Software toolkit simplifies using LabView for digital-filter design
By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, March 17, 2005
To efficiently design digital filters, engineers rely on a variety of software tools for iterative design, optimization, and implementation. National Instruments’ $995 LabView Digital-Filter-Design Toolkit Version 7.5 provides a single graphical-software tool that engineers can use throughout the design process to quickly and interactively design custom filters for such tasks as noise reduction, signal extraction, antialiasing, and resampling on FPGA devices in the manufacturer’s PCI and PXI plug-in modules and CompactRlO embedded-system platforms (Picture). The toolkit also generates ANSI C code for use on fixed- and floating-point DSP targets.
The package, which includes four new Express VIs (virtual instruments) for interactive configuration and provides many standard digital-filter-design algorithms for fine-tuning of specifications, features state-of-the-art algorithms such as the Remez exchange method and the least Pth norm method for advanced applications, telecommunications, and electronics design. Engineers who lack sufficient signal-processing experience can access nearly 50 sample VIs to speed their path up the learning curve.
Says Shawn McCaslin, senior R&D group manager for signal processing and math at NI, “The toolkit’s combination of comprehensive filter-design tools and easy-to-use LabView Express technology make it a quick and accurate tool to guide engineers and students from theory to implementation without requiring multiple software platforms.”
National Instruments, 1-800-258-7022, www.ni.com/toolkits.
