Evaluation Engineering - 22

MIL/AERO TEST

(VITA 78, etc.). The new product is an
OpenVPX chassis platform that supports
both 160-mm deep (standard OpenVPX)
and 220-mm deep (SpaceVPX) boards.
The open-frame chassis features up to
four slots at 1.0-in. pitch of each board
depth type. The modular enclosure allows
various board pitches to be used at 0.2in. increments. Card guides support both
air-cooled boards and conduction-cooled
boards, with wider 220-mm-deep card
guides to support extra-thick SpaceVPX
conduction-cooled boards per VITA 78.

Trends and challenges
"The trend we see is that maintainers are
seeking easy to use, sustain, and deploy
test sets that overcome the obsolescence
and multiple large box test sets found
on the flightline today," said Sargeant of
Marvin Test Solutions.
According to Sargeant, maintainers
face using multiple large-box test sets
that take several airmen to carry to the
flightline, and consume large amounts of
time to set up, tear down, and run tests on
the flightline. "These large, slow test sets
compound the problem of the reduced
number and lower experience levels of
maintainers found in squadrons today.
All levels of maintainers are faced with
an ever-growing number of cyber threats,
therefore, they are searching for cybersecure test sets to combat the threat."
Butler at NI cited many trends affecting NI's aerospace and defense customers. "Through digital transformation
initiatives, these customers are looking
to modernize both their products and
their processes. This trend is the result
of a convergence of digital technologies,
and promises to revolutionize the way
companies design, manufacture, and
service their products."
McCarthy at Rohde & Schwarz cited the
commercialization of space, or NewSpace,
as an interesting trend. "It is clear that the
military and aerospace industries are attempting to leverage commercial technologies in space," he said. "From a standpoint
of RF and microwave communications
testing, this also involves the desire to
utilize commercial communications
standards in NewSpace, for secure and
globally-available networks."

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McCarthy added that commercial communications standards being developed
in parallel include the 3GPP work item
on non-terrestrial networks (NTN).
"NTNs can provide a tactical battlefield
or global coverage of secure networks,
and they have three areas of concerted
development in the defense industry:
low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems,
high-altitude platform stations (HAPS),
and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS),"
he said. "Of these three investments, some
of the most promising and popular innovations are the investments in the LEO
constellation networks."
Wa l k er a t C opp er Mou nt a i n
Technologies commented on security
from the perspective of a vector network
analyzer manufacturer, calling USB VNAs
a better fit than traditional instruments.
"Taking traditional network analyzers in
and out of secure environments is a lot of
work, requiring removable hard drives,
data-purging procedures, and oversight
over those data-purging procedures. With
USB VNAs the computer that stores and
processes the data is separate from the
measurement module, so, as long as the
computer stays in the secure area, all
data concerns are eliminated, and the
data measurement module can easily
move between laboratories and sites. Our
measurement module has only volatile
memory, so no data is retained, and the
separate PC can be made secure following
standard security protocols."
Anritsu has noticed two main trends,
according to Summers. First, "Deployed
systems are continuing to be more technical, along with the tools used to maintain
them and technologies, yet are easy to
operate," he said.
Summers cited challenges related to
signals intelligence (SIGINT) and electronic warfare (EW), which require precise test and measurement equipment,
such as spectrum analyzers, to operate
according to specification in demanding
environments.
Rule at Pacific Instruments identified
trends toward large-scale systems and
structure testing requiring an integrated
data-acquisition system capable of supporting multiple types of sensors, wide
range of sample rates, filtering schemes,

modularity and expandability. "For smaller scale tests, many military and aerospace facilities are evaluating and moving toward a distributed data-acquisition
system architecture. The ability to utilize
a network of small data-acquisition systems located as desired and linked together as one large system is advantageous in
many applications," he said.
According to Stasonis at Pickering
Interfaces, "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 to prove
that the 'lessons learned' are correct.
We are also seeing a drive for smaller
test systems to bring better support to
the battlefront."

Pickering Interfaces Model 40-558 matrix.

Stasonis emphasized that the product
life/availability of test gear should be as
long as possible. "For defense applications that are reaching end-of-life-for
example, VXI instrumentation-we offer
migration paths from VXI switching to
PXI. In order to keep our product families supportable in the long haul, we have
gone through projects where we design
out obsolescence in our products-ensuring that newer designs are form/fit/function the same compared to older models."
Regazzi at Giga-tronics commented on
trends from both a business and technology perspective: The demand has finally
arrived for test equipment to process signals with instantaneous bandwidths in
the GHz range.
Averna over the past year has identified two trends that have stood out in
MIL/aero test. "The first is a result of the
many acquisitions that have transpired
within the industry. Now we are seeing
companies investing in streamlining the

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