FPGA-based system for the education in data acquisition and signal generation

Abstract

Signal generation, signal conditioning and data acquisition systems usually have fixed structures, whose functionality cannot be modified. In an educational context, students can only modify some of their functional parameters and check the effect of such changes on the generation and acquisition processes. This paper presents a reconfigurable signal generation, conditioning and acquisition system that, in addition to cover these basic educational tasks, allow students to test different structures and to choose the most suitable for a given application. It basically consists of a SCXI environment from national instruments and an FPGA development board, which adds reconfigurability capabilities to the system. An application example is discussed, in which functionality is reconfigured for reading an incremental encoder and generating a PWM signal.