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Table of Contents1. Test & Measurement Exciting Times Ahead ........................................................................5

2. Selecting The Right Modular Platform for Test and Measurement ......................... ......10

3. Test & Measurement Whats Coming Up Next ...................................................... ...........13

4. Smart Test & Measurement Supporting Innovation in Other Industries ........................18

5. Top 6 Trends in Test & Measurement ..................................................................................23

6. Testing in manufacture ...........................................................................................................26

7. Optimise Your Test System Smartly .....................................................................................31

8. In-Target test automation and test quality Tools ................................................................34

9. T&M Trends For RF Designers ...................................................................................... .......37

10. Is Your Oscilloscope Smart And Connected? ......................................................... .......42

11. Whats New In Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes ............................................................ .......46

12. Multimeters For High-End Testing .......................................................................... ..........49

EFYREPORT

5T E S T & M E A S U R E M E N T S P E C I A L

New human interface devices like touch, gesture and speech recognition will take centre stage this decade, making it possible to analyse data like never before

TesT & MeasureMeNT exciTiNg TiMes ahead

uMa BaNsal ments have come to be recognised as star performers.

In 2009-10, the T&M industry in India grew by 10.8 per cent. The total market size today stands at Rs 8 bil-lionup from Rs 7.22 billion of the previous fiscal year. Ever-changing technology, application needs, ad-vanced industrial environment and growing demands are inspiring T&M manufacturers to keep in sync. As a re-sult, the T&M industry has witnessed

many changes in terms of technology upgradation, price competency and new products over the last few years.

sectors driving the growthAerospace and defence, telecom, man-ufacturing, government and education sectors are the biggest growth drivers for T&M in India. These sectors need T&M and monitoring tools to help engineers accelerate the performance of computing and networking through high-speed serial technologies; apply digital RF technologies to create flex-ible wireless networks and mobile devices; incorporate embedded sys-tems; and facilitate high-quality video through multiple digital formats and channels.

Apart from these traditional sec-tors, solar and LEDs are the prominent growth drivers today.

The telecom sector needs instru-ments for high-frequency measure-ments. The defence sector needs high-reliability instruments and the educational sector needs low-cost instruments, says Chandmal Goliya, managing director, Kusam Electrical Industries.

The growth of T&M in the tel-ecom sector has been fuelled by the fast growing subscriber base and arrival of new technologies like 3G, WiMAX and LTE. There is a large requirement for on-site installation and service of equipment in telecom, says Manish Kwatra, CEO, Metro Electronic Products.

For telecom applications which combine voice, video and data, devices

Test and measurement (T&M) instruments have remained the backbone of all manufactur-ing and service industries for several decades. But though they play pivotal role in most industrial segments, all the attention was earlier enjoyed by core industry devices. The scenario has, however, changed now. From being a less glorified performer, T&M instru-

Keithley 4225 PMU

EFYREPORT

6 T E S T & M E A S U R E M E N T S P E C I A L

such as protocol analysers, network analysers, volt/amp/watt meters, logic analysers and signal generators are in large demand, adds Rajesh Suresh Joshi, manager-business development, Dynalog (India).

There is tremendous potential for T&M in the defence industry too. Indias total spending on the defence industry is expected to reach $36 bil-lion by 2013. For supplies to defence, it is mandatory that a certain percentage of these be sourced locally even in the procurement deals signed with foreign suppliers, informs Neelam K. Kumar, executive director, Aplab Limited.

The aerospace and defence sector would mostly be interested in high-end vector network analysers, spec-trum analysers and signal generators up to 50 GHz, adds N.V. Valsalan, head-test & measurement and broad-cast, Rohde & Schwarz India.

The increasing automation in vari-ous industries, including automotive, food and beverages, and textiles, will need sophisticated test instruments at various check points of every stage to minimise repairs afterwards in the production lines.

devices availableGautam Awasthi, general manager (marketing), electronic measurement group, Agilent Technologies India, classifies T&M devices into two broad categories based on their usage: Ad-

vanced/application-specific and basic.

Advanced or appli-cation-specific. Equip-ment such as network analysers, protocol testers, spectrum ana-lysers, and cable and antenna testers cater to specific T&M require-ments and therefore fall under application-specific category.

Cable and antenna testers measure cable losses, distance-to-fault functions, etc and are normally used in field installation and maintenance. Similarly, spectrum analysers are used in spectrum monitoring, checking the hopping and interfering signals in a particular band, and characterising any particular communication standard.

Basic. Equipment such as multim-eters, power supplies, function genera-tors, oscilloscopes and frequency coun-ters come under basic category and can be seen on every electronics test bench. These instruments are normally used in general-purpose debugging of the device-under-test.

recent trends driving innovationsWireless. The combination of advanced technical capabilities brought about by digital RF and the increasing customer demand for more functionality and seamless mobility has led to a number of innovations in wireless communi-cations. The latest advancements in T&M are mostly pertinent to WiFi test systems, SIM card tests and network testers.

Latest technologies like LTE use MIMO antennae with 22 configura-tion enabling data rates of 100 Mbps in downlink and up to 50 Mbps in uplink. This means that todays test equip-ment should be able to simulate such scenarios and also handle multiple radio access technologies to facilitate testing, says Valsalan.

Embedded systems. Embedded

technology is being used to deliver new applications and services in a va-riety of industries including consumer electronics, industrial electronics, auto-motive, avionics, medical and commu-nications. A major trend on the design side is energy efficiency. Integration of more switch-mode power supplies in embedded systems is bringing about test issues. The use of a switch-mode power supply obviously introduces switching into the end product.

Another key trend is dynamic pow-er management. Embedded system de-signers using off-the-shelf processors will spend more time looking at power usage. Hence they need to learn how to better program the devices with programmable frequency and voltage scaling.

In general, embedded systems are rapidly becoming more complex and this applies not only to high-end handsets but also to low-cost childrens toys. This, in turn, will lead to system-level test issues, which is eventually leading T&M vendors to package more tests into their instruments.

Serial data communication. The shift from parallel to high-speed serial data communications is one of the sig-nificant trends in recent times. So USB compliance testing is an important area for test and measurement. There are already some six billion USB devices worldwide. And with USB 3.0 poised to enter the design mainstream, its a technology with huge growth potential.

Major applications 1. Communications (cellular test,

wireless and wireline tests, optical)2. Aerospace and defence (surveillance,

signal intelligence)3. Research & development (digital, RF,

microwave, etc)4. Security (surveillance, military

communications)5. Core electronics (data acquisition,

control, automation, semiconductor, component test, nanotechnology, RF and microwave)

Gautam Awasthi General Manager (Marketing)

Electronic Measurement Group Agilent Technologies India

DSA-X 92504A digital signal analyser by Agilent Technologies

EFYREPORT


One important implication for test equipment going forward is that the expertise to validate channel compli-ance needs to be embedded into the instruments. Besides, advanced serial protocols are likely to make probing more challenging.

Video. In the video industry, T&M will continually evolve as new technol-ogies arrive and picture/audio specifi-cations and delivery systems change. It will be a whole new ballgame with digital video and its multiple formats, compression methods, screen sizes and other variations. The transition to higher-resolution digital video requires a new class of test and measurement tools for broadcasters to accommodate newer, faster and more complex tech-nologies such as HD, 3G-SDI and IP.

Semiconductor chips. Keeping up with the design trends is pretty chal-lenging for T&M companies. This eventually means designing ever-more capable front-end ICs for next-genera-tion instruments.

The steadily shrinking prices of microprocessors make it financially feasible to incorporate multiple mi-croprocessors into the design of inex-pensive instruments. In this way, each different instrument function (display, analogue-to-digital conversion, etc) has its own dedicated microprocessor, allowing far higher throughput as no function has to wait its turn for pro-cessing by a central processor.

At the same time, as the worldwide demand of semiconductors for cell-

phones, portable wireless devices and consumer electronics grows, T&M designers have to offer instruments capable of testing the increasingly sophisticated components that go into these devices.

T&M design trendsIncreasingly complex test-ing requirements are driv-ing T&M manufacturers to improve and incorpo-

rate features like multichannel testing, higher bandwidth and smoother PC interface with user-friendly software. Transition from analogue to digital, and from standalone instrument to a total test solution, and development of application-specific test instruments are the primary transitions.

