Improving Life Cycle Management for Testing Aerospace and Defense Electronics

Sean Thompson
Platform Manager Aerospace/Defense Applications
Sean.thompson@ni.com

National Instruments Confidential

Agenda
Understanding Life Cycles Improving Life Cycle Management with a Software Defined Modular Platform

All Systