xPC Target

Signal Acquisition

The xPC Target real-time kernel stores signal data from the target application in RAM on the target PC. You can use this signal data to analyze and visualize signals. xPC Target supports the following types of signal acquisition:

• Signal monitoring -- This is the process for acquiring signal data without time information. In this mode, you can get the current value of one or more signals. The data is not acquired in the real-time task but in the background task. The advantage of this process is that collecting data does not add any computational load to running the real-time application.

• For example, if you have a LED Gauge in a Simulink model on the host PC, you could use signal monitoring to display the status of the signal.

• Signal logging -- This is the process of acquiring signal data while a target application is running, and then visualizing the collected data after the target application stops running. The data is collected in the real-time task and acquired samples are associated with a time stamp. After the run reaches its final time or you manually stop the run, the host PC makes a request to upload data from the target PC. You can then visualize signals by plotting data on the host PC, or you can save data to a disk.
• Signal tracing -- This is the process of acquiring and visualizing signal data while a target application is running. The data is collected in the real-time task and acquired samples are associated with a time stamp. It allows you to acquire signal data and visualize it on the target PC or to upload the signal data and visualize it on the host PC while the target application is running. The flexibility of this acquisition type is very similar to the behavior of a digital oscilloscope.

For information on the various ways to acquire signal data with xPC Target, see User Interaction, Signal Monitoring with MATLAB, Signal Logging, and Signal Tracing.

Real-Time Application

Parameter Tuning