The Automated Test Blog

Yes, its 2009 and time again to make some predictions about the technologies and trends that I think will shape our industry this year.  Of course, making predictions for the rest of this year right now is a pretty risky proposition. But, one thing I know to be true is that in a tough economy, you have to be able to do more with fewer resources. Test and measurement often comes under particular scrutiny in an economic down cycle, and test engineers will need to be prepared to optimize our approach to verification and production test, or even look at alternatives to our existing test engineering strategies

These demands have led to three major trends that I believe will significantly influence the Test and Measurement industry over the next year. Instead of blogging them all here today, I will share one per entry over the next few weeks.

Trend#1: Growth of Software-Defined Instrumentation

The adoption of software-defined instrumentation is the most significant trend in test and measurement for 2009. Software-defined instruments, also known as virtual instruments, consist of modular hardware and user-defined software that give engineers the ability to combine standard and user-defined measurements with custom data processing using common hardware components. This flexibility has become critical as electronic devices such as next-generation navigation systems and smart phones integrate diverse capabilities and rapidly adopt new communication standards. Using software-defined instruments, engineers rapidly can reconfigure their test equipment by modifying software algorithms to meet changing test requirements.

In addition, engineers are using software-defined instrumentation to achieve new levels of measurement performance and lower test costs by applying the latest technological advancements such as multicore processors and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in their test systems to meet the demands of new application areas such as wireless and protocol-aware test.

Because of the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of this approach, thousands of companies are adopting software-defined instrumentation and industry standards that build on this approach continue to grow, even in the difficult world economy.  For example, according to the PXI Systems Alliance, more than 100,000 PXI systems will be deployed by the end of 2009, and the number of deployed PXI systems is expected to double in the next decade.

Jessy Cavazos, test and measurement industry manager at Frost & Sullivan, recently confirmed that PXI is influencing this trend when she stated, “The open, modular architecture of software-defined instruments such as those in PXI have proven beneficial to a wide range of industries, and, as a result, PXI revenue in measurement and automation is expected to grow at 17.6 percent CAGR through 2014. The performance delivered by the PXI platform has successfully addressed areas such as RF applications in radar testing, mobile phone testing and other wireless applications that were previously impossible to address with other instrumentation.”

Next week, I’ll post on the second trend, the increased adotoption of parallel technologies.

Well, 2009 is finally here.  After a couple months of bad news on the financial markets and the global economy, I think we’re all ready for a fresh start.  No, I don’t think the bad news is over yet; in fact, it will probably get a little worse still before it gets better.  Still, while 2009 does promise to be a challenging year economically, I doubt it will be as bad as some of the headlines would lead you to believe.  And, in any economy, there are opportunities for those who innovate.  In fact, I believe that innovation actually flourishes in the toughest situations.  I’ll write more on that idea in a future post.  For now, here’s to making the most of 2009!