette organization
- Analog Modulation
- Digital Modulation
- Visualizing data with Constellation Plots and Eye
Diagrams
- Digital Modulation Measurements
- BER, MER, EVM, Burst Timing and Rho functions
- Channel coding
- Impairments
Chapter 7 - Additional RF Hardware
- Pre-amplification of RF signals
- Explanation of an RF preamplifier
- Noise floor improvement
- Introduction to the PXI-5690
- RF Switching
- Types of switches
- Switch performance
- Insertion loss
- VSWR
- NI RF switching
- NI-Switch API
- Switch Executive
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