Test bits

Digital RF East

Tektronix (Beaverton, OR) and the state-run China Electronics Standardization Institution (Beijing) have formed a partnership to set up a joint lab for advanced research and assessment of digital RF and digital TV standards in China. The research facility will play a key role in developing China’s new DTV and digital RF standards.

Tektronix will provide the lab with its latest enhanced video and RF test instruments, including RSA6100A real-time spectrum analyzers, WVR7120 waveform rasterizers, and the PQA500 picture quality analyzer.

VXI: alive and well

While there has been much attention given to new backplane architectures for test instrumentation such as PXIe, it is well to remember that the grandparent of all such configurationsVME extensions for Instrumentation, or VXI—is still proving itself to be of significant value.

In the most recent newsletter issued by the VXI Consortium (Niwot, CO), Charles Greenberg of EADS North American Defense points out that there are three military-related areas where VXI is still playing a particularly useful role:

1. Re-hosting a legacy military test system.

2. Building a test system with Synthetic Instruments (SI).

3. An SI replacement for an obsolete instrument.

Greenberg goes on to give specifics about why VXI serves so well in all three areas.

The consortium has formed a technical working group to begin discussions on the feasibility of the next-generation VXIbus specification. For more information, visit http://www.vxi.org.