A low-cost digital simulator for performance evaluation of computer relays

This paper describes a PC-based open-loop digital simulator that was developed using a general-purpose data-acquisition card and a graphical programming language called Visual Designer. It did not require any text-based programming for tasks such as interfacing, digital-to-analog conversion, and outputting the generated waveforms under DMA control. The simulator was utilized to evaluate the performance of a computer relay. Some test results are presented.