High-Speed Serial Communication and Interface

One of the important features of the Digital Signal Transceiver Driver is its capacity to change the serial protocol used to communicate with a digital TRM. The PXIe-7903 serial instrument uses the high-performance Xilinx Ultrascale+ FPGA, allowing you to use an IP developed by NI or partners—or instantiate your own IP customized for your needs. The Digital Signal Transceiver also features a serial LabVIEW FPGA abstraction to easily incorporate this serial interface protocol to our firmware for communicating with the device under test (DUT).

To simplify the integration process, NI includes some example protocols already integrated in LabVIEW to facilitate your development. The following is a list of protocols available for this version of DST:

  • JESD204B/C—This protocol communicates with ADCs and DACs directly through many lanes and at high-speed transmission frequencies.
  • Aurora 64B/66B—This protocol communicates between digital devices or PXIe instruments through the serial interface on the module front panel.
  • Ethernet—(4x 10 GbE) This protocol communicates between discrete devices (hardened for flight) or systems through Ethernet protocols.

    • However, independent of the protocol used, you can use the existing DST API by developing a plug-in interface for high-speed serial. This interface helps you reuse most of the offering without changing much of the existing test system. NI provides an example bitfile and packed libraries for you to use with loopback configurations. These bitfiles are located at: 

    <Program Files>\National Instruments\NI-DST

    To support additional protocols or to enable additional features of the example protocols, you must develop a LabVIEW packed library file (.lvlibp) that adapts the serial interface used by DST.

    • Use the Base Class, niDSTS Base.lvclass, to derive your own plugin code. Find niDSTS Base.lvclass in:
      <Program Files>\NI\LVAddons\niDST\1\vi.lib\niDST\niDSTS\niDSTS.lvlibp
    • You can access some plugins for our examples protocol at: 
      <Program Files>\National Instruments\NI-DST\Plugins
    Note Contact NI for more information about implementing the protocols listed above or any other protocol.