Driven by the user need, there is transition towards hybrid test equipment that occupy less space but perform multiple functions. Test equipment are now no more mere benchtop. These are increasingly be-coming integrated with PCs for real-time measurements and monitoring by adopting PXI (peripheral extension interconnect), PCI (peripheral compo-nent interconnect) PC-based platform and VXI technologies.

Software-defined instrumenta-tion based on National Instruments

LabVIEW graphical programming platform, parallel processing technolo-gies, and new methods for wireless and semiconductor tests help engineers develop faster and more flexible auto-mated test systems.

Also, T&M instruments today in-corporate highly graphical displays/readouts and are easier to interface with external ancillary equipment such as part handlers, probers and switches. Use of new communication interfaces and smart switching is changing the way they are used.

New communication interfaces. Until recently, instruments employed GPIB and serial (RS-232) interfaces for PC communications. Today, however, most system instruments include Eth-ernet, or better yet LXI and USB inter-faces, in addition to the legacy buses, which may be provided as optional or standard equipment.

Over time, higher-performing and lower-cost interfaces will win out over legacy interfaces such as GPIB on rack-and-stack instruments. But this displacement is likely to take years to transpire, anticipates Klaus Leutbecher, vice president-worldwide sales, Keithley Instruments.

Smart switching. Manufacturers of switching hardware for automated testing have been talking up this con-cept for production test applications for close to two decades. Now some new designs employ an embedded

test script processor (TSP) that offers enhanced capabilities for controlling test sequencing/flow, decision-making and in-strument autonomy.

Users program and com-municate with TSP-enabled in-struments in two wayseither by executing individual TSP commands (similar to sending individual SCPI commands) or by writing test scripts. De-signed to reside on the instru-ment or switch mainframe itself, such scripts are a collec-tion (list) of instrument control commands and/or program

Digital storage oscilloscope by Kusam Electrical Industries

MSO 5204 mixed-signal oscilloscope by Tektronix

EFYREPORT


statements that can be executed on command. The use of these scripts can eliminate the transmission time from the PC to the switch system because all commands and statements in the script are executed by the mainframe. For switch mainframes equipped with an LXI interface, all TSP configuration and script loading and data transfer can be performed via this interface, explains Leutbecher.

Whats comingIf the last decade is anything to go by, the next one holds tremendous promise for the test and measurement industry.

We will see ultra-high-speed net-works making it possible to access all the content from the Web online. This could make test and measurement platform-independent and available through the providers portal as a service harnessing the power of mul-tiple connected systems to perform complex measurements and analysis. Perhaps, a more modular app like sys-tem would be the order of the day with minimal footprint on the client device

and demand-based selection of features online, says Yasir Fahim, general man-ager, ADInstruments.

New human in-terface devices like touch, gesture and speech recognition will take centre stage, making it possible to analyse data like nev-er before. Touch-screen panels and ultra-portability are expected to trans-late into significant leaps forward for the test and measurement industry, says Mohammed Ghouse, country manager (business communication), Scientech Technologies.

Wireless sensing will get further refined and more accurate. Tech-nologies such as wireless charging for telemetrical probes will establish in the mainstream right down to the consumer electronics level.

According to Mrs Kumar, De-mand for synthetic instrumentation (with high performance, less footprint, ruggedness, high levels of integration, faster testing, flexibility and reconfigu-rability) is probably the next big wave in T&M.

Ultra-fast I-V sourcing and meas-urement capabilities are becoming increasingly critical for many technolo-gies, including compound semiconduc-tors, medium-power devices, non-vola-tile memories, micro-electromechanical devices (MEMS), nano devices, solar cells and CMOS devices as well as high-power discrete or so-called high-brightness LEDs. Using pulsed I-V signals to characterise devices rather than DC signals makes it possible to study or reduce the effects of self-heating (joule heating) or to minimise current drifting in measurements due to trapped charge.

Transient I-V measurements allow scientists and engineers to capture ultra-high-speed current or voltage waveforms in the time domain or study dynamic test circuits. Pulsed

sourcing can be used to stress test a device using an AC signal during reliability cycling or in a multi-level waveform mode to program/erase memory devices.

Emerging 3G and 4G communica-tions standards are driving invest-ment in the performance products and mainstream embedded applications are increasing in demand.

Spectrum analysers are also seeing an increase in demand as needs for greater wideband performance in radar and spectrum management increase, particularly in intelligence, regulatory monitoring and defence applications.

Manufacturers face challenges, though The challenges before T&M manu-facturers can be summarised in three wordssmaller, faster and cheaper. In other words, their products must be able to characterise ever-smaller compo-nents more quickly and less expensive-ly. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the development of instrumentation for nanotechnology research.

Nanotechnology has the potential to improve our quality of life in diverse ways, such as faster electronics, huge memory/storage capacities for PCs, cheaper energy through more efficient energy conversion, and improved security through the development of nanoscale bio- and chemical-detection systems. However, before these new technologies become commercial realities, researchers must be able to characterise nano material and device

Key challenges for manufacturers 1. Lack of electronic devices, discrete

or embedded, indigenously available 2. Hybrid equipment thwarting the sales

of discrete testers3. Constantly evolving standards and

technology, particularly in wireless 4. Growing rental market restraining the

sale volumes5. Heavy influx of imports, especially

low-value products6. Misperception about the use of T&M

instruments7. Lack of qualified, trained hardware

and RF engineers8. Price-sensitive customers and hence

price constraints9. High initial investments10. Trading more prof i table than

manufacture under present policies11. In-house demand volumes are very

small12. Lack of motivation and favourable

policies from the governmentNeelam K. Kumar, Executive Director,

Aplab Limited, India

Caddo iSeries by Scientech Technologies

EFYREPORT


properties quickly and accurately. Electrical characterisation is es-

sential to gain insight into phenomena that occur beneath the surface of nano materials. For example, gate dielectrics in advanced semiconductors can have a physical thickness of less than one nanometre; the performance of these dielectrics can be predicted only by evaluating their equivalent electrical thickness. Similar considerations apply to carbon nanotubes, silicon wires and graphenethe basis for many nano innovations.

One of the main challenges in elec-trical characterisation of nano materials and structures is dealing with ultra-low signal levels. Another challenge is the wide range of behaviour that these materials and components can exhibit. For example, polymer materi-als can have resistances greater than one gigaohm. However, when drawn into fibres less than 100 nm in diameter and doped with various nanoparticles, a polymer may be changed from a su-perb insulator into a highly conductive wire. The result is an extremely wide range of test signals.

Detecting tiny electrical signals at the low end of the range requires high-sensitivity, high-resolution instruments such as electrometers, picoammeters and nanovoltmeters. Also, using these instruments for high-level signals as well demands instruments with a very wide dynamic range.

T&M manufacturers are also faced with the challenge of a shorter turna-round time. With the turnaround time (concept to design to volume produc-tion) increasingly becoming shorter due to the market competition, new and efficient methods of verifying the integrity and quality of handsets and similar products are required by all handset makers. With elements of design regularly being developed in different places, it is important to have common industry-standard test tools that enable groups to share informa-tion and resolve problems quickly. The quickening rate of technology changes means a faster cycle time for new prod-

Major contributors to this report

Chandmal GoliyaManaging director, Kusam Electrical Industries

Gautam AwasthiGeneral manager (marketing), electronic measurement group, Agilent Technologies India

Neelam K. KumarExecutive director, Aplab Limited

Naresh NarasimhanCountry marketing manager Tektronix India

Sumit SharmaMarketing manager-India, Good Will Instrument

Mohammed GhouseCountry manager (business communication), Scientech Technologies

Yasir FahimGeneral manager, ADInstruments

Rajesh Suresh JoshiManager-business development, Dynalog (India)

N.V. ValsalanHead-test & measurement and broadcast, Rohde & Schwarz India

Klaus LeutbecherVice president-worldwide sales, Keithley Instruments

Manish KwatraCEO, Metro Electronic Products

ucts entering the verification stage.High-volume manufacturing re-

quires innovations from T&M vendors so as to lower the test costs. Handset manufacturers demand solutions that can help them reach the market faster with a lower cost of testing and con-sequently a lower cost of production.

india: still a costly affairThere are already a few Indian T&M companies having their manufacturing base in India, while it is not the case for MNCs. In India, the import duty on raw materials is still high and therefore importing the finished goods is cheap-er than locally producing them. As the Indian T&M market is still taking the shape and India is yet to be known as one of the best places for EMS, setting up manufacturing facility in India may be a costly affair for any global T&M maker, says Sumit Sharma, marketing manager-India, Good Will Instrument.

