Testing

Agilent Technologies test and measurement business will rebrand as Keysight Technologies in August and Jay Alexander has been named as chief technology officer. Alexander’s appointment is significant as new product development was a big driver behind the plan to separate Agilent’s test and life sciences businesses, when it was announced last September. He will manage the increased investment which is ...

The cross-industry group promoting the LXI Ethernet-based test instrument interface is creating its first reference design which will be used by test fims to adapt their devices to the LXI bus-based instrument standard. This extends the work for the LXI Consortium from strandard development to practical implementation. The LXI Technical Committee will develop a reference design for use by the 50 or so consortium member companies. To ...

It is practical to characterise charge/discharge cycles of rechargeable batteries using an SMU (single-source measurement unit), writes Mary Anne Tupta from Keithley Instruments. Rechargeable batteries are commonly characterised using charge/discharge cycling, which provides useful information on internal chemistry, capacity, usable cycles, and lifetime. In production, this technique is often used to verify if a battery meets specifications and isn’t defective. ...

A programmable test and measurement instrument which runs open source software developed by start-up Red Pitaya can be bought from RS later this year. The board can be configured as an oscilloscope, an arbitrary waveform generator or spectrum analyser by downloading open source software applications from an online marketplace created by Slovenia-based Red Pitaya. The credit card-sized board uses a ...

A three-year research project, completed by the Rugby Science Group at Bath University and funded by the International Rugby Board (IRB), has contributed to recent changes in the law of scrummaging. With a view to establishing safer engagement techniques, the IRB selected Bath University research team to investigate the forces and motion of scrum mechanics in order to determine the ...

Aeroflex is working on developing test technologies for 5G wireless systems as part of its involvement in the UK-based 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) programme led by the University of Surrey. “The 5GIC programme gives us an excellent platform for collaboration with world-class researchers and companies in this exciting mobile communications field,” said Li-Ke Huang, technology manager of Aeroflex. Aeroflex will develop systems for the testability of the high-density, ...

Pico Technology has released an eight channel PC oscilloscope. Called PicoScope 4824, it has 12bit resolution, a USB 3.0 interface, an integrated 14bit arbitrary waveform generator (AWG), and is powered over the USB cable. Input bandwidth is 20MHz (50mV-50V vertical sensitivity, or 10 MHz (10 and 20mV) Sample rate is 40Msample/s/channel with all channels in use, which can be doubled ...

Agilent Technologies is demonstrating a cloud-based radio access network as part of the C-RAN collaboration project with China Mobile Communications Research Institute (CMRI) at the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Agilent and CMRI have been developing technology and test methods for a next-generation, cloud-based radio access network, or C-RAN. Areas of research include TD-LTE/TD-LTE-Advanced Radio Frequency testing, new test ...

MIPI M-PHY specification is an important element in mobile device design and Dean Miles presents some tips about testing physical interfaces. Three billion MIPI-powered ICs were shipped in 2012, but of those only 100 million were based on the high-performance, low-power M-PHY specification. Take the Electronics Weekly UK Salary Survey 2014 » That is certain to change in the coming ...

Tom Hoppin from Agilent Technologies explains how to correlate microwave measurements between handheld and benchtop analysers to achieve higher accuracy in the field As more and more technicians and engineers head into the field to make measurements in less than hospitable conditions, the need for accurate handheld measurement instrumentation has become all the more acute. For many, however, “precise microwave ...