TABLE OF CONTENTS Bonnie Stahlin [*]
Agilent Technologies
Loveland, Colorado
This chapter provides an overview of both the software and hardware components of instruments and instrument systems. It introduces the principles of electronic instrumentation, the basic building blocks of instruments, and the way that software ties these blocks together to create a solution. This chapter introduces practical aspects of the design and the implementation of instruments and systems.
Instruments and systems participate in environments and topologies that range from the very simple to the extremely complex. These include applications as diverse as:
Design verification at an engineer s workbench
Testing components in the expanding semiconductor industry
Monitoring and testing of multinational telecom networks
[*] Additional material adapted from Introduction to Electronic Instruments by Randy Coverstone, Electronic Instrument Handbook 2nd edition, Chapter 4, McGraw-Hill, 1995, and Joe Mueller, Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland.
Hardware and software work in concert to meet these diverse applications. Instrument software includes the firmware or embedded software in instru- ments that integrates the internal hardware blocks into a subystem that performs a useful measurement. Instrument software also includes system software that integrates multiple instruments into a single system. These systems are able to perform more extensive analysis than an individual instrument or combine several instruments to perform a task that requires capabilities not included in a single instrument. For example, a particular application might require both a source and a measuring instrument.
Figure 1.1 shows a block diagram of the...
