Study of virtual instrument technology applied in sound field test

Abstract

As a widely used technology in the field of test and measurement, virtual instrument (VI) combines high-performance modular hardware with flexible software to perform a variety of experimental tasks. In order to perform the sound field test in laboratory, we build an specialized platform of VI, whose hardware system mainly consists of multi-channel data acquisition boards, independence analyzer, mechanical positioning device, and industrial personal computer equipped with PXI, GPIB, and Ethernet bus interface. Also, a graphical VI programming language (LabVIEW) is adopted to develop the corresponding software system. With this VI platform, we measure the impedance property of transducers and the sound field of a phased array composed of them. The results show that the transducers are positioned correctly by the mechanical positioning device, the excitation time of every transducer of the phased array is controlled accurately, and finally a set of high-quality waveforms are acquired.