Acquiring an I/Q Waveform

The Digital Signal Transceiver Driver allows you to receive digital data through the high-speed serial link from the device and emulate acquiring the RF signal in an I/Q waveform from the digital TRM. Complete the following steps to acquire I/Q data.

  1. Verify the rate of data arriving from the high-speed serial and set up the value in the API, if not automatically obtained through the FPGA firmware. In general, this value is fixed, and it can only be queried.
  2. Configure the acquisition properties, trigger properties, and the specific test parameters.
  3. Commit the properties to the instrument to set up the system to receive data.
  4. Initiate the acquisition process, which will make the instrument ready to receive data, wait for triggers, or any other means to start acquiring.
  5. Fetch the data from the onboard memory to the host.
  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 as many times as necessary to obtain all data.
  7. Stop and release hardware after you are done with acquisition.
  8. Transfer the I/Q data into NI-RFmx or any other software for analysis or processing the specific measurements.

The following fundamentals are important to understand when acquiring I/Q data.