Engineers and Students Now Can Program DSPs with National Instruments LabVIEW

“With the release of the new LabVIEW DSP Module, DSP developers and students have a graphical, system-level alternative for programming their DSP devices,” said Gene Frantz, senior fellow, Texas Instruments. “As our devices grow in capabilities and sophistication, the role of graphical, system-level design and development tools will continue to increase in importance.”

The LabVIEW DSP Module extends LabVIEW core capabilities to directly program Texas Instruments TMS320C6711 and C6713 DSK evaluation boards and NI SPEEDY-33 boards with signal processing functions and programming constructs, such as spectral analysis and filtering, without requiring a separate DSP compiler. Because LabVIEW features an intuitive graphical environment, engineering professors can integrate the new software into their signal processing, communications, control and filter design courses to help students quickly and easily build everything from communications systems to complex motor control applications. By using LabVIEW to develop these applications, students can focus on the concepts and results rather than tedious implementation details and avoid programming in low-level, text-based languages.

Currently, engineers programming DSP devices spend most of their time performing tasks that involve multiple, time-consuming steps to make small changes. With the LabVIEW DSP Module, they can more quickly reduce iteration design cycles and overall development time and make changes in real time on their actual DSP hardware to instantly display results. The LabVIEW DSP Module is ideal for application areas such as communications, custom-control algorithms, digital and least-mean-square (LMS) filtering and audio processing and analysis.

“Traditionally in signal processing courses, students are required to have significant experience programming in complex, text-based languages, in addition to understanding often complicated math and analysis principles,” said Dr. Geoffrey Orsak, dean of the Southern Methodist University School of Engineering and pioneer of The Infinity Project, a highly successful curriculum that uses signal processing to teach engineering concepts in a meaningful and exciting way to high school and early college students. “The new LabVIEW DSP Module provides a configuration-based interface that helps students focus on math and analysis to better understand the application concepts. With LabVIEW, students have an easy-to-use, hands-on method for learning and applying challenging signal processing techniques to real-world applications.”