Industry Happenings: Autotestcon balances ATE cost, performance, and resiliency

This year’s IEEE Autotestcon conference held Sept. 12-15 at the Disneyland Hotel and Conference Center, Anaheim, CA, had 66 exhibitors including prime contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The military services also were represented with groups attending from the U.S. Navy; the USMC Marine Depot Maintenance, Albany; the USAF 581 SMXS/MXDPCB, Warner Robbins AFB; and the USAF 516 SMXS/MXDPF, Hill AFB.

Familiar themes such as legacy test system support, the importance of sustaining test program set (TPS) performance on aging ATE systems, and extended-period support requirements were revisited from a number of viewpoints. In addition, cybersecurity, while not new, was given much greater emphasis than in the past. Each of the four keynote speakers independently discussed the topic, one detailing an experiment in which an infected radio infected the ATE that tested it, the ATE then passing on the infection to subsequent radios being tested.

Working off-line to limit unwanted access is not a viable option because of the benefits provided by a networked tester, especially the ease with which test software can be remotely updated and the prognostics value of performance-related data. As one speaker put it, ATE is “the perfect attack vector,” and ATE resiliency to attack has become a major design factor. On the other hand, formal procedures are available that can minimize risk of a successful attack but in many cases are not being followed.

FPGAs

Although no presentations were exclusively focused on FPGAs, highlighting them is warranted because virtually all the test instruments being exhibited depended on one or more FPGAs for the level of performance achieved. Together with software-defined-radio techniques and synthetic-instrument technology, FPGAs have facilitated today’s ATE solutions.

Specific instances include the latest member of the RADX LibertyGT series of configurable instruments: the Model 1111B-MCRT2, a multichannel, real-time, radio test instrument. This line of software-defined synthetic instruments provides real-time spectrum analysis via DSP techniques implemented on FPGAs. The 1111B can be configured as a channelized real-time VSA with up to 128 receive channels with a variety of modulations. Or, it can function as a 16-channel VSG, also with per-channel choice of modulation type.

National Instruments and Astronics Test Systems have collaborated on the design, manufacture, and marketing of a set of three more PXI instruments that can replace several VXI functions in new test systems. Software-defined-instrument technology, which uses FPGAs, allows these modules to directly replace similar VXI functions, supporting existing TPS use with minimal changes. The technology also provides a degree of future-proofing so that a module can be repurposed to test more recently introduced weapons systems.

In another example, a technical paper discussed development of a test system that could measure EW jammer response time. The author reasoned that because jamming uses digital RF memory to achieve high speed, associated ATE needed to be just as fast—it wasn’t. Rather than detect and process an attacking jamming signal by an ATE’s system computer in preparation to issue a counterattack, an FPGA was used resulting in 20x faster operation.

Data

Implicit in ATE system sustainability is the need for prognostics, and that requires data. Lockheed Martin’s Logistics and Sustainment group provides support for many types of systems including ATE. By collecting and analyzing data, the group can improve logistics—for example, by increasing the quantity and availability of spares for parts that fail more often.

However, data collection can be a problem if originally providing certain types of data was not part of a prime system’s requirements document. The implication is that test must be an integral part of the design effort so that the data needed for prognostics is included.

A further aspect is the choice of data: which types of data will be needed in the future? As the saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. Collecting a large amount of diverse data could be useful, and so-called big-data analysis was discussed. This topic relates to cybersecurity to the extent that ATE needs to be networked to facilitate data acquisition and subsequent analysis.

Sustainment

In the final paper of the conference, Mike Dewey, director of marketing at Marvin Test Solutions, discussed a few simple tools that can help clarify the replace/ maintain decision. A test instrument will go through a few stages on its way to total obsolescence. The first occurs when the manufacturer announces that the instrument no longer will be supported. Another stage occurs when second-hand instruments no longer are available. Perhaps the final stage is reluctant admission by the depot’s technicians that even they cannot bring the unit back to life.

In some ways, reaching the final stage makes the replace/maintain decision easy, but you still must decide how much of the system to replace, how much future-proofing to do while still supporting current TPS, and how much it all can cost.

The tools are spreadsheets that facilitate assessment of the situation. One tool helps you to describe all the relevant aspects of the current system—the functionality, size, and power consumption that you have now are the best guides to what you need to achieve in a new system. Another tool concentrates more on cost and by adding columns provides a convenient display of competing solutions.

Whether to replace or maintain existing ATE systems is a perennial Autotestcon topic. As these systems age, the decision naturally involves more replacement, but additional parallel requirements such as cybersecurity and the capability to provide cross-platform support also influence how the decision is implemented.