Electrical Metrology Applications of LabVIEW Software

Automation in measurement has wide range of electrical metrology applications and construction of powerful calibration software is one of the highly accurate metrological laboratories’ priorities. Thus, two automatic systems for controlling and calibrating the electrical reference standards have been established at National Institute for Standards (NIS), Egypt. The first system has been built to calibrate the zener diode reference standards while the second one has been built to calibrate the electrical sourcing and measuring instruments. These two systems act as the comprehensive and reliable structure that, from the national electrical standards, disseminates the traceability to all the electrical units under calibration. The software of the two systems has been built using the Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) graphical language. The standard development procedures have been followed in the building of both systems software. The software requirement specifications as well as functional specifications are taken into consideration. Design, implementation and testing of the software have been performed. Furthermore, software validation for measurements’ uncertainty as well as results’ compatibility in both automatic and manual modes has been achieved.