IVI Instrument Drivers and MATLAB

MATLAB supports the use of IVI-C and IVI-COM instrument drivers through Instrument Control Toolbox. You can use MATLAB software to control instruments, make measurements, analyze data, and build test systems. Once data is in MATLAB, you can analyze and visualize that data for tasks such as signal processing, statistical analysis, digital filtering, and curve fitting.

The IVI standard defines an open driver architecture, a set of instrument classes, and shared software components. IVI instrument drivers often ship with an instrument or are available from the manufacturer’s Web site.

Find IVI Instrument Drivers

• Instrument driver search tool (search by model name or number)
• IVI Foundation Driver Registry

Working with IVI Instrument Drivers from MATLAB

While you can work with all IVI drivers directly from Instrument Control Toolbox, some IVI drivers require you to generate a MATLAB IVI instrument driver from the IVI driver. Certain IVI-COM instrument drivers do not require this step and can be used directly from MATLAB. Before generating a MATLAB IVI instrument driver, search for preconfigured MATLAB IVI instrument drivers.

Notes:

• IVI-COM drivers can be used from 32-bit MATLAB only.
• IVI-C drivers can be used from 32-bit or 64-bit MATLAB. To minimize the need to have different MATLAB code for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, it is recommended to use the IVI-C driver. For further details on using IVI drivers in MATLAB, refer to the Getting Started with IVI Drivers product documentation.

Communication Protocols

If an IVI driver is not available for your instrument, you can communicate with your instrument either by using a VXIplug&playinstrument driver or by directly communicating with the instrument over any of these communication protocols:

• GPIB
• Serial
• TCP/IP
• UDP
• VISA

Resources

• IVI Getting Started Guide (Chapter 6): Using IVI with MATLAB
• Using MATLAB with Agilent Instruments (Demo, also applies to other manufacturers)
• IVI Foundation
• Using MATLAB Software with Keithley Instruments through IVI Instrument Drivers (PDF)
• Using MATLAB to Configure and Control Tabor’s Wonder Wave Series with IVI Drivers (PDF)

Learn more about Test and Measurement

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