Blogs
Network Integrated Circuit (IC) Testing
Network Integrated Circuit (IC) Testing Customer Case A customer makes Integrated Circuit (IC) chips that are used in home network systems. These systems can communicate with many different electronic devices by using the standard 120 Volt, 60 Hz AC household wiring to transmit signals throughout the house. This eliminates the need for extra wiring. They need to test their IC chips before selling them to the company who builds the network systems. They need to test the bit failure rate, the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), chip sensitivity and noise indifference. For these tests, they require a programmable analog [...]
Automotive Engine Controller Monitoring
Automotive Engine Controller Monitoring Customer Case The customer is a major electronics manufacturer who wants to find a cost effective replacement to VXI digitizers in testing automotive engine control signals. The requirement is for several ATE stations. Each one will require 4 single-ended channels or 2 "true differential" channels, 4 MHz of input analog bandwidth (mostly single shot) with voltage ranges from 0.05 to 70 volts. The digitizers must have at least 12 bits of vertical resolution, 0.5% accuracy and ½ MegaSample per channel of acquisition memory. The customer would like to operate the station under a controlling LabVIEW [...]
Fiber Optic Automated Measurement System
Fiber Optic Automated Measurement System Customer Case The customer is in the business of developing lasers and LED components for fiber optic data \ telecommunications applications. The requirement is for an automated test system to monitor the pulse characteristics of the laser. The customer will require 3 channels at high vertical resolution due to the fact that some variances in amplitude will be only 1 mV and need to be detected. The goal is to capture 10,000 samples per channel at 50 MegaSamples per second with a 1 KHz to 5 KHz Pulse Repeat Frequency (PRF). The customer would [...]
Digital ASIC Device Testing
Digital ASIC Device Testing Customer Case The customer wants to test the design of their ASIC devices. To test their IC, they need to stimulate the IC with a particular bit-pattern many times. They call each pattern period a "view". During each view, they need to collect data from the IC. The IC is not purely digital, so the IC output data is not the same for each view, although the stimulus pattern is the same for each view. The stimulus pattern must be "real-time" during a view, but there can be arbitrary delay or dead-time between views. They [...]
Digital I/O ASIC Testing
Digital I/O ASIC Testing Customer Case A customer needs to generate stimulus to test his Application Specific Integrated Circuits and to capture response from that ASIC. The stimulus definition exists as an ASCII file with rows and columns of 1s and 0s. Each column corresponds to a different input pin of the ASIC and each rows corresponds to a different time tic (every 50 nanoseconds). The controlling baud clock runs at 10 MHz. The requirement is to record the digital response from the separate output pins of the ASIC as another ASCII file of 1s and 0s. Again, every [...]
Modernizing a Passive Sonar that has a Beam-Former with Digital Output
Modernizing a Passive Sonar that has a Beam-Former with Digital Output Customer Case The customer's requirement is to capture 10 signals, lasting 0.6 milliseconds each. 120 such signals arrive sequentially from a multiplexer within a beam-former. The clock rate is 2 MHz. The beam-former creates 120 beams and the raw digital data (underwater acoustic signal) from each beam is present at the output port of beam-former with a clock rate of 2 Mhz. At a certain time, we get the digital raw data of one beam. We plan to get 120 x 10 12-bit data records. That is, we [...]
Neutrinos Study
Neutrinos Study Customer Case Neutrinos are said to be the most elusive and exotic particles in the universe. They are tiny neutral elementary particles that interact with matter via the weak nuclear force. Scientists are still trying to measure the mass and to characterize their properties. A customer who is studying neutrinos will be using photo multiplier tubes (PMT) coupled to a scintillating material to detect them. The PMT will produce a small electrical pulse when a neutrino is detected. These PMTs are located 2 Kilometers deep, in a mine located in Ontario, Canada. The customer is looking for [...]
Laser Excitation of Single Atoms
Laser Excitation of Single Atoms Customer Case The client is an academic department conducting fundamental atomic physics research. The target of a Laser is a single Alkali atom, which enlarges to the size of several microns, upon receiving the pulse excitation. The enlarged atom is called a Rydberg atom and can reach the size of a grain of sand. The enlarged atom has new physical properties that are characterized by a detector that creates fast analog data streams. The setup of the experiment involves generating femtosecond Laser pulses, and capturing a 0 to 15 Volt ramp function with a [...]
Laser Based Position Measurement System
Laser Based Position Measurement System Customer Case In order to test their Laser Based Position Measurement Systems, the customer needs to characterize an output pulse from his circuitry which lasts for approximately 5 microseconds. According to the customer's estimates, he must use a sampling rate of 50 MSPS or higher in order to be able to analyze the signal completely. An additional requirement of the test system is that a specific number of successive pulses be digitized and then averaged in order to eliminate system noise. The number of such successive pulses must be variable. The repeat rate of [...]
High-Power Laser Lamp Array Tester
High-Power Laser Lamp Array Tester Customer Case The customer is building a tester for an array of high-power laser lamps. These lamps draw 35,000 Amps of current. The test involves sending a control signal to the laser lamp and measuring the time between the signal and the switching on of the lamp (which is picked up by a photodiode). This time is representative of the quality of the lamp. The customer currently has a 16-channel system, and would like to explore increasing the number of channels. In the customer's present system, eight CompuScope 512 cards are installed in a [...]