Evaluation Engineering - 16

RF/MICROWAVE SWITCHING

our engineers can help develop one to
the customers specifications."
Stasonis said Pickering's products
come with software drivers for virtually
all major OSs and application development environments. "While we supply
IVI drivers as mandated for LXI instruments, we do offer a common API that
interfaces with all products, regardless of
the communications link to the host PC,"
he added. Consequently, customers can

that connect the desired input to output
without needing to manage individual
switch states."
Fi na l ly, St a son is com mented ,
"Sometimes the little things are the most
important. For example, we provide frontpanel status LEDs on all our microwave
products. This makes a programmer's
effort easier as he can quickly determine if their code is making the right
connections."

Pickering Interfaces Model 60-801-008 50-Ω 6-channel LXI microwave multiplexer.

choose the platform best suited to meet a
specific application requirement without
needing to incorporate a new software
interface. "Our drivers include soft front
panels (SFP) that provide the ability to
manually control the on/off state of each
relay," Stasonis said. "We have recently
introduced a shared memory architecture
that allows users to monitor the states
of the relays on the SFP during program
execution which facilitates integration
debug efforts."
Stasonis commented that microwave
switch systems can be complex networks
of interconnected relays, passive components, and wiring. "We have learned over
the years that the integration effort can
become a time-consuming task for software engineers who need to define the
states of all relays required to establish
a path between a test instrument and
the article under test," he said. "To help
accelerate integration, our products are
supported by our Switch Path Manager
utility (SPM), which enables an entire
switching subsystem, including all relays
and external interconnects, to be virtually defined using a graphical interface.
Once a switch architecture has been defined in Switch Path Manager, software
engineers can simply write function calls

EVALUATION ENGINEERING APRIL 2020

AMETEK VTI Instruments offers
switching products including the SM7000
Series microwave switch modules, which
consist of 13 C-size single and dual-slot
VXI modules that range in frequency
from DC to 18 GHz, 20 GHz, 26.5 GHz, and
40 GHz, according to Chris Gibson, senior product manager. "Relays are SPDT,
SP4T, SP6T, and transfer switches, and

the relays can be unterminated or terminated," he said. "Many modules include
up to 32 SPST low-frequency control relays for controlling external devices such
as electronic RF/microwave attenuators.
Two modules are nonblocking 4x4 RF/
microwave matrices."
In addition, the SMX Series includes 20
PXI Express modules having either 3.5GHz or 26.5-GHz bandwidths, Gibson
said. Modules have multiple 1x4, 1x6, 1x8,
1x16, and 1x32 multiplexer configurations
with a 3.5-GHz bandwidth. The 26.5-GHz
bandwidth modules
include single and
multiple, independent coaxial SPDT,
SP4T, and SP6T switches, pass-through adapters,
and a transfer switch. "The
SMX PXI Express modules have an
embedded virtual schematic control
application that enables control of
all relays for facilitating test setup and
debugging," explained Gibson. "This application is independent of the test protocol application software."
Gibson described the EX7000 family
as a highly flexible group of configurable
systems that are LAN LXI-based in standalone mainframes, with bandwidths
extending to 26.5 GHz and 67 GHz and
beyond. "The EX7000 family has the LXI

Rohde & Schwarz R&S OSP Open Switch and Control Platform in an EMC testing environment.

Evaluation Engineering

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