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Arbitrary Waveform Generator - Help me get started Plz

Hossein Ghaffari Nik
Prodigy 70 points
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: DAC3484, DAC5688, DAC5682Z, DAC3283

Hello All,

I have worked mostly with Microchip's microcontrollers and some regular DACs and DDSs to generate Sine, Triangular and square waves of different low frequencies in the past. 

I would like some guidance as to what ICs I should use to accomplish an arbitrary waveform generator that is capable of outputting frequencies up to 20 to 50 MHz.  I am a bit familiar with how it is supposed to be done and I envision this to be a microcontroller or a DSP that has 1 period of the signal (any random signal) in the memory (or calculate it on the fly then stores it in the memory)  and then using DMA updates an external or internal high speed DAC.

I know to get a good clean signal I would need to sample it almost 10x faster than the signal frequency and that's where I have no experience with high speed data conversions and things that I need to consider.

Any help that would get me started with the right IC combinations  is greatly appreciated.

Warm Regards,

HoSsEiN

  • 0
    TI__Guru* 79214 points

    Hello Hossein,

    Pretty much all of our high speed DACs such as the DAC3283, DAC5682z, DAC5688, DAC3484, etc, can be used to as DDS to generate sine, triangular, and square waves. Our high speed DACs are designed to interface with FPGAs or custom ASICs with continuous data transfer with either LVDS bus or CMOS bus. I am not familiar with DSP's DMA update. There is a possibility of dead time after transferring large amount of data. You may need to have a FPGA to interface between the DSP and the DAC. 

    The TSW3070 EVM board is a good demonstration of high speed signal generator front end with TI high speed DAC and amps. You may refer to the link below for detail:

    http://www.ti.com/tool/tsw3070evm

    -KH