Evaluation Engineering - 9

oscilloscopes have lacked things like
higher-resolution ADCs, deep acquisition
memory, touchscreens, serial decoding/
triggering, fast update rates, a usable FFT,
etc. This became generally accepted industrywide, as it was the usual tradeoff.
"More modern, portable oscilloscopes
like our R&S Scope Rider do not make
users choose," Markley said. "This is also
true in vector network or spectrum analyzers. For example, our new R&S Cable
Rider ZPH cable and antenna analyzer is
fast to boot, fast to warm up and makes
measurements in 0.3 milliseconds per
point. This was not something typically
possible in handheld instruments before."
To take a deep dive into this topic of portable instrumentation, we at EE gathered
commentary from various vendors of such
solutions to get their thoughts on technology trends, challenges, customer demands,
and what newer products are on the market. Read on to see what they told us.

What's trending?
What technology or market trends are
vendors seeing in the area of portable
instrumentation?
Dan Dunn, VP of aerospace defense solutions at Keysight Technologies: "Portable
RF/microwave test equipment for field
use is trending toward versatility-an
all-in-one instrument capable of making
measurements that previously required
multiple pieces of heavy test equipment.
It needs to be rugged and capable of withstanding the toughest environmental
conditions while simultaneously delivering quality measurements. Technology
trends advancing the success of portable
RF/microwave combination analyzers are
miniaturization of circuits, increased
battery capacity, active cooling designs,
custom integrated circuits, and FPGAs."
Keysight's Fieldfox line of portable analyzers.

Trevor Smith, business development
manager at Pico Technology: "System
designers are taking advantage of higher
performance ICs to bring more sophisticated and advanced products to market.
The ICs themselves have been tested and
characterized with ultrahigh-performance laboratory oscilloscopes, priced
accordingly, and are out of reach for most
engineering budgets. Manufacturers are
responding with products that deliver
the performance needed to capture and
analyze signals that are flowing in the
new generation of electronic designs, at
affordable prices. Even if the escalating
budget pressure created by the constantly
increasing cost of high-end lab scopes
doesn't prevent a potential buyer from
purchasing new equipment, it may likely
limit the number of units available to engineers and potentially slow development
if test equipment access is restricted."
Brian Walker, senior
R F desig n eng ineer
at Copper Mountain
Technologies: "We see the
need for affordable, miniaturized VNAs that can
be embedded into handheld systems, perhaps for
detection at a distance
from dangerous chemicals or metallic objects with a particular physical configuration."
Jason Chonko, applications
marketing manager at SIGLENT
Technologies NA: "Automatic measurements and feature integration are leading
the field for trends. Engineers and technicians are faced with solving more technical issues than ever before. They require
flexible tools that can solve more problems quickly. In the past, instruments

would provide basic measurement data
and then some calculations could be
performed offline to find the root cause
of the problem. Today, instruments that
provide the end result, not just the basic
measurement, are preferable because
they can provide faster and more accurate results."
Kai Li, product manager at MEAN WELL
USA: "Miniaturization has been an ongoing trend for portable instruments. As a
result, internal components are also required to shrink in size, and some components are even shifted to external solutions. This is especially true for power
supplies and chargers. On the opposite
side of things, the power consumption
of portable instruments continues to
increase as more functions are implemented. A new trend is the integration
of IoT functions and wireless capabilities."

Copper
Mountain
Technologies'
M5065 vector
network
analyzer in use.

Kaitlyn Franz, test & measurement
product marketing manager at Digilent:
"When we look at the portable instruments market, there are two main types
of products-PC or USB instruments and
handheld instruments. While handheld
instruments shave their conveniences-
display-on-device and probes-on-device-we are seeing a shift in the availability, use, and innovation in the PC/
USB instrument market. Engineers are
really taking advantage of the portability
of these instruments and companies are
reacting by jumping in. This provides a
marketplace where innovation and software are critical."
OCTOBER 2019 EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

http://www.EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

Evaluation Engineering

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