A PC-Based Multifunctional Virtual Oscilloscope

A cost effective and flexible DAQ card and PC sound card based multifunctional virtual oscilloscope with time domain analysis, frequency domain analysis, joint time-frequency domain analysis and data analysis function is presented. The NI Labview based virtual instrument was designed and developed with the capability to acquire, display and analyze signals in time-frequency domain using the short time Fourier transform analysis (STFT) and wavelet transform analysis tool kits in Labview and also carry out data analysis functions such as curve fitting (regression analysis) and statistics measurement (mean, median, and mode). The PC sound card used as an alternate signal acquisition in the proposed virtual oscilloscope makes the system flexible for school laboratory and the time-frequency analysis functions, data analysis functions of the virtual instrument makes the system a compact multifunctional virtual oscilloscope for signal (stationary and nonstationary signals) and data analysis in the laboratory.