The Automated Test Blog

As I stated in an earlier blog post, I’m planning to discuss one of five industry trends per blog entry over the next few weeks. My 4th trend is:

The Explosion of Wireless Standards
Test engineers are facing new challenges as the use of wireless technolgies is rapidly expanding. This was a hot topic during the recent CES 2008 conference. One article covering CES, stated “Today’s young people might be called the wired generation, but judging from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show they might not have to deal with actual wires for much longer.” Below are few examples of products that have traditionally been “wired”, but are now becoming “wireless” devices:

• • Apple Time Capsule, which is a 1 terabyte wireless hard-drive using 802.11n.
  • GM Vehicle-to-Vehicle technology, cars are becoming wireless network that can broadcast position, speed, heading to surrounding cars.
  • Samsung flat-panel wireless TV, that receives its data from an 802.11n transmitte

As Wireless transitions from a vertical industry into a horizontal application, more and more test engineers will be faced with the challenge of testing RF wireless capability. Soon, RF instrumentation could become as ubiquitous as general-purpose instruments such as digital multimeters. This growth in adoption requires test engineers to learn wireless protocols and keep pace with the rapid introduction of new standards. This trend was reflected in the 2007 Test & Measurement World Salary Survey (which I blogged about late last year), in which subscribers across engineering disciplines were asked to identify the top technologies they are being required to learn. Among the top responses were WLAN and WiMax.An additional challenge as wireless becomes ubiquitous on high volume consumer devices, is that manufacturers must optimize the throughput of test systems. When a low cost music player adds wireless capability, for example, the test system, which now must include RF test equipment, can’t add significant cost to the  product.  Keeping up with these demands requires an RF platform optimized for throughput and cost.

Bookmark to:

Posted in RF Test, National Instruments, Modular Instruments, Wireless, Apple, Test Engineer