Object-oriented design of measurement systems

It is shown that a concurrent, real-time, object-oriented programming paradigm named RTO (real time objects) may be a suitable basis for building the software of an intelligent measurement system. After a presentation of the paradigm, the authors present the software architecture of an RTO-based measurement system, and discuss its advantages in terms of modularity and reusability. Analog-to-digital (A/D), digital-to-analog (D/A), and magnetic measurements on ferrite cores were implemented in order to evaluate the software system. The hardware architecture is based on a waveform analyzer and a polynomial waveform synthesizer connected to a personal computer which functions as the system manager. It is concluded that the real-time features of RTO eliminate problems which arise from hidden systems-or language-dependent issues