A Novel Technique for Acquisition and Presentation of Complex Vibration Waveforms

Oscilloscopes are traditionally used for the graphical presentation and analysis of electrical waveforms. In many experiments, waveform acquisition and live presentation forms the heart of the problem. In particular, data acquisition and presentation of repeating complex signals like sine sweep in vibration generation and testing and frequency-modulated signals in radar and sonar applications offers the challenge of live waveform presentation and their basic measurements. In this paper, we present a new, robust, fast, and simple technique for waveform period estimation in the time domain and oscilloscope triggering for both complex and simple waveforms. The proposed technique, namely, the normalized degree of difference (DOD), has both these capabilities, and it has been verified by extensive software simulations and implementation on the National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW-PXI platform. Successful real-time results are obtained for the sine sweep vibration waveform. The proposed technique, simulation, and implementation results are presented in this paper.