Signal Generator
Signal generators, also known variously as function generators, RF and microwave signal generators, pitch generators, arbitrary waveform generators, digital pattern generators or frequency generators are electronic devices that generate repeating or non-repeating electronic signals (in either the analog or digital domains). They are generally used in designing, testing, troubleshooting, and repairing electronic or electroacoustic devices; though they often have artistic uses as well.
There are many different types of signal generators, with different purposes and applications (and at varying levels of expense); in general, no device is suitable for all possible applications.
Traditionally, signal generators have been embedded hardware units, but since the age of multimedia-PCs, flexible, programmable software tone generators have also been available.
Read more about Signal Generator: Special Purpose Signal Generators, Technical Trends Driving The ARB Industry
Famous quotes containing the words signal and/or generator:
“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“He admired the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only with the weakening of this generator whose fecundity diminishes with age that he could hope for his torture to be appeased. But it appeared that the power to make him suffer of one of Odette’s statements seemed exhausted, then one of these statements on which Swann’s spirit had until then not dwelled, an almost new word relayed the others and struck him with new vigor.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)