Synthesis and generation of critical waveforms by means of AWG

The generation of complex waveforms is necessary to comply with the more and more stringent requirements of the modern standards concerned with electronic systems test and measurement. The arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) available on the market provide flexible solutions to generate a number of test signals. In fact, AWGs operate as multifunction generators, support many modulation formats, and allow the user to customize the output waveform. Anyway, the synthesis and generation of a class of modulated waveforms, which are of interest for several applications, still appears difficult even with arbitrary generators. For these applications the ability of the technician is fundamental in order to overcome the obstacles and produce the waveform, forward referred to as critical, needed to complete the test. In the paper, the synthesis of some critical waveforms is discussed and feasible solutions to generate them by means of AWGs are proposed.