Virtual Instruments

You can use multiple virtual instances of the WTS . All virtual instruments share the same WTS physical hardware. Each virtual instrument can also have multiple personality instances, called configuration spaces, which perform generation or analysis for a wireless personality. The following figure shows the WTS instrument, virtual instruments, and configuration spaces.

In traditional instruments, if you have four test stations that each control a DUT, and want to share a physical instrument among the test stations, only one test station at a time can access the physical instrument. Each test station must also be aware of when the other stations are using the physical instrument, or use VISA locks while one station is accessing the instrument to prevent access from other test stations. For example, in the following figure, Client B must wait until Client A releases the physical instrument before it can access it.

Using WTS , each test station can interact with its own virtual instrument, which it can program completely, as if it were the sole user of the WTS instrument. In the following figure, the virtual instrument attached to Client A is a different virtual instrument than the one attached to Client B. In this way, you can share the same physical hardware among multiple test stations and concurrently run different test plans that traditionally would require exclusive control of the physical hardware.

To further maximize efficiency by reducing communication overhead, each virtual instrument has multiple instances of personality configuration spaces. Each configuration space can be configured for a general measurement set, such as GPRF. Each configuration space likewise has multiple results spaces, which allow for initiation of measurements even before the prior measurement has completed.

If you are using multiple virtual instruments, each virtual instrument is identified by its own VISA address in MAX, such as TCPIP:192.168.0.10:Instr0, where Instr0 is the VISA address assigned in MAX.