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NI-RFmx interoperable toolkits offer simple access to the most advanced optimization techniques such as multiple measurement parallelism and high-dynamic-range noise correction. The result is extremely fast and high-quality measurements with minimal software development effort. NI-RFmx Spectral Analysis Toolkit Perform spectral measurements such as channel power, adjacent channel power, and occupied bandwidth. NI-RFmx Demodulation Toolkit Perform demodulation measurements on analog and digital modulation signal formats including QAM and ASK.
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NI-RFmx toolkits provide a high-level measurement experience with many advanced optimization features. The API is a single-session architecture built on top of the NI-RFSA instrument driver used in several other NI application software products such as the LTE Measurement Suite. The NI-RFmx API includes high-level parameters that intelligently optimize instrument settings to help you achieve the highest quality measurement with the fewest software calls. Additionally, NI-RFmx has features that vastly simplify the software complexity of multimeasurement parallelism. The modular software architecture offers access to lower level NI-RFSA instrument- and application-specific functions that provide the ultimate balance of ease of use and test code flexibility. NI-RFmx works with all NI software-designed vector signal analyzers (VSAs) and preserves the usage of
NI-RFSA instrument driver FPGA extensions, which are available only on LabVIEW FPGA-enabled products. With NI-RFmx and NI-RFSA instrument driver FPGA extensions, you can maintain the trusted measurement software stack and still benefit from the power of the FPGA for advanced hardware optimizations.

Figure 1. Hardware and Software Architecture
Learn More About Instrument Driver FPGA Extensions
Learn More About the NI-RFSA Instrument Driver
Learn More About NI Software-Designed Instrumentation
The NI-RFmx API is designed to be easy to use without sacrificing measurement performance. You can perform the most basic measurement in as few as four software cells.
Each measurement includes a complete set of functions for customizing parameters such as sweep time or integration bandwidth.
The NI-RFmx API includes multiple interoperable toolkits such as the Spectral Analysis and Demodulation toolkits. Every toolkit includes a VI Tree on the LabVIEW palette. This feature offers a quick guide for programming in LabVIEW so you can build measurement applications quickly.
Figure 2. NI-RFmx Demodulation Toolkit VI Tree
NI-RFmx installs with examples for programming each measurement. Examples include both basic and advanced functionality to give you the appropriate starting point depending on your application goal. In addition to measurement examples, NI-RFmx includes advanced examples that show how to easily use multimeasurement parallelism with results naming, composite measurements, and advanced automation with signal naming. NI-RFmx also features a complete set of documentation including measurement theory and product usage.

Figure 3. NI-RFmx Spectral Analysis Toolkit Simple Example Block Diagram
Figure 4. NI-RFmx Spectral Analysis Toolkit Example VI Programs
NI-RFmx includes LabVIEW, C, and .NET APIs. Though LabVIEW offers many programming benefits, such as the VI Tree and inline data visualization, all the core benefits of the
NI-RFmx approach also apply to the most common text languages such as C and .NET. Similar to LabVIEW, NI-RFmx has basic and advanced examples for programming in text-based languages.

Table 1. NI-RFmx Spectral Analysis Toolkit Measurement Device Support
Table 2. NI-RFmx Demodulation Toolkit Analog Measurement Device Support

Table 3. NI-RFmx Demodulation Toolkit Digital Measurement Device Support
NI-RFmx is a measurement-centric API that gives you easy access to advanced optimization such as
Composite measurements
Multimeasurement parallelism with results naming
Measurement automation with signal naming
Instrument driver FPGA extensions
To better understand how you can use NI-RFmx to optimize your test application, review the four fundamental operations to complete any measurement:
Configure measurement parameters
Acquire raw data
Analyze data per configured measurement parameters
Fetch desired results
You can use NI-RFmx to easily build applications from simple serial measurements to advanced parallelism. NI-RFmx is optimized for modular instruments; thus, you can achieve the fastest test times with software that is built to exploit the inherent parallelism in the PXI platform. Since the four operations listed above are performed on different modules in the system, you can easily extract the parallelism inherent in RF measurements. The four key techniques for performing multiple measurements are described below using
NI-RFmx examples: serial measurements, composite measurements, multimeasurement parallelism with results naming, and measurement automation with signal naming.
The most straightforward way to perform multiple measurements is serially. You can easily make serial measurements using NI-RFmx. Every supported measurement includes a
“Read” function that initiates an acquisition, analyzes the data, and fetches the results. In Figure 5, a channel power (CHP) measurement is performed and then a transmit power
(TXP) measurement is performed. Since these measurements are implemented serially, each measurement has its own independent acquisition. With NI-RFmx, the code to perform these measurements is intuitive, so you can get started quickly.

Figure 5. NI-RFmx Serial Measurement Program Execution Flow
When you want to perform two measurements on the same signal, use a composite measurement. These measurements share a single data acquisition and analyze data in multiple ways. An additional benefit of composite measurements is you can analyze the data in parallel, which reduces the total time to perform the same measurements serially.
In the example below, two measurements are enabled, ACP and TXP. The Initiate function starts the two measurements by triggering the PXI module to acquire a single set of data. After the acquisition is complete, the data is transferred to the host. Then NI-RFmx spawns threads to analyze the data in parallel. You can fetch the results when analysis is complete. Composite measurements offer not only speed but also measurement results based on a single data set, which reduces the measurement uncertainty of multiple data acquisitions.
Figure 6. NI-RFmx Composite Measurement Program Execution Flow
Many automated test applications require multiple independent measurements on a single instrument. Such applications include amplifier frequency/power sweeps or multi-DUT wireless device test. Often engineers implement these applications by serially sequencing measurements. With NI-RFmx, you can easily decouple acquisition from analysis with a feature called Results Naming. This feature works when measurements in a sequence are independent of previous results and both measurements are performed on separate acquisitions, unlike composite measurements. This technique vastly reduces the overall test time for a sequence of many measurements.
In the example below, ACP and TXP are performed on different acquisition configurations. This simple program completes the following operations.
Initiate ACP acquisition.
Wait for ACP acquisition to be complete and the PXI module to be released. NI-RFmx pawns a thread for ACP analysis, but this is not visible to you.
Initiate TXP acquisition (likely before ACP analysis is complete).
Wait for TXP acquisition to be complete (likely before ACP analysis is complete).
Fetch both measurement results when their respective analysis threads are complete.
The key feature in NI-RFmx is Results Naming. In this example, both measurements are initiated and tagged with a name, and that name is then used to fetch the results. You can see the parallelism clearly in this example. The benefit of this technique only improves with more measurements in your sequence. Depending on the computational complexity of the measurement, this technique can have a huge impact on overall test time. Measurement parallelism is a known technique to reduce test time; NI-RFmx makes this easier by managing threads and results so you can develop and realize the benefit of PXI faster.

Figure 7. NI-RFmx Multimeasurement Parallelism Program Execution Flow
The following measurements were performed with a PXIe-8135 embedded controller using the PXIe-5644R vector signal transceiver (VST). The PXIe-5665 VSA was used for the high dynamic range with noise correction tests. All benchmarks were taken with 100 measurements in a loop. Table 4 shows the average per point. From these results, you can see that multimeasurement parallelism always has some benefit, but that benefit is more apparent for measurements that spend a large amount of time undergoing computation analysis, such as EVM. A test program with computation-dominated measurements like EVM shows significant speedup over acquisition-dominated measurements like high-dynamic-range ACPR.
Table 4. Multimeasurement Parallelism Average per Point Benchmark
Instrument reconfiguration can complicate and slow down a test program. With NI-RFmx, you can make reconfiguration easier by preconfiguring multiple measurements based on a signal name. In the example below, 300 independent measurement configurations are preassigned a name. In the inner loop, configurations are recalled by name, which removes the need to configure individual parameters. Fewer function calls are required in the inner loop, so test time and software complexity are reduced. You can use NI-RFmx signal naming and results naming together, as shown in this example, to achieve highly optimized parallel measurement performance with minimal code complexity.

Figure 8. NI-RFmx Automation With Signal Naming Program Execution Flow
For NI software-designed instruments, NI-RFmx preserves support for instrument driver FPGA extensions, so you can pair advanced optimizations, such as fast power servo or automated DUT control, with the power and ease of use of NI-RFmx. The benefit is the performance of the FPGA with a known and trusted measurement stack with long-term compatibility. Instrument driver FPGA extensions apply to NI VSAs such as the industry-leading PXIe-5646R VST and the best-in-class 26.5 GHz wideband PXIe-5668R VSA.
Figure 9. NI-RFSA Instrument Driver FPGA Extensions and NI-RFmx Integration Diagram
Learn More About Vector Signal Transceivers
Learn More About Power Amplifiers
NI-RFmx Spectral Analysis Toolkit Model Page
NI-RFmx Demodulation Toolkit Model Page
NI-RFmx Integrated Application Example
NI-RFmx with LTE Measurement Suite Example
Table 5. Typical Measurement Results for PXIe-5665 and VST Product Lines

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