PXI Newsletter

Newsletter: Using PXI Digital Instrumentation for Video Test Applications			12/17/2009
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From the President of the PXISA, Loofie Gutterman:

PXI System Alliance Links

Welcome to the December edition of the PXI Newsletter. Our intent is to educate and inform you about how the PXI standard is being used in modular test systems for a wide variety of industries. One of the important attributes of PXI is its small footprint which offers outstanding functional density – a term that represents the ability to pack high-performance functionality is a very small package and PXI delivers just that.

PXI and PXI Express have changed the test industry’s focus and landscape. Before PXI, there were the multi-bay, large and expensive GPIB systems or VXI- based platforms which were less bulky but still expensive and still requiring multiple instruments bays. There was also the option of using PC- based technology which offered a smaller and less expensive solution but came with the tradeoff of lower performance. PC based test delivered the smaller footprint customers were demanding but without the functional density and performance that were required as well.

PXI has changed the fundamentals and attributes of test systems - delivering high performance solutions combined with a small footprint and high functional density. That was 11 years ago and today, the performance of PXI is substantially higher and the functional density is even better. Testers that required 2 instrument bays before can now be accommodated in a single PXI chassis, creating what some in the industry call “a tester in a box”. A term which refers to a single PXI chassis that provides all the resources required by a test application including UUT power, high-performance digital and analog instrumentation, switching, and a mass interconnect system that can mate with Interface Test Adapter to provide a complete solution. This “tester in a box” that was not available only 10 years ago is now becoming very popular with the availability of high-performance, high functional density PXI solutions.

In this issue, we talk about two PXI applications. The first focuses on the testing of digital video products and systems, using high performance PXI digital products. The second article provides an overview of how a customer was able to successfully transition from an older generation, CAMAC data acquisition system to a smaller, more compact, higher performance PXI-based system. We hope you enjoy this edition of the newsletter. We wish you Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

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Main Article

Using PXI Digital Instrumentation for Video Test Applications

Introduction

The task of verifying or characterizing video components and systems has always been challenging. Typically, testing of video interfaces has been done with special purpose “box” or card modular instrumentation. Regardless of the video format – digital or analog, there are two fundamental criteria for evaluating any video system; the ability to validate the operation and performance of the interface according to a defined set of standards, and the ability to verify that a design can perform beyond established parameters – i.e. tolerate and recover from anomalies.

The former criteria can often be met using common off the shelf test components to generate standard video content using one of the many defined standards, such as a crosshatch or pin cushion patterns. However, for more complex systems, sometimes it is necessary to exercise a video system using a “real-world” image or input, such as testing a video processor in a missile guidance system. Additionally, to objectively evaluate the performance of these systems, it is necessary to provide not only real-world images, but also do it in a consistent, repeatable and deterministic manner - something that can not be achieved using a video source such as a camera or with off the shelf testers.

The latter criteria - characterizing a video system’s ability to tolerate and recover from anomalies, often involves varying electrical or timing properties of the transmitted signal. In this case a test instrument is required that operates beyond the performance boundaries of a normal video generator.

Thanks to all our readers.
Bob Helsel, Editor
www.pxisa.org

Application Article

Argonne National Labs Selects PXI in System Migration

DynamicSignals has recently successfully delivered a two-chassis KineticSystems PXI system for Argonne National Labs.

Argonne National Laboratory is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's oldest and largest national laboratories for science and engineering research. As an existing CAMAC customer of KineticSystems, Argonne was seeking a solution to migrate to a system based on much a newer technology, a PXI-based system, for adding/updating instrumentation to control/monitor klystrons and linacs. A majority of the channels are used to control and monitor the magnets for the linac and other channels for controlling the klystrons. They wanted to move to PXI to achieve the following:

Lower price
Faster throughput
Flexibility
Better compatibility with a modern PCI-based systems
Easier for future channel count expansion

Beyond the basic DAQ requirements, such as channel count, channel type, sampling rate, etc., this project faced many other challenging issues related to instrument location, budgetary constraints and cabling requirements.