Using new instrument interface standards to increase automatic test system performance

The performance of automatic test system is always closely linked to the performance of the instrument interface architecture used in the system. The evolution of various instrument interface standards and the recent progress in test automation with these standards are discussed in this paper. Also it reviews the technical aspects of various interface standards like USB, firewire, Ethernet etc. in terms of its specifications and architecture and describes how these standards can help the test system developers to improve performance and lower system maintenance cost It also discusses the emergence of modular ATE architecture based on PXI & cPCI; the benefits and limitations of these systems as compared to industrial PC based test systems and the different factors to be considered before selecting these systems for test automation. Also a comparison of industrial PC and PXI based test systems in terms of performance and system cost is made by taking the case study of the automatic test system for base band telemetry packages of Indian launch vehicles.