Evaluation Engineering - 16

AEROSPACE TEST

considering worst-case scenarios. A failure in commercial aerospace can lead to
injures or casualties to the civilian population whereas a failure in a military application is directly related to the capability to
accomplish a mission with mainly tactical
or economic impacts for the operator."
Ramirez Perez continued, "Secondly,
commercial aviation has been driven
by COTS environments, which reduce
the cost by using enough reliable, well
proved components. COTS systems ease
the verification and integration at the final platforms but constrains the flexibility
of engineers to achieve new designs. On
the other side, military developments
have given a higher priority to customizations, security, and isolation through
specific implementations, which offers
more freedom to engineers on their designs, but increases the complexity of the
testing and verification solutions."
MIL/aero OEMs are all looking for
shorter time to market and easy-to-use
solutions," said Niehoff of Samtec. "That
is where Samtec is filling the need with
COTS items."

Synergy
"In general, there is a modernization trend
driven by the need for more data (not just
voice)," commented Vondran at Astronics
Test Systems. "The physical layer of the
communication link is evolving to meet
this need with SDR architectures. This
evolution will continue to keep pace with
the complexity inherent in these communication applications. If true, we predict
the synergy between military and commercial aerospace will become more the
norm (than the exception). Our position
as a trusted supplier will continue to fuel
these modernization efforts."
"Both commercial and military/aerospace customers require tools that are
precise and adhere to the specifications
for which the instrument(s) are designed,"
said Rodgers at Teledyne LeCroy. "A key
difference in military applications is the
nature of the systems communications
and components therein; there are more
'mission-critical' concerns and functions
in a military airframe."
"Numerous components in all microwave systems have continuously

EVALUATION ENGINEERING FEBRUARY 2020

evolved and are now being optimized
for specific applications," according
to CTT marketing. "Both military and
commercial configurations can benefit
from improvements in increased sensitivity, reduced size and weight, higher
efficiency, reduced cost, and increased
system power efficiency. Improvements
in these areas can spring from either the
system designer or from breakthroughs
at the component level."

Aerospace test trends
Several trends point to the future of
aerospace test. "Aerospace programs
are leveraging the cost and technology
benefits of the commercial marketplace,"
said Rodgers at Teledyne LeCroy. "This
trend assists the aerospace market in
providing an increase in product-development options at reduced costs to deploy. However, the aerospace industry, by
nature of the products and services they
supply and support, needs to ensure the
general market products and designs can
withstand the scrutiny and rigors of the
level necessary to be used in aerospace
applications. Test and measurement tools
and practices must be maintained at the
highest level possible in support of the
aerospace requirements."
Eccles, Murphy, and Blume commented, "The SIL is becoming exponentially
more important to Bloomy's aerospace
customers as the complexity of their control systems increases. We expect that the
wide variety of sub-tier suppliers of controls and their test systems will require
commonality and interoperability of these
test systems. It is likely that the coming
months and years will, by necessity, see
standards emerge for standardizing the
command and control of these test systems as well as for sharing data among
them."
"Along with emerging technologies
like 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and
quantum computing, there will be an
increase in the number of connected devices enabling an entirely new paradigm
of connectivity and capability-which
means that customers will require higherperformance and frequency with lower
latency and wider bands," according to
KRYTAR marketing.

"Customers want to be able to stream
real-time and record," commented
Nguyen at DTS. "SLICE6 Air supports
both real-time streaming that's viewable
in industry-standard and nonproprietary
data formats, as well as dual onboard recording to 16-GB nonvolatile memory."
CTT marketing sees a range of applications-narrowband, wideband, or ultrawideband (microwave and mmWave)-
operating in pulsed or CW mode, for
new multifunctioned systems that effectively conserve weight, space, and power
consumption.
"COTS buy-in is becoming more and
more accepted," said Niehoff at Samtec.
"Samtec's SET capabilities strengthen
customer confidence in using a COTS
product in their application."
"The advances in AI and machine
learning will likely mean more HILS applications to test for all possible circumstances, whether it is hardware, firmware, or software testing," said Stasonis
at Pickering. "We are also seeing a drive
for smaller test systems in order to more
easily bring support to the battlefront."
"In general, the trends in the aerospace
industry are slow in adoption (compared
to something trendy like 5G)," according
to Vondran at Astronics Test Systems,
"Even so, the transparent, collaborative,
and methodical process towards modernization seems to be moving toward
a faster cadence. This agility combined
with trusted relationships is what will
accelerate the future of aerospace test
into reality."
Many of the spokespersons quoted in
this article have elaborated on the points
raised here and have weighed in on additional challenges and trends in aerospace
test. A future article will provide more
on the topic.
REFERENCES

1. Underwood, Kimberly, "5G for Warfighters,"
Signal, AFCEA, June 1, 2019.
2. "Anritsu adds RTSA to Field Master Pro," EEEvaluation Engineering Online, Sept. 17, 2019.
3. "New technology demands, multifunctionality
make signal generators more integral to
testing than ever," EE-Evaluation Engineering,
November 2019, p. 6.
4. "Highland Technology debuts dual-channel
quadrature modulator," EE-Evaluation
Engineering Online, Nov. 29, 2019.

Evaluation Engineering

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Evaluation Engineering