The Future of Instrumentation - High Frequency Electronics

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High Frequency Design Software Revolution The Future of Instrumentation: The Software Revolution By Matthew Friedman Engineers are becoming empowered to make measurements and create test systems specifically suited to their exact needs. 65 years ago Bell Labs forever changed technology with the invention of the transistor. Considered one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, it is hard to find an element of our life that has not been impacted by its existence. This of course has had a profound impact on instrumentation as well. Companies like Hewlett-Packard were born from this silicon revolution and their instruments replaced the vacuum tube instruments of General Radio before them. Like 45 years ago, we are now at another crossroads in instrumentation with the software revolution. Just as everyone expects their smartphone to have apps customized to their exact needs, engineers are struggling to make do with fixed functionality instruments. As we stand at the precipice of this new era, we are seeing a fundamental shift as engineers are becoming empowered to make measurements and create test systems specifically suited to their exact needs. Test Complexity Drives Change in Instrumentation With increased technological innovation comes the challenge of testing each new breakthrough. For example, as wireless standards become more complex, the number of operational modes for these devices increases exponentially. As we progress to the latest WiFi standards like 802.11ac, there are many new modulation schemes, additional channels, more bandwidth settings, and extra spatial streams that increase testing complexity. Additionally, characterizing WLAN transceivers is especially challenging when faced with thousands of independent operational gain settings (Figure 1). With such complexity, manual testing techniques become infeasible and some level of automation is required. This is traditionally achieved by connecting box instruments over 22 High Frequency Electronics Figure 1 • An example block diagram of a typical WLAN receiver shows how each component has multiple gain stages, resulting in hundreds of thousands of different possible gain settings for a single receiver. (Courtesy of Qualcomm Atheros).
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Page 1 and 2: ALSO PUBLISHED ONLINE: www.highfreq
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Page 8 and 9: EDITORIAL Vol. 12 No. 1, January 20
Page 10 and 11: MEETINGS & EVENTS Conferences Janua
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Page 14: IN THE NEWS National Instruments an
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Page 27 and 28: Figure 4 • The NI PXIe-5644R is t
Page 29 and 30: QUALITY, PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILIT
Page 31 and 32: COMPLIANT LAVI VERY LOW DISTORTION
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Page 39 and 40: Precision Cable Connectors Our Spec
Page 41 and 42: Industry pros are talking about us
Page 43 and 44: HI-REL Block High Level RF Interfer
Page 45 and 46: International Microwave Symposium I
Page 47 and 48: COMPLIANT CeramiC FiLT erS Low Pass
Page 49 and 50: www.highfrequencyelectronics.com Hi
Page 51: Product Showcase Modco VCO’s for
Page 54 and 55: High Frequency Design EM Simulator
Page 60 and 61: Product Highlights Coupler Mini-Cir
Page 62 and 63: Product Highlights Connectors Carli
Page 64 and 65: Product Highlights Transmit Module
Page 66 and 67: Advertiser Index Company...........
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