Communication Systems Laboratory Ali Fahim Khan

Function Generator

Introduction

The purpose of this lab is to introduce to the students the basics of function generator. It is assumed that
the student already knows and has worked on an oscilloscope. These are commonly used engineering
instruments and a thorough understanding of these is required for future labs.
As the name implies, a function generator is an instrument used to generate a deterministic signal having
known characteristics thereby enabling an engineer or technician to test and examine a circuit.

Objectives

During this lab, you will use the function generator to generate a number of signals and to analyze those
signals using an analog oscilloscope. You shall become familiar with waveforms including sinusoidal,
square, and triangular.

Equipment

Table 1 Required equipment for the lab

Qty Equipment

1 Function generator

1 BNC to 2 alligator clips cable

1 Digital Oscilloscope

1 10X probes of analog Oscilloscope

Theory
Function Generator

The signal generator is exactly what its name implies: a generator of signals used as a stimulus for
electronic measurements. Most circuits require some type of input signal whose amplitude varies over
time. The signal may be a true bipolar AC1 signal (with peaks oscillating above and below a ground
reference point) or it may vary over a range of DC offset voltages, either positive or negative. It may be a
sine wave or other analog function, a digital pulse, a binary pattern or a purely arbitrary wave shape.
 Communication Systems Laboratory Ali Fahim Khan

Fig. 1 Front panel view of ED Laboratory FG-1882 function generator

Table 2 Specifications of ED FG1882 function generator

Function generator specifications

Model ED Laboratory FG-1882

Frequency range 0.01 Hz - 10 MHz in 9-decade Range

Waveform sine, square, triangle, ramp and pulse

Output (level): 20 Vp-p (10 Vp-p into 5 Ohm

Attenuator 0, 20, 40, 60 dB and variable

Impedance 50 Ohm +- 10 %

Sweep (Mode) Linear and Logarithmic

Time 1 ms-10s
 Communication Systems Laboratory Ali Fahim Khan

Signal generators have hundreds of different applications. Some of these include:

Testing Digital Modular Transmitters and Receivers

Wireless equipment designers developing new transmitter and receiver hardware must simulate baseband
I&Q signals with and without impairments to verify conformance with emerging and proprietary
wireless standards. Some high-performance arbitrary waveform generators can provide the needed low
distortion, high-resolution signals at rates up to 1 gigabit per second (1 Gbps), with two independent
channels, one for the I phase and one for the Q phase. Sometimes the actual RF signal is needed to
test a receiver.
Testing D/A and A/D Converters

Newly-developed digital-to-analog converters (DAC) and analog to-digital converters (ADC) must be
exhaustively tested to determine their limits of linearity, monotonicity, and distortion. A state-of-the-art
Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) can generate simultaneous, in-phase analog and digital signals to
drive such devices at speeds up to 1 Gbps.

Stressing Communication Receivers

Engineers working with serial data stream architectures (commonly used in digital communications buses
and disk drive amplifiers) need to stress their devices with impairments, particularly jitter and timing
violations. Advanced signal generators save the engineer untold hours of calculation by providing
efficient built-in jitter editing and generation tools. These instruments can shift critical signal edges as
little as 200 fs (0.2 ps).

Waveforms

There are two types of alternating-current signals, which are also called waveforms:

Periodic
Non-periodic

Periodic signals, such as sine or triangle waves, behave in a uniform manner and repeat themselves over
a given length of time. Each repetition of a repeating signal is called a period or a cycle. Some examples
of waveforms are given in fig. 2
 Communication Systems Laboratory Ali Fahim Khan

Figure 2 Some examples of waveforms.

Non-periodic signals, such as analog voice, behave in a non-uniform manner and do not repeat
themselves over any given length of time.

Note: In this lab, we will only work with periodic signals.

When working with AC signals, there are three properties of the signal that we are concerned
with: amplitude, period and frequency.

Modes:

A function generator offers various modes of operations. Some are:

Burst mode: In this mode, the function generator can be made to produce either single-cycle waveforms,
or short bursts of waveform separated by periods of 0V output. This mode enables the user to create a low
duty cycle waveform. An application could be that of microcontroller characterization.

Sweep mode: This mode enables the user to create a signal that monotonically increases its frequency
from a set low up to a high value. Once the high value of frequency is achieved, the signal changes its
frequency back to the low value. The increment can be linear or logarithmic and the speed of change of
frequency can be changed.

Gate mode: This mode enables the user to multiply the output of the function generator with an arbitrary
square wave form.

The function generator shall be covered in depth during the demonstration by the instructor.

Perform the following experiments.

 Communication Systems Laboratory Ali Fahim Khan

Experiments No.1

Generate and observe the waveform , where A=100 mV and f=5kHz.

Remember the A is in millivolts and not volts. Use the attenuator function.

Capture the waveform by digital oscilloscope.

Smooth the waveform using the average feature keeping M=4, 16 and 128.

Acquire the data and recreate in MATLAB.

Contrast the differences between non-smoothed, and smoothed waveforms. Explain the reason for the
difference.

Experiment No.2

Create a pulse waveform with 20% duty cycle and 90% duty cycle with peak to peak voltage of 1v and
1kHz

Capture the waveform by digital oscilloscope.

Acquire the data and recreate in MATLAB

Experiment No. 3

Create a saw tooth waveform with positive slope and negative slope.

Capture the waveform by digital oscilloscope.

Acquire the data and recreate in MATLAB

Experiment No. 4

Use the sweep mode under linear and logarithmic option to give a sweep frequency between 1kHz and 7
kHz. Change the time for the sweep and observe. You do not need to submit this part.

Experiment No. 5

Use the burst mode and observe by changing the burst time. You do not need to submit this part.

Experiment No. 6

Use the gate function to gate a sinusoidal wave created in experiment no 2 to a 10Hz, 20% duty cycle
pulse wave.

Capture the waveform by digital oscilloscope.

Acquire the data and recreate in MATLAB

 Communication Systems Laboratory Ali Fahim Khan

References

[1] http://circuitslab.case.edu/manuals/Signal_Generator_Fundamentals-_Tektronix.pdf