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Publish Date: Jul 9, 2010


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Designing Next Generation Test Systems - An In-Depth User Guide

50 ratings | 1.56 out of 5
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Overview

National Instruments has developed an extensive collection of technical guides to assist you with all elements of your test system design. The content for these guides is based on best practices shared by industry-leading test engineering teams that participate in NI customer advisory boards and the expertise of the NI test engineering and product research and development teams. Ultimately, these resources teach you test engineering best practices in a practical and reusable manner.

Download a collection of technical guides from the test system resource library.

Table of Contents

  1. Executive Summary: Designing Next Generation Test Systems
  2. Guidelines for Designing Next Generation Test Systems
  3. Strategies for Improving Test System Performance
  4. Case Studies and Customer Applications

Executive Summary: Designing Next Generation Test Systems

Test managers and engineers are now using test executive software to implement modular test architectures based on widely adopted industry standards to provide:
  • Increased test system flexibility
  • Higher performance architectures
  • Lower test system investment

Increased test system longevity


To learn more about these trends, view the:

Designing Next Generation Test System Executive Summary.

Guidelines for Designing Next Generation Test Systems



1. Test Management Software Strategy for Reducing Development Cycles and Cost
  • Industry trends and challenges
  • Learn more about the modular test software framework

2. Choosing the Right Software Application Development Environment
  • Factors to Consider When Selecting an ADE
  • Comparison of LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, and Microsoft Visual Studio .Net (C++, Visual Basic .Net, C#, and ASP.NET)

3. Hybrid Systems: Integrating Your Multi-Vendor, Multi-Platform Test Equipment
  • Definition of a hybrid system
  • Tips on designing your test system

4. Instrument Bus Performance: Making Sense of Competing Bus Technologies for Instrument Control
  • Understanding bus performance including bandwidth and latency
  • Compare GPIB, USB, PCI, PCI Express, and LAN/LXI instrument control buses

5. Understanding a Modular Instrumentation System for Automated Test
  • Compare traditional instrument and virtual instrumentation architectures
  • The role of hardware and software in a modular Instrumentation system

6. PXI: The Industry Standard Platform for Instrumentation
  • Hardare and software architecture
  • Benefits of PXI Express

Strategies for Improving Test System Performance

7. Maximizing the Throughput of Your Automated Test System

Tips on choosing the highest-throughput bus for your application

Select Software that Takes Full Advantage of the Technology


8. Tips for Improving the Accuracy in Your Automated Test System

  • Understand instrument specifications
  • Consider calibration requirements

9. Designing and maintaining a test system for Longevity
  • Software and hardware considerations
  • Maintenance and Support Considerations

Case Studies and Customer Applications



10. RF Case Study: Software-Defined Radio Architecture for Communications Test

11. Microsoft Uses NI LabVIEW and PXI Modular Instruments to Develop Production Test System for Xbox 360 Controllers

12. U.S. Air Force Increases Mission-Capable Rates with PXI

13. Sanmina-SCI Exceeds Throughput Goals with PXI Tester and Multithreaded Software

 

50 ratings | 1.56 out of 5
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Reader Comments | Submit a comment »

There is a typo on page 5-7 in Bus performance summary. The typo is GPIB instead of GBIB.
- MANJUNATHA SHEELAVANTHAR, EATON. manjunathas@eaton.com - Oct 25, 2008

 

Legal
This tutorial (this "tutorial") was developed by National Instruments ("NI"). Although technical support of this tutorial may be made available by National Instruments, the content in this tutorial may not be completely tested and verified, and NI does not guarantee its quality in any way or that NI will continue to support this content with each new revision of related products and drivers. THIS TUTORIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND SUBJECT TO CERTAIN RESTRICTIONS AS MORE SPECIFICALLY SET FORTH IN NI.COM'S TERMS OF USE (http://ni.com/legal/termsofuse/unitedstates/us/).