Web based virtual oscilloscope for underwater acoustic signals

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport (NUWCDIVNT) has developed a virtual digital oscilloscope that has the unique capability of tapping various nodes of a signal data stream in a digital signal processor (DSP). The NUWCDIVNPT Virtual Oscilloscope (NVO) is written in the Java programming language and is accessible using any web browser. The implementation includes most of the functionality found on an ordinary bench-top oscilloscope, including trigger source and mode selection, vertical and horizontal scale controls, and interactive cursors. The virtual scope is used to observe exercise data (real time or simulated), and for trouble shooting signal processor hardware via the Internet. The NVO software was designed using the Unified Modeling Language Object Oriented design methodology. One of the primary design goals for the NVO was to ensure that the design not only met the requirements for processing and displaying data from a DSP, but that the design was easily extensible for other data sources without a major redesign and re-coding effort. Object oriented design methodologies such as inheritance, encapsulation, data abstraction and polymorphism enabled these design goals to be achieved. This paper discusses the role of object oriented design methods used to design the NVO.