Need of the hourThere are a few steps that can be taken to help India become the R&D hub for T&M equipment.

Naresh Narasimhan, country marketing manager, Tektronix India, says, Companies are looking at world-class manufacturing and lean manufacturing techniques to reduce the production costs so that the ben-efits can be passed on to the end-user. Having said this, the infrastructure should be improved tremendously. Besides, the government should change its policies and automation should be considered. Components and sub-systems required for manu-facturing, like chassis/power supply modules, should be made available at zero duty. Excise duty and sales tax for electronic test equipment (present-ly 8.24 and 12.5 per cent, respectively) should be brought down. Finally, more manufacturing units from sup-port industries like plastic moulding units for quality cabinet design and manufacturing are needed.

The author is executive editor at EFY

TesT & measurement


The architecture of a test and measurement system depends upon the needs and future requirements of its intended applica-tions. While investing in cutting-edge technology is a must to keep pace with todays innovation, it is not always economically viable to move to an en-tirely new platform. Here we compare the various test platforms, helping design engineers to make an informed selection.

LXILAN eXtensions for Instrumentation (LXI) is an Ethernet-enabled instru-mentation standard, introduced in 2005, with the aim to ride on the suc-cess of the Internet. With the Internet gaining widespread popularity, the Ethernet bus interface was chosen due to its versatility and easy accessibility.

The LXI consortium is an industry consortium of 53 test and measure-ment companies that maintains the LXI specification, promotes the LXI stand-ard and ensures interoperability. It continues to keep pace with advance-ments in its ecosystem. For instance, it recently announced the adoption of the IPv6 extended function, which ensures that LXI vendors approach IPv6 in a consistent way before its use in test systems becomes widespread.

LXI-based systems are built on a backbone of small modular instruments that utilise the low-cost, open-standard local-area network (LAN) or Ethernet. Of course, there are other modular in-struments available that work on com-

Modular test platforms allow engineers to put together a system that meets just about any need by mixing and matching different technologies. There are many platforms available to choose from. Take a look at their merits and demerits

Selecting The Right Modular Platform for Test and Measurement

Dilin AnAnD

peting platforms, but the advantage of LXI systems is that these do away with the cost and complexity of card-cage architectures. Furthermore, the integra-tion of instruments is a breeze.

Binoy Johnson, a hardware design engineer, says, The difficulties faced with Ethernet-based systems also make their way here. LXI-based systems would require you to rope in your IT department for instances such as discovering the instruments and then setting them up.

While there have been many claims that LAN (or other buses) are ideal for all applications, the reality is that each bus has different strengths

and real-world systems take advantage of multiple busses in a unified software framework. In particular, LAN is well suited for distributed applications, but not necessarily for desktop measure-ments or automated testnotes the National Instruments whitepaper Understanding LAN/LXI for Instru-ment Control.

Another feature built into this plat-form is interoperability. LXI devices can communicate with PXI and VXI instruments by utilising the inter-changeable virtual instrument (IVI) driver that the standard mandates for just this purpose.

Sadaf Arif Siddiqui, marketing pro-

AXIe-based device

LXI trigger bus connector VXI embedded controller and remote

TesT & measurement


gramme manager, Agilent Technolo-gies, says, While the platforms are many, we maintain common measure-ment science and algorithms across all portfolios so that users can easily mix-and-match the best of products and dont face any compatibility issue.

VXIVME eXtensions for Instrumentation (VXI) is the oldest platform discussed here. Launched way back in 1988, it is an open standard platform for automated test. This platform was established by Hewlett Packard (now Agilent Technologies) and Tektronix.

Although an old technology, VXI does have its plus points. A good thing about VXI instruments is that they can be power cycled indepen-dently of the PC. This allows you to keep away from the frustrating task of rebooting the PC, says Johnson.

VXI is based on the older Ver-saModule Eurocard (VME) bus de-veloped for the Motorola 68000 line of CPUs, which is not a part of the latest computer architectures and leaves VXI unable to take complete advantage of the advances in PC technology and software. The engineers need to be trained to understand the VXI pro-gramming.

To modernise an existing VXI system, it is more cost-effective to invest in a PXI chassis and controller to control the VXI system using Mxi-2 technology rather than purchase a new VXI controllernotes the NI white-paper Working with VXI Platforms.

However, as a PXI- or VXI-based system can be heavily dependent on the performance of the host PC, in order to get higher performance, you

Test Platforms ComparisonLXI PXI VXI AXIe

Controller Any Intel PC-based Motorola or Intel PC-based Intel PC-based

Controller interface Mainly message-based Mainly register-based Register or message-based Register or message-based

Bus interface Ethernet PCI, PCIe Motorola 68000 (parallel) PCI Express or LAN

Typical bus throughput (bits/s) 1G 1G 256M 10G

Power and cooling Independent for each instrument Common based on chassis Common based on chassis Common based on chassis

Year 2005 1997 1987 2009

might have to spend a bigger amount in the initial stage itself.

Mike Gooding concludes his paper VXI Plug n Pray with some informa-tive remarks: The test industry has come a long way in providing inte-grators with instrument hardware that plug together electrically and physically. Their companion efforts in software have not been as simple, nor well-defined. These software efforts have produced significantly easier integration of instruments into test systems. However, we are still far from declaring successful achievement of plug-and-play ease to integration. It is still very much a plug-and-pray activity.

AXIeAdvancedTCA Extensions for Instru-mentation and Test (AXIe) is a new modular test instrument standard. It is an open standard that creates a robust ecosystem of components,

products and systems targeted at general-purpose instrumentation and semiconductor test.

The AXIe platform allows design-ers to achieve some critical high-per-formance instruments like high-speed logic analysers, digitisers, serial bus protocol analysers and high-band-width arbitrary waveform generators, which were having some limitation on other modular platforms.

Siddiqui explains, AXIe has been proposed to the industry by three founding members: Test Evolution Corp, Aeroflex and Agilent. Since its introduction in November, there have been four additional companies that have joined the consortium.

Like VXI was built on the VME standard and PXI on the PCI standard, the AXIe standard is built on an exist-ing standard, AdvancedTCA. This standard is primarily used as a compu-tation chassis standard by networking companies such as Cisco. It provides the capability modules that require higher power or density than can be supported by PXI, he adds.

The ATCA specifications lever-aged by this platform were developed to meet the high data rates and pro-cessing performance of the telecom industry. ATCA backplanes provide protocol-agnostic, multilane, switched-serial links among boards, and the backplanes support transfer speeds as high as 10 Gbps per lane (see the table for comparison).

PXIDeveloped in 1997, PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) was introduced in 1998 as an open industry standard to meet the increasing demands of com-

PXI module

TesT & measurement


plex instrumentation systems. Today, PXI is governed by the PXI Systems Al-liance (PXISA)a group of more than 70 companies chartered to promote the PXI standard, ensure interoperability and maintain the PXI specifications.

The PXI modular platform has been around for more than a decade and cur-rently enjoys the largest product base. PXI describes a mechanically modular platform that uses the PCISIG-governed peripheral component interconnect (PCI) or PCI Express to control the modules. PXI-based instruments also depend heavily on a PC, and are gener-ally Windows-centric as the specifica-tion defines only WIN32 drivers. Most PXI instruments are register-based products that require software drivers hosted on a PC for control.

One of the main difficulties with PXI-based instruments comes from their tight integration to the PCfrequent rebooting of the PC is forced on the user

during PXI development. This com-plicates the software installation and instrument start-up, shares Johnson.

PXI focuses on a central processing model using products that are modular and rely on a high-speed data bus for communicating with the CPU that does the computing to perform system func-tions. Utilising CompactPCI, this plat-form gains on performance and industry adoption. Data bandwidth performance of PXI systems easily exceeds the per-formance of the older VXI test standard. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the huge adoption of PXI by test managers.

Over the last few years, the industry reached a tipping point in automated test and is now making a large-scale switch to PXI. In a recent survey of test manag-ers from around the world conducted by NI, over 70 per cent of test managers indicated they will use PXI as the core of at least one of their next automated test systems. This is in contrast to only 30 per

cent of test managers who will continue to use rack-and-stack instrumentation, says Denver Dsouza, senior technical consultant, National Instruments.

Perhaps the best thing about PXI is that, because it is based on off-the-shelf PC technology, the performance gains come faster and at a much lower cost with each advancement in that arena.

Is there any competition between PXI and the newly released AXIe plat-form? Adesh Jain, applications consult-ant with Agilent Technologies, doesnt think so. AXIe is seen more like an extension of the PXI test-development model rather than as a competitor to PXI. It leverages existing standards from Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA), PXI, LXI and IVI. The standard is broadly applicable to general-purpose instrumentation and semiconductor test, he explains.

The author is a tech correspondent at EFY

www.electronicsforu.com www.ffymag.comwww.linuxforu.com www.efyindia.comwww.eb.efyindia.comTHE COMPLETE MAGAZINE

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EFY report


While todays technology offers solutions for monitoring or remote reporting via mobile devices, test organisations need new expertise to unite the networking, Web services and mobile app portions of the solution

uma Gupta

test & measurement Whats Coming up Next

ments. Instruments are being designed to measure such signal levels. The measurement data also needs to be analysed. To enable this, PC connectiv-ity has become a common feature on general-purpose test instruments.

T&M needs across different seg-ments are broadly common. But deep-down, there are different levels of test-ing and different-grade T&M products being used.

Requirements across segmentsWithin education, where test and measurement is mainly meant for

teaching or research purpose, there is quite a significant difference between two sub-segments. In undergraduate labs, basic or mid-range instruments such as digital multimeters, power supplies, oscilloscopes and function generators are mainly used to do some basic measurements and learn differ-ent aspects of testing. But in research work, high-end scopes, spectrum ana-lysers, network analysers and vector signal generators are used in such ar-eas as high-energy physics, nanotech-nology, millimeter-wave and UWB.

In aerospace and defence, high-bandwidth, high-frequency T&M

T esting plays a critical role from the very beginning of the product life-cycle, i.e., the de-sign stage. Be it any technology or any product, unless and until it is validated and tested, it cannot be manufactured and produced for the market.

Test engineers need to measure the parameters of the signals with a high degree of accuracy and performance. Today, circuits are packed in compact assemblies and affected by a lot of interference, noise and unwanted sig-nals. This, in turn, affects the measure-

PXI platforms by National Instruments

EFY report


instruments are being used for state-of-the-art electronic systems such as RADAR, satellite and surveillance. Shortening the product development cycle has long been a key objective of military and aerospace organisations. One method to reduce the develop-ment time is concurrent design and test, which is often represented with the V-diagram product development model. In these industries, for which the end product is a highly complex system of systems, the left side of the V-diagram is considered design and the right side represents test.

Defence communication systems have traditionally been analogue in na-ture. However, digital technologies are replacing the traditional analogue com-munication systems. To successfully im-plement the digital systems, one needs to analyse the technology manifestations in different environments. Software-defined and modular test systems can be used to meet these requirements.

Catering to each technology, there may be various testing needs. For instance, in communication one may have to check the signal frequency, power, harmonics, etc, while in auto-motive one may have to do different levels of stress testing, torque testing, pressure testing, etc.

As wireless communication con-tinues to grow, the pressure to find innovative ways to more effectively use channel bandwidth is increasing. One of the most recent innovations is the development of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennae systems to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and increase the throughput. Ac-curate testing of MIMO transceivers presents significant challenges to exist-ing test instrumentation architectures. New architectures like hybrid PXI or benchtop instrumentation enable not only advanced signal processing algo-rithms to multiplex and de-multiplex various spatial streams but also tight synchronisation between transmit and receive antennae.

In general, T&M users are increas-ingly demanding the best possible measurement and source accuracy,

noise, signal response, and system throughput for todays demanding measurements. With the constant evolution of technology, they expect upgradeable instruments with back-ward technology support. Also, as data rates increase, there is demand for higher-bandwidth instruments. In the manufacturing domain, fully auto-mated environment test setups are in demand. Similarly, as the communica-tion technologies move from 2G to 3G to 4G, one needs handheld, portable but rugged instruments to deploy base stations and towers.

Users want the T&M instruments to be capable of offering universal con-nectivity via GPIB, USB, LXI/Ethernet and other interfaces. They increasingly expect T&M products to keep pace with rapid evolutions in desktop, mo-bile and Internet computing standards, the most recent of which is support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. The software that enables all of these advanced capabilities must be simple and easy to understand, use and integrate into human interactive and programmatic applications in the lab and the factory.

Different instruments at a glance Oscilloscopes by and large have seen most changes over the last couple of years.

With the availability of high-end

technology like digital signal proces-sors and field-programmable gate ar-rays at low cost, signal acquisition has become pretty fast. This has made it possible to get real-time display on the LCD of a digital oscilloscope, unlike in cathode-ray tube oscilloscopes. With digital oscilloscopes, it is also possi-ble to add advanced features like fast Fourier transform, waveform recorder, data logger, advance triggering and logic channels at a very low cost, says P. Prabhu, general manager (technical), Scientific Mes-Technik.

Other test instruments like digital multimeters, function generators and frequency counters have also shrinked in size with advanced features. Mi-crocontroller-based designs in these instruments have helped in reducing the number of mechanical switches, thereby improving the products per-formance and life.

With automation for mass and quality product manufacturing, there is increase in the use of measuring instruments in production lines. Some-times the measurement data needs to be collected and analysed in less than 10 seconds. Multiple data needs to be collected while the product is on the conveyor belt for a very short duration. These challenges are being met with new instruments.

Specifically, general-purpose T&M instruments have witnessed the fol-lowing changes in terms of technology:

N9344C handheld spectrum analyser by Agilent Technologies

EFY report


Oscilloscopes. The current gen-eration of oscilloscope is digital storage oscilloscope, digital phosphor oscillo-scope, mixed-signal oscilloscope and mixed-domain oscilloscope. Analogue oscilloscopes too have become digital read-out type and offer various con-nectivity options.

Each type has its own distinct fea-tures. Digital storage oscilloscopes pro-vide a high real-time sampling rate and memory depth. Besides, these perform a number of automatic measurements and display results on an LCD screen. With digital technique, they can be remotely operated and become a part of the automatic test setup.

Spectrum analysers. Spectrum analysers are available in frequencies ranging from 1 GHz to several GHz and are capable of a number of power calculations in different units with comparisons. EMI pre-compliance capability, limit lines, improvement in dynamic range and connectivity are some of the technical improvements.

Multimeters. Multimeters today are digital with LCD read-out. Human safety is of prime importance in both handheld and benchtop types. Resolu-tions up to 6.5, 7.5 and 8.5 digits are available.

New digital multimeter designs are increasingly expected to provide higher levels of precision and stability, as well as more standard built-in func-tions like capacitance, frequency and temperature measurement. End users are also looking for digital multimeters

that can ensure near-universal connec-tivity and come with simple software drivers, utilities and application-sup-port software.

Digital multimeters are frequently being integrated with switch main-frames to provide more complete test and measurement solutions in a single enclosure.

Keithleys Series 3700A system switch/multimeter family is one example. It offers scalable, instru-ment-grade switching and multi-channel measurement solutions that are optimised for automated testing of electronic products and components. Series 3700A mainframes are equipped with many standard features. For ex-ample, easy connectivity is supported with three remote interfaces: LXI/Ethernet, general-purpose interface bus (GPIB), and universal serial bus (USB). Fourteen digital I/O lines are also included, which are programmable, informs Chuck Cimino, marketing director, Keithley Instruments.

Arbitrary waveform generators. VLSI technology based arbitrary wave-form generators offer a number of arbi-trary waveforms in the built-in library.

Signal generators. Advancements in signal generator design include more programmable signal control, faster and deeper waveform memories, improved usability and connectivity, and greater throughput and signal performance. Other improvements include the simulation of high-speed serial interface clocks and data layers,

as well as LTE modulation evolution.Power meters. With the growth of

the smart grid, line power meters are increasingly required to provide serial communication capabilities, in addi-tion to standard features like flexible connectivity, usability and application-support software. RF power meters must support higher frequencies and more selectivity due to increasingly complex communication modulation standards and tighter regulations on in-band and out-of-band transmitter power qualifications and testing.

Focus areasThe main technological advancements which are applicable to any T&M product are modularity or upgrade-ability, PC controllability and intercon-nectivity, application software, rug-gedness, high bandwidths, accuracy, repeatability and multiple functionali-ties in the same instrument.

Also, the emphasis is on intelligent battery charging and power efficiency.

Above all comes the safety of op-erator and installation. Thats why the complete range of IDEALs industrial clamps is designed with TightSight dis-play. It allows an electrician to keep his head and face out of potentially danger-ous panels while viewing the measure-ment. The high-voltage indicator is another feature that indicates presence of voltage even with the dial set to the wrong function. The clamps carry CAT III and IV ratings, and come in a rugged construction. UL listing adds to safety measures, says Sushil Tare, sales man-ager, electrical, Ideal Industries India.

There is a trend to use common development platforms on which a range of instruments can be built. This approach has several advantages for test system manufacturers and, in turn, their customers. It makes it more eco-nomical to deliver common interfaces and improved usability benefits. It also helps reduce development cycle times and provides greater economies of scale, which enable more product functionality and features to be offered at lower prices.

Through shared components,

Caddo iseries

EFY report


high-speed buses, and open, user-defined software, modular instrumentation is best suited to meet the needs of test and measurement today and in the future. NI modular instruments are the building blocks of economical and versatile automated test systems. With modular instruments, you can choose from a wide variety of measurement, signal generation, RF, power and switch modules and then configure the instruments in software to meet your specific measurement tasks. Because these instruments are modular and software-defined, they are quickly interchanged and easily repurposed to meet evolving test needs. Additionally, NI modular instruments provide high-speed test execution by harnessing the power of industry-standard PC and advanced timing and synchro-nisation technologies. Options are available for a variety of platforms including PXI, PXI Express, PCI, PCI Express and USB, informs Nandini Subramanya, senior marketing com-munications manager, National Instruments India.

With the availability of improved semiconductor devices in smaller sizes, T&M instruments have not only become cost-effective but also smaller in size and better in perfor-mance.

Digital storage oscilloscope is a good example. The MDO 4000 mixed-domain oscilloscope from Tektronix com-bines digital storage oscilloscope and spectrum analyser functions in a single unit. Scientechs i-series products, viz, Caddo 831i oscilloscope, 4064i function generator and 4074i programmable power supply, offer digital read-out and Eth-ernet connectivity, explains J.K. Baldua, director-technical, Scientech Technologies.

Agilent Technologies works closely with various stand-ards and organisations and helps users with innovative and reliable test products.

Sadaf Arif Siddiqui, technical marketing specialist, Agi-lent Technologies India, informs, Be it a basic test instru-ment or a high-performance instrument, we go hand-in-hand with technological advancements across all segments. A typi-cal example is the upgradeability feature, which is present in our entire range of oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers and network analysers. We have also incorporated some unique features in our products, such as OLEDs in digital multim-eters, no fans and no vents in handheld spectrum analysers, and function generator in benchtop oscilloscopes.

Overcoming the challenges Production volumes for T&M instruments are gener-ally much lower than for consumer devices like PCs, smart-phones and tablet computers. This means that leading-edge features common to these consumer devices, such as capaci-tive touchscreen interfaces and super-high-resolution colour screens, arent as affordable for T&M applications.

T&M instruments need to be designed with industrial-grade components that remain available for many years for design stability reasons. One reason why industrial products are typically a few generations behind consumer devices as far as interfaces and related elements are concerned is the

EFY report


and FPGA devices that are constantly increasing in speed. Multi-core proces-sors are now available in industrial and mil-grade versions to allow more sophisticated user interfaces and digital signal processing to be used in medium- and lower-cost instruments.

Doing more in software rather than hardware helps reduce costs and im-prove functionality and flexibility for users and can also facilitate platform reuse and leverage.

Key trends driving next-generation devices The global race to achieve useful, in-tuitive, elegantly integrated products is well underway in the T&M sphere, just as it is in the mobile phone and computing worlds.

Many of the advances in the next generation of instruments will be related to usability and connectivity to support the Internet-friendly gen-eration of users. Though signal per-formance in T&M will always remain a top priority, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interfaces will get some much needed attention.

To understand the implications of these interfaces for T&M products and vendors, one needs to just look at the smartphone revolution to see how product innovation and brand leadership in such devices can shift the dynamics of a very large consumer industry in just a few years.

To meet the reduced profit margins due to increased competition, T&M manufacturers will need to innovate and use new technologies of smart mobile devices and cloud computing.

While tablets and smartphones can-not replace ubiquitous PC or PC-based measurement platforms like PXI, they offer unique benefits when used as extensions to a test system. When The Nielsen Company surveyed consumers in 2011 to understand why they were using tablets instead of traditional PCs, the top reasons cited included user experience improvements like superior portability, ease of use, faster startup time and longer battery longevity. Given this information, the expected use cases for mobile devices within automated test include test system monitoring and control and test data and report viewing.

While todays technology offers solutions for monitoring or remote reporting via mobile devices, test or-ganisations will need new expertise to unite the networking, Web services and mobile app portions of the solution.

Development of next-generation single-chip T&M instruments using the latest extreme ultraviolet technol-ogy will help increase the operating margins without any compromise on the functionality. With the rapid rise in communication technologies like 3G and 4G, the implementation of remote testing will reduce the costs significantly, says Paras Dagli, execu-tive director, Dynalog (India).

In short, the Internet and the seem-ingly never-ending demand for more mobile computing devices and capa-bility means that future generations of T&M equipment will also continually be challenged to deliver faster, better and easier to obtain results!

The author is an executive editor at EFY

time it takes for displays and other such components to become avail-able for industrial products. Also, the product cycles of typical T&M product designs are much longer than for con-sumer devices.

Despite challenges related to scale and T&M product longevity and design cycles, a growing number of industrial components suppliers are working to close these gaps. The use of shared product platforms can help raise volumes to interesting levels for individual vendors and through value-added suppliers of such assemblies.

On the signal conditioning front, ongoing advances in semiconductor devices and analogue and RF ICs are helping to push sensitivity, signal range and speeds when used in instrumenta-tion front-ends. Refreshing product designs frequently and, in some cases, using modular design approaches can help enable fresh access to the latest analogue components, as well as dis-plays and user interface technologies.

Processing power for embed-ded designs also continues to evolve exponentially with specialised DSP

P. Prabhugeneral manager (technical),

Scientific Mes-Technik

Sadaf Arif Siddiquitechnical marketing specialist, Agilent Technologies India

Sushil Taresales manager, electrical,

Ideal Industries India

Major contributors to this report

Chuck Ciminomarketing director,

Keithley Instruments

J.K. Balduadirector-technical,

Scientech Technologies

Nandini Subramanyasenior marketing

communications manager, National Instruments India

Paras Dagliexecutive director,

Dynalog (India)

Technology Focus


Janani Gopalakrishnan Vikram

As various industries face pressure to innovate and deliver higher quality and performance, they, in turn, expect the test and measurement world to deliver super-capable systems that are more accurate, intelligent and fast. let us see how T&M is evolving to meet these stringent demands

smart Test & measurement supporting innovation in other industries

consumer. In defence, for example, technology is being used to provide real-time intelligence to the aerospace/defence personnel, to keep them con-nected and reduce riskwhich re-quires highly reliable systems. Hence high-performance test equipment must be available to test these state-of-the-art weapons and space systems. Plus, the T&M instruments should be well supported and affordable.

Any form of R&D is also very stringent in its technical requirements.

Customers like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) are very specific in their technical require-ments as there is no margin of error permissible in their work. Since quality and performance are critical factors in communications, T&M plays a huge role there too. Likewise, high-speed circuit design manufacturers also require high-end logic analysers and oscilloscopes. In short, almost every technological field that is high on in-novation requires a lot of support from the T&M industry.

Indeed, the T&M industry is also innovatingto help others innovate. Rapid technological developments and innovations have transformed the T&M landscape over the last decade. For example, digital signal processing and software interface with comput-ers have enabled analysis of results. Miniaturisation technology has made the instruments portable and easy to handleportable instruments are technically on par with sophisticated lab instruments. PCI Express external interface and the use of mobile tech-nology have also made significant strides, says Mahendra Pratap Singh, business development manager, Fluke.

Gautam Awasthi, general manager-marketing, Electronics Measurement Group, Agilent Technologies India, points out that the T&M industry is quick to imbibe new technologi-cal advancements such as faster and smaller semiconductor chips, better and brighter displays, and convergence or consolidation.

As the requirements of client industries such as wireless, defence and space research get more and more stringent, the test and measurement (T&M) indus-try is under great pressure to deliver highly capable instruments, systems and software.

Strategic electronics, especially aer-ospace and defence, is a very fastidious

Technology Focus


These technological trends have had a far-reaching impact on the way T&M is being utilised today. Not only have these advancements helped bring down the test times or cost of instrumentation, they have also helped in making the instrumentation easy to use and more efficient. New tech-nologies help customers discover new alternatives to the traditional ways of testing, like instruments with multiple capabilities, one-box testers, automated test set-ups and modular instrumenta-tion, Awasthi adds.

Here is a quick round-up of the technological trends in test and meas-urement.

Automation across the lifecycleAutomation is an important develop-ment in T&M. It relieves the users from routine tasks, enabling them to focus on innovation. Earlier, there was a lot of automation in manufacturing, but now measurement automation tasks are performed at all stages of the prod-uct lifecycle including research, design verification and production test.

One-touch analysis, multiple-instruments-in-one and fast measure-ment speeds are some of the trends seen in T&M automation. Software platforms such as LabVIEW also help in automating tests by enabling data collection and analysis from multi-ple sources such as standalone and modular instruments, data acquisi-tion hardware and cameras. There is also a surge in the popularity of the PXI platform, which is optimised for automated test. The modular PXI plat-form provides a solution that is faster, smaller and more cost-effective than rack-and-stack options.

Prashanth Kaithamana, senior manager-key accounts, Anritsu, ex-plains a use case in wireless commu-nications: Automation plays a key role for regression/conformance/carrier acceptance testing wherein the device-under-test (DUT) needs to be tested against a series of validated test cases. Engineers feel it cumbersome to manually test all the test cases one by

one and therefore automation makes the life of the test engineer easy.

Completely automated labs are there. You just need to connect the in-puts and the instrument does the entire job with the help of data acquisition systems and advanced analysis soft-ware. One can get a complete report of the data and analysis by just pressing a button. It removes the chances of manipulation and error. Automation is relatively less in portable instru-ments as compared to lab instruments but rapidly increasing there too, says Singh.

A lot of R&D is happening around automation and analysis, to give the customers a complete solution and val-ue for their investment in T&M instru-ments. Our organisation too believes in thisfor example, our vibration, power quality and thermal imaging solution analyses the data and gives the customer a solution that helps him to make a quick decision.

Growing importance of softwareSoftware builds up a lot of support and ease in enhancing the measure-ment and analysis capability of any

instrument. All good manufacturers in T&M are working on enhancing their software for more automatic measurements, says Ambrish Kela, managing director and CEO, Scientech Technologies.

Software forms an important part of a total solution in the T&M space. It manifests as design software for de-sign automation, application software that runs on equipment to help meet application-specific needs, customised software recipes and wrappers for automated test needs. It imparts ana-lytical capability to a test system, mak-ing it more intelligent. An instrument supported by appropriate software can execute complex algorithms and give meaningful results, helping customers to improve their processes and take instantaneous decisions. Software also helps improve the user interface, mak-ing instruments more user-friendly and effective.

Eric Wetjen, product marketing manager-Test and Measurement, MathWorks, explains, In addition to providing a platform for automation, software allows for custom user-defined measurements that extend the off-the-shelf capability of instruments.

PXIe-5644R vector signal transceiver by NI

Technology Focus


When building a new test system, soft-ware tools can be used to reduce the all important time to first measurement. In addition, international instrument driver standards like IVI and LXI save test engineers time by simplifying soft-ware code maintenance and enabling adaptive test sequences that minimise test execution time.

Easy customisation lets users explore solutionsModular hardware, smart software and common platforms have given rise to easily customisable and reconfigura-ble test systems that address test needs to the T. Software-designed instru-mentation and synthetic instrumenta-tion are two notable swirls created by industry leaders.

Software-designed instrumenta-tion provides the highest level of flex-ibility, performance and future-proof-ing possible to date with off-the-shelf hardware. As system requirements change, software-designed instruments mean that not only your software in-vestment will be preserved across dif-ferent pieces of modular input/output (I/O) but your existing I/O can also be modified according to the application at hand. To add to all this, it gives test engineers the ability to take advantage of the performance provided by the latest PC, CPU and bus technologies, says Satish Mohanram, business de-velopment manager, National Instru-ments (NI) India.

In August this year, NI introduced the first software-designed instru-ment, the PXIe-5644R vector signal transceiver (VST). Mohanram explains that software-designed instruments feature three defining characteristics: Instrumentation hardware designed with Open Source firmware based on FPGAs with out-of-the-box capa-bilities and rich sample code; well-built system design software based on LabVIEW to simplify the complexity of designing a custom hardware in-strument; and a fundamental change in mindset from integrating a fixed-function device to designing exactly the instrument one needs.

Another interesting customisation option comes from Agilent. Synthetic instrumentation is a modular hard-ware and software test initiative, which involves linking individual hardware and software test modules together to emulate standard instruments in a new, compact form factor. The result is a morphable, common system archi-tecture that enables scalable automated test systems.

A single hardware or software test platform is rarely the right answer for every test scenario. That is why we fo-cus on modular products based on the PXI and the new AXIe standard. These modular form factors enable new capa-bilities that werent previously possible across analogue, digital, radio fre-quency (RF), microwave and lightwave technologies. We also focus on con-nected solutions that unite automated design solutions with simulations that can include actual measurement equip-ment and devices under testor their simulations, says Awasthi.

Wetjen points out that software platforms also help string together cus-tom solutions from off-the-shelf com-ponents. Our customers often build custom test solutions with off-the shelf instruments. The customisation is per-formed by the software, which extends the capability of the instrument. For example, many oscilloscopes on the market today come with the option to perform custom analysis in MATLAB and redisplay the channel directly on the scope, allowing engineers to ex-pand the functionality of off-the-shelf instruments, he adds.

FPGAs promote customisation and reusabilityThe use of Open Source, field-pro-grammable gate arrays (FPGAs) is revolutionising measurement hard-ware to a large extent.

So far FPGAs had been used on T&M equipment only to do specific high-end processing due to their low latency and high computational power, but today the evolution of software tools has enabled customers to define

Technology Focus


FPGA functionality with ease. Open, user-programmable FPGAs on modu-lar instruments enable equipment us-ers to define their custom processing requirements on the hardware, thereby driving better productivity (both in terms of throughput and test coverage) and reusability through re-configura-bility (and hence lower cost of capital equipment), explains Mohanram.

NIs new VST mentioned earlier is also an exemplary use of FPGAs. This device combines the functionalities of a vector signal generator and a vector signal analyser, and contains a user-programmable FPGA for real-time signal processing and digital input/output for digital control. With the added flexibility of an FPGA, the VST is ideal for custom triggering, DUT control, parallel measurements and real-time digital signal processing.

With the availability of end-user-accessible FPGAs on test instruments, there is a trend towards providing the test engineer the ability to customise the signal processing that occurs on the instrument. We expect more engineers to take advantage of this combined with automated code generation over the next few years, says Wetjen.

Growing demands of wireless testingThe evolution in mobile networks is forcing T&M manufacturers to come

up with innovative solutions for test-ing across the wireless value chain.

Test equipment are needed by network operators to assist them in debugging new network features, interoperability analysis, acceptance testing, quality-of-service analysis and network performance optimisa-tion. They often need to analyse data from oscilloscopes and spectrum analysers with increasingly higher bandwidths and deeper on-board memory. They are also involved in developing and testing software-defined radios or custom communi-cations schemes. In some cases, they must create and transmit complex arbitrary waveforms to test receiver algorithms or collect data on a spec-trum analyser to verify the perfor-mance of a transmitter.

In mobile phone test systems, there has been a huge demand in de-termining communications protocols from the earliest stages. As a result, T&M companies have to provide measuring equipment with the high-est number of approved conform-ance tests of transmission protocols between base stations and mobile handsets. Manufacturers of mobile handsets and chipsets throughout the world need fast and reliable measur-ing instruments to test mobile hand-sets because handsets that pass are recognised as 3GPP-compatible. This

contributes to the smooth growth and development of 2G/3G mobile phone systems. A similar activity has to continue in LTE as well. For wireline systems, there has been a huge de-mand in standardisation of jitter and wander2 measurement technologies, says Kaithamana.

T&M companies are already tun-ing up to the LTE-Advanced features that could create a large volume of business in the coming times. In ad-dition to dramatically increasing data transmission speed, LTE-Advanced is emerging as a key technology for realising the seamless convergence of wireline and wireless networks as it is based on the Internet Protocol (IP). LTE measurement represents a substantial business opportunity with the potential of becoming a pil-lar of growth for the next ten years or more.

Many-in-one instrumentsHigh levels of integration and min-iaturisation have made it possible to pack many instruments into one unit of manageable form factor. Agilents N6705B DC power analyser is one such example. It integrates up to four advanced power supplies with digital multimeter, scope, arbitrary waveform generator and data logger features. It eliminates the need to put together multiple pieces of equipment and

Agilents N6705B DC power analyser with 14585A control and analysis software

Technology Focus


create complex test setups including transducers (such as current probes and shunts) to measure current into your DUT. The DC power analyser also eliminates the need to develop and debug programs to control a col-lection of instruments and take useful measurements because all functions and measurements are available at the front panel.

Agilents new FieldFox range is another interesting many-in-one exam-ple. FieldFox microwave analysers can be configured as cable-and-antenna analysers, spectrum analysers, vector network analysers or all-in-one com-bination analysers. Each compact, 3kg package is available in four frequen-cies: 9, 14, 18 and 26.5 GHz.

In the recent past, we have seen mixed-domain instruments that cater to analogue, digital and RF measure-ments in an integrated housing. Anoth-er new trend has been in multi-utility PC-based instruments that include an oscilloscope, a DDS function generator, a programmable power supply, etc. Such multi-utility instruments are becoming quite popular for R&D pur-poses, says Kela.

Other trends1. Instruments with Ethernet and wire-less interfaces are coming up. Wireless interface is especially helpful for on-field T&M.

2. Device displays are improving greatlythis is very helpful for in-struments that provide graphical and visual analytical features for users. We see companies including best-in-class display technologies like organic light-emitting diode (OLED).

3. Widespread use of parametric analysers for solar cell, nanotechnology and material science research.

4. Emergence of low-power (e.g., USB-powered) scopes and other meas-urement hardware that can be used with mobile phones, tablets and other handheld PCs.

5. Use of MEMS devices in hand-held and portable/field-usable instru-ments as these are small and robust, requiring little power while also of-

fering surprisingly high performance. 6. Use of green technologies in

the design and manufacture of test systems.

7. Smaller chips, better power management technologies, extremely capable yet light software have led to portable, multi-utility, handheld analysers that perform on par with traditional bench systems.

8. GPS functionality in field instru-ments for location-specific analysis of data gathered.

9. A lot of effort concerning mobile connectivityand special interest in making systems work with tablet PCs. Over the past year, there have been examples of how this could work, but there is still a lot of flux regard-ing how data collection, secure data storage (on or off the cloud) and data analysis will all work together. There is increasing interest in storing test data in the cloud, as well as for monitoring tests and acquiring data using tablet computers.

In short, the T&M world is inno-vating rapidly to handle the changing requirements of customer industries. There are challenges aplenty and op-portunities as well. One major secret to success at the moment would be to understand the customers complete value chain and provide products that cater to the full product lifecycle.

With the widespread acceptance of model-based design in research and development, the product develop-ment cycle has been significantly ac-celerated. Today, the first prototype of product hardware is often much closer to the final shipping design than in the past. This reduces the time available for traditional T&M verification and validation techniques, and the time available for development of produc-tion test systems. T&M practitioners must look for ways to develop and conduct their tests earlier in the de-velopment cycle, and forge a stronger relationship with upstream design teams, says Wetjen.

The author is a technically-qualified freelance writer, editor and hands-on mom based in Chennai

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TesT & measurement


The new generation of consumer electronics devices converge Internet connectivity, wireless communications, high-fidelity audio and HD video into a single device. To keep up with the times, different strategies have been adopted by test and measurement manufacturers and design houses. Take a look

Top 6 Trends in Test & Measurement

Dilin AnAnD

FPGA-enabled instrumentation1With the increase in system-level tools for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) over the last few years, an increasing number of manu-facturers are including FPGAs in in-strumentation. Whats more, engineers are given the choice to reprogram these FPGAs according to their requirements. So test engineers can embed a custom algorithm into the device to perform in-line processing inside the FPGA, or even emulate part of the system that requires a real-time response.

Satish Thakare, head-R&D, VLSI di-vision, Scientech Technologies, explains the traditional challenges that led to this trend: Designers and manufacturers have to face a lot of challenges to make the product available in the market in a

short time. Using a hardware-based ap-proach does not serve the purpose as the designer has to redesign the hardware for every product. Even conventional meth-ods will not serve the purpose as it works on the sequential method. So the design-ers need a kind of technology that allows them to change the functionality without changing the hardware while being able to upgrade the product on the go.

Thakare goes on to explain the so-lution: The obvious choice for the de-signer is to use reconfigurable hard-ware, i.e., FPGA. A benefit of using the FPGA in the instruments is that it offers high reliability, low latency, reconfigurability, high performance, embedded digital signal processor (DSP) core and true parallelism.

Apart from digital functions, some FPGAs have analogue features. Some mixed-signal FPGAs may have inte-grated analogue-to-digital converters and digital-to-analogue converters.

Mahendra Pratap Singh, business development manager, TTL Technolo-gies, adds, Logic blocks can be config-ured to perform complex combinational functions and also include memory ele-ments, which can be simple flip-flops or more complete blocks of memory. The architectural flexibility, customisation flexibility and cost advantage put FPGAs ahead of complementary technologies.

The most common test instrument in the industry with this capability is the digitiser, which allows faster processing of digitised data.

Wireless standards outbreak

As new wireless standards like the WLAN 802.11ac, WiMAX, LTE and high-throughput 802.11ad roll out, it becomes even more challenging for test engineers in India and around the globe. Bharti Airtel has already launched its 4G service in Kolkata, making India one of the first countries in the world to commercially deploy this cutting-edge wireless technology. As RF and wireless applications expand to become general-purpose, the instrumentation segment might also begin to mirror this trend with the adoption of RF instrumentation to such a level that it becomes as impor-tant as our digital multimeters.

A common problem that test

engineers face with the explosion of different standards is that they have to continuously set up different test platforms for each standard.

Sadaf Arif Siddiqui, technical marketing specialist at Agilent Tech-nologies, provides more insight: A test engineer working on fast emerging standards may have to bear the pain of setting up different test instruments and different test platforms or software. Moving to an easy-to-use, upgradeable and multi-standard vector signal analy-sis software and instruments such as X-series analysers will reduce this pain and test times to a large extent, thereby optimising the test time and costs.

Agilent Technologies flexible signal analysers for essential RF measurements (Image courtesy: Agilent Technologies, Inc.)

2

TesT & measurement


Software-defined instrumentation

As the complexity of products con-tinues to increase, their testing becomes much more challenging. Test engineers now require test systems that are flexible enough to support the wide variety of tests that must be performed on a single product while being scalable enough to encompass a larger number of tests as new func-tionality continues to be added.

Increasingly, the functionality of complex devices is being defined by the software embedded in them. This is challenging for many test engineers because most standalone instruments cannot change their functionality as fast as changes in the device under test (DUT) due to the fixed user interface and firmware that must be developed and embedded in the instrument. Thus test engineers are turning to a software-defined approach to instrumentation, so that they can quickly customise their equipment to meet specific application needs and integrate testing directly into the design process, says Eric Starkloff, director of NI Test Product Marketing.

Thakare shares two major advan-tages of software-defined instrumenta-tion: First, it can dramatically reduce the number of hardware components in all the mixed-signal designs, which means smaller chip size for system-on-chip implementation. Second, it can provide automatic adjustment or com-pensation for circuit component varia-tions due to temperature dependence, ageing and manufacturing tolerances.

Software-defined instrumentation looks to become an essential component of scalable and highly performing test systems. Singh agrees by saying, We predict a bright future for software-defined instrumentation. Software-defined instruments, also known as virtual instruments, are modular hard-ware with user-defined software giv-

ing the flexibility to combine standard and user-defined measurements with custom data processing using common hardware components. This flexibility is useful for electronic devices like ad-vanced navigation systems and com-munication devices like smartphones to integrate diverse capabilities and adopt new communication standards.

Test engineering: A strategic assetAccording to NIs recent global survey of test engineering leaders, a shift has emerged within electronics manufacturing firms wherein they are now using product test for competitive differentiation. This shift culminates in an elevation of the test engineering function to become a strategic asset to the company. The test participants of the survey said that their primary goal over the next few years was to reorganise their test organisation structures for enhanced efficiency.

(Source: NI Automated Test Outlook 2012)

Software-defined instrumentation by NI (Image courtesy: www.ni.com)

Increased use of wireless devices at the workplace

Tablet computers and smartphones have become so popular that they have a significant presence at the workplace toonot as devices under test but as part of the test system. While the computing power made available by these devices is nota-ble, they cannot replace the PC and related measurement platforms like

PXi. Instead, these devices are suit-able for data consumption and report viewing, and system monitoring and control.

National Instruments Automated Test Outlook 2012 explains: The ex-plosion of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones provides compel-ling benefits to engineers, technicians

and managers involved in automated test who need remote access to test status information and results. While todays technology offers solutions for monitoring or remote reporting via mobile devices, test organisations will need new expertise to unite the networking, Web services and mobile app portions of the solution.

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TesT & measurement


The author is tech correspondent at EFY Bengaluru

Use of multicore and parallel test systems

As the complexity and func-tionality of electronic devices grow exponentially (in sync with Moores law), so does the cost of testing them. Minimising the cost of test can be challenging, but one way is to test more with less. The inherent parallelism that is made available by the graphical program-ming paradigm of software like La-bVIEW from National Instruments and FlowStone DSP from DSP Ro-botics helps engineers immediately benefit from multicore processors and overcome the complexity as-sociated with traditional text-based languages.

The trend of increasing clock speed to get better performance ended back in the early 2000s. Since then, processor manufactur-ers have implemented alternate technologies to ramp up perfor-mance while keeping the clock speeds around 3 GHz. These

technologies include the use of processors with multiple cores on a single chip, hyperthreading, wider buses and hyper transport. Moreover, the advancement of the process node to the current 22nm process by utilising 3D transistors has resulted in significantly faster, leaner and more efficient proces-sors for use in embedded control-lers and modular instrumentation.

Denver DSouza, senior techni-cal consultant at National Instru-ments India, says, The reality that transistor density doubles every 18 months has led to significant advances in the performance of electronic devices. This is evident not only in the latest Intel Core i7 processors but in the shrinking of technology such as 64GB solidstate drives, which are now the size of a postage stamp. These technological advances translate into consider-able cost reductions.

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Merging of EDA tools and hardware test platforms

The extremely competitive environ-ment in which electronics compa-nies work now is shown by how next-generation communication protocols are barely labeled as standards before they can be seen in the market. For instance, the 802.11ac solutions have already been brought out by Broadcom even though it is yet to be ratified. In situations like these, companies go all out to get a jumpstart on the competi-tion, and what better way to do this than to merge design and testing in order to accelerate the time to market.

Adesh Jain, applications con-sultant at Agilent Technologies, ex-plains why the traditional method is slow: Traditionally, for any complete electronic product to be ready for the market, each compo-nent of the complete system is first

designed and verified with EDA tools, then prototypes are fabri-cated and tested, before the final product is released to the market. If discrepancies are found in the hardware at later stages, the whole cycle has to be repeated, which would result in loss of time as well as money for any organisation.

Proper verification at earlier stages reduces this time and effort to a great extent. The tests, specs, algorithms and plots used in the early stages of EDA are the same as measured on the test bench. The aim is to merge both the worlds and see if it is possible to save the design engi-neers time by streamlining the flow and thus improve productivity while reducing the time to get the product out to the market.

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TesT & MeasureMenT


Uma GUpta

testinG in manUfactUre During manufacture, testing adds to the cost of the final product significantly. sometimes the cost of testing can be even greater than the cost of product manufacturing itself. test and measurement manufacturers have been quick to respond by coming up with innovative ways to lower the test cost and increase throughput

Testing is a critical component of product development and production process. It can im-prove a products performance, increase quality and reliability, and lower return rates. It is estimated that the cost of fail-ure decreases ten times when an error is caught during production instead of the field, and decreases ten times again if it is caught in design instead of produc-tion. By catching these defects and col-lecting the data to improve a design or process, test delivers value to an organi-sation. At the same time, manufacturing tests add to the cost of the final product.

So its time to drive innovation into this process through technology insertion and best-practice methodologies in order to generate large efficiency gains and cost reductions.

testers usedManufacturing a product involves a lot of in-line equipment. In a surface-mount technology (SMT) line, not one machine is capable of handling the entire process. There are various machines used for various purposes. Roughly, a basic SMT line requires a printer, a mounter and a reflow oven to give an assembly output. To reduce the final cost, certain measurements

can be done on the manufacturing line itself.

R.S. Gupta, senior manager-Sales & Marketing, DVS India, informs that manufacturers have started using high-quality, repeatable printers capable of 2.5D and 3D inspection of the paste printing itself, so no separate testing is required at this stage. The printer introduces almost 60-65 per cent of the problems of the process in line. So by taking care of the first stage, your product doesnt show up the kinds of problems that are incorporated at the first stage. Problems detected at an ear-lier stage can be corrected at a very low cost. This reduces the final product cost.

Once the product comes out of as-sembly, the manufacturer does various kinds of testing to check whether the product is manufactured as per the requirements or not. Testing is done for manufacturing defects and functionality.

During the product assembly, some problems may get incorporated due to human or machine mistake, or due to a faulty part put on the assembly from the suppliers side. Out of a thousand components, one or two parts may be failing. As component manufacturers today are taking a lot of care, this is very rare. So it may not be failure from the suppliers side but there are devices which are very electrostatic discharge (ESD) sensitive and may fail when han-dled with bare hands. Also, the process itself may fail due to over-heating, etc.

The basic requirement of testing an assembly is to detect whether the prod-uct is free from manufacturing defects or not. It is the cheapest testing carried out in an assembly. It detects whether

SMT testing

TesT & MeasureMenT


the component used is correct or placed correctly. Apart from these component problems, there could be soldering-side problems as well. When solder is used in excess it could create a bridge between two nearby pins, while less sol-der creates a dry point. Manufacturing defect testers detect the analogue com-ponent type and its value, but cant test digital components. These arent very costly either. One can use manufactur-ing defect analysers (MDAs), flying probe testers (FPTs), automated optical inspection (AOI) systems or automated X-ray inspection testers depending on the equipments return on investment. Of these, manufacturing defect analys-ers are the cheapest.

In the same kind of environment, one can even use a high-end tester called in-circuit tester (ICT). An ICT is a full-capacity tester capable of testing analogue, digital and mixed-signal devices. It costs ten times more than an MDA. The rate of fault detection is very high using an ICT. So a manufac-turer using an ICT charges more for its products. Besides doing what an MDA does, the ICT performs power-on testing as well. That is, when you apply the power, it checks individual components on the assembly for their functionality (whether they are per-forming as per their specifications or not). It, however, cant test the full product for its functionality.

ICTs are very generic. These are user-programmable. You can use an ICT to test different components by using a dedicated fixture and program written for the PCB. The fixture ensures electrical connection between the assembly and the tester. These fixtures and programs are very dedicated. That means if you have a product with ten components, you need ten fixtures and ten programs for component testing. Of course, even a manufacturing defect analyser requires a dedicated fixture and program but these two cost very less. For ICT the cost is higher due to full power-on testing.

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