can PXI AWGs produce a train of ramped square waves

[abondy]

Hi I'm looking at purchasing a NI PXI 5413 waveform generator. I know this has the ability for producing arbitrary waveforms but I'm hoping I can achieve what I want with the built-in function generation capabilities. I want to produce a train of square wave pulses where each pulse has a specified ramp-on and ramp-off time. Is this possible without specifying an arbitrary waveform? Thanks!

[pipipi0405]

Do you mean you want to specify a duty cycle for each cycle of the square wave? In that case a MultifunctionDAQ such as NI 6341 might be sufficient, and you can use NI-DAQmx to program duty cycle for each cycle. However, DAQ has limitation in the maximum frequency of the square wave (40MHz, I think) and the frequency you can specify is limited. If you need to generate a square wave that has frequency that is not supported by DAQ then you would need an AWG. In AWG, you specify the frequency and amplitude with this function below:

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/370524V-01/nifgenlv/nifgen_configure_standard_waveform/

Or you can create a frequency list with the function below and change the frequency for every cycle

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/370524V-01/nifgenlv/nifgen_create_frequency_list/

but the duty cycle is always 0.5 and cannot be changed.

You will need to create an arbitrary function to do what you want to do.