Control options

The condition for the analog output is set with the Output rate (Hz/ch) and Start output control on Control Options section.

The Start output condition can be set either to:

• on start acq. which means that the output starts with the data acquisition
• manual - the signal output start can be started manually during the data acquisition.

The Output rate of the function generator is not related to the sampling rate and should be more than 10 times higher than the highest output frequency to avoid harmonic distortion.

If Show info channels are enabled the values of the parameter channels (amplitude, phase angle, offset and frequency) are additionally available as dedicated channels in the instrument views and mathematics.

If Stop measurement after finish is enabled the data acquisition will be stopped after the signal output has been finished. This requires a defined Cycles (n)umber for output in the Operation modes.

The start and stop of generation can be either on start acq.(acquisition) or manual. Each operation mode carries different manual control:

• at the fixed frequency the generation can be started and stopped
• at burst mode, the individual bursts are issued with manual control
• at stepped sweep, we can go manually to the next frequency

The start and stop of generation can be with a half sine window, so the amplitude will not rise from 0 to full amplitude immediately, but within a certain time which ensures that the systems under test don’t suffer from impact shock.

Show control channels option allows the user to change the output parameters via control channels. Measurement screens could have sliders and knobs to control function generator.

If this option is chosen, then the rates of change must be defined first in the channel setup screen to define maximum change when the slider is changed.

In the measurement screen, we can add control channels. First, we choose the control channel icon next, we assign what we want to control. Depending on the operation mode of the function generator, we can control frequency for all output channels and amplitude, phase and offset for each channel.

Now we can change the type of the control channel from text entry to horizontal, vertical slider or analog gage and create a perfect control layout for function generator.