InstrumentationNewsletter The Worldwide Publication for Measurement and Automation l Second Quarter 2009 6 Eight Cost-Free Techniques to Improve Test Throughput 8 Embedded Industry Trend – Sensors Get Smart 10 New RIO IF Transceiver Module Brings FPGAs to RF Applications Think Beyond the Box 11 Address Three Top Software A Software-Defined Engineering Challenges with Approach to RF Test LabVIEW Tools page 3 12 Customize Your Chip Characterization with NI FlexRIO and LabVIEW FPGA 14 Lunacy Challenge Incorporates CompactRIO at FIRST Championship 15 Did You Know LabVIEW Could Convert Your PC or SBC into a Real-Time System? 16 Special Focus: Virtual Instrumentation Helps Engineers Upgrade Infrastructure 24 How to Integrate Your Tools into the LabVIEW Environment 26 The Future of Instrument Control – The Software Is Still the Instrument 27 NI Labs Includes Pioneer Release of C Interface to LabVIEW FPGA ni.com 2009-10802-104-101 Q2 INL.indd 1 4/24/09 2:55:51 PM CategoryInside NI Innovating through Tough Times What do Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, and CNN have in common? results and lower perceived risk. Whether it is a test system or a Believe it or not, each of these companies was founded during new product concept, ideas accompanied by a prototype are more difficult economic times. What about product innovations like nylon likely to receive funding. and the Apple iPod? They were also developed and released in weak economies. It turns out that these examples are not anomalies – Use the Network adversity can help spur innovation. It turns out that breakthrough innovation does not come out of the It is clear that innovation is the lifeblood of high-tech companies. blue. According to Andrew Hargadon, author of How Breakthroughs But I am not simply referring to the lightning bolt ideas that only Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, happen in a research lab. I am talking about the ideas that all of us – innovation often creates value from the network it brings together. test engineers, design engineers, and researchers alike – apply to For instance, Hargadon argues that the success of the iPod is not only improving the processes and products that we work on every day. But due to its slick design, but rather how Apple assembled a network of how do you innovate in a time when resources are scarce and the hardware, software, and content in a way that its competitors still business world has collectively become risk-averse? The answer is have not matched. When resources are tight, there is another reason what I call “lean innovation.” to reach out to the network: with fewer resources, you need to find elements to reuse. Do More with Less While the temptation might be to act conservatively in 2009, In the past, you may have had a fully staffed design team with a I encourage you to embrace lean innovation. To do so, however, digital engineer, analog engineer, mechanical engineer, and software you will have to do more with less, prototype your idea quickly, developer. Now, it may be only you. To prototype a design or build a and maximize reuse through the network. test system, you need to apply your domain expertise across multiple engineering disciplines. Therefore, I expect to see more engineers An extended version of this article first appeared in the March 26, 2009, edition of Electronic Design. designing at a system level, using a technique called graphical system design. This approach abstracts the implementation details that have typically required more specialized skills. – Eric Starkloff [email protected] Eric Starkloff has been with National Instruments Prove It since 1997 and is the vice president of product It is going to be hard to get an idea financed in these conditions marketing for test. He holds a bachelor’s degree without first proving its impact. With graphical system design software, in electrical engineering from the University you can quickly develop a prototype of the system to show initial of Virginia. Newsletter Instrumentation Volume 21, Number 2 Second Quarter 2009 Executive Editor John Graff Creative Manager Joe Silva Production Artists Pam Nalty, Fatos Shita Editor in Chief Jennifer Dawkins Art Director Adam Hampshire Photo Editors Nicole Kinbarovsky, Allie Verlander Managing Editor Andria Balman Project Manager Pamela Mapua Image Coordinator Kathy Brown Senior Editor Jenn Giles Designer Gerald Codina Production Specialists Judy Pinckard, Robert Burnette Associate Editors Jennifer King, Jontel Moran Illustrator Brent Burden Circulation Coordinator Molly Rand Contributing Editors Johanna Gilmore, Tiffany Wilder Print Production Art Manager Laura Thompson Instrumentation Newsletter is published quarterly by National Instruments Corporation, 11500 N Mopac Expwy, Austin, TX 78759-3504 USA. ©2009 National Instruments. 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The mark LabWindows is used under a license from Microsoft Corporation. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. LEGO, the LEGO logo, MINDSTORMS, and WEDO are trademarks of the LEGO Group. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. A National Instruments Alliance Partner is a business entity independent from National Instruments and has no agency, partnership, or joint-venture relationship with National Instruments. 2009-10802-104-101 Q2 INL.indd 2 4/24/09 2:55:53 PM CategoryCover Think Beyond the Box – A Software-Defined Approach to RF Test The traditional engineering response to testing a new wireless standard often involves selecting a box instrument with the closest specifications. For automated test systems with multiple test requirements, this This approach worked when testing RF devices with common approach usually results in a different box for each measurement test requirements. In recent years, however, the efficiency of a box requirement in the system. When the test requirements are uniform instrument for automated RF testing has significantly diminished amidst and nonchanging, this method may be sufficient, but it becomes the constant changes in features in wireless devices. The production cumbersome, slow, and ultimately more expensive for testing today’s volume of wireless devices is also exceeding the typical test throughput complex RF devices, which often use multiple wireless standards. of traditional RF box instruments due to the slower processors and A software-defined approach is ideal for automating RF verification, data buses that are often generations older than current PC technology. validation, and production tests, while traditional RF box instruments A clear understanding of the traditional RF instrument makeup and continue to play an important role on the design bench. the challenges of working with fixed-measurement functionality and suboptimal I/O processing is helping engineers think beyond Inside the Instrument the box for their automated RF measurement needs. Today’s engineers must think beyond the box for their RF test needs. However, to think beyond the box, they first have to Software-Defined Approach know what is inside a typical RF box instrument. Inside each The transition to software-defined instrumentation for all types of approximately 38,000 cubic centimeters of sheet metal and automated measurement systems, including RF, is growing rapidly with plastic enclosure is a vendor-defined world of components that an expected deployment of 100,000 PXI-based systems by the end of constitute an RF box instrument; typically there is a power supply, 2009, including more than 600,000 software-defined instrument modules. processor, PC motherboard or backplane, embedded operating The open, user-defined software and modular PC-based hardware are system, measurement libraries, and a software display. The ideal for automated RF test applications because they provide the traditional appeal of a box instrument is the combination of highest-performance processors and data buses, flexible peripheral these matched components applied to a specific set of I/O, compact modular design, smart power distribution and monitoring, measurement requirements. and precise timing and synchronization throughout the system. IEEE 802.11a/g EVM Measurement Times 700 667 600 500 400 300 Measurement Time (ms) Measurement Time 200 100 53.4 12.5 8 0 General-Purpose VSA Specialized PXI Express PXI Express WLAN Box Vector Signal Analyzer Vector Signal Analyzer with AMD Turion 64 X2 with Intel Core 2 Duo Figure 1. Compare EVM measurement times of competitive instruments.