PC and microcontroller based logic circuit analyzer

Date

3-2006

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics

College

College of Arts and Sciences (CAS)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Alvin Joseph J. Faustino

Abstract

A logic analyzer that analyzes and displays digital signals and state transitions of medium scale logic circuits was designed, constructed, and tested. The instrument displays the logic signal transitions exhibited by each channel connected to the device under test. The study has three main phases namely software development, hardware design and construction, and device testing. The ZiLOG microcontroller used was programmed to enable it to acquire data from the circuit under test and transfer it to the computer through the UART. The main user-interface software was created using Visual Basic 6.0 and was able to show sufficient amount of data to view the transitions of the signals of the circuits under test. The analyzer was calibrated by testing it on different signal frequencies using a function generator. The maximum acquisition frequencies derived on this test were 1.46 MHz, 1.11 MHz, 1.06 MHz, and 876 kHz for the 8, 16, 23, and 28 channels respectively. The computed maximum signal frequencies were 146 kHz, 111.8 kHz, 106.9 kHz, and 86.7 kHz for the 8-channels, 16-channels, 23-channels, and 28 channels timing mode respectively. Also a set of medium speed logic circuits was tested and their logic analysis and graphs were recorded and studied. Results showed that the logic analyzer timing mode was able to analyze medium scale digital circuits that have typical frequencies of around 500Hz to 100 kHz. Although frequencies above this range would still exhibit recognizable transition patterns, the more acceptable signal frequencies must be 10 times the acquisition frequency in order to get more accurate number of samples.

Language

English

Location

UPLB Main Library Special Collections Section (USCS)

Call Number

Thesis

Document Type

Thesis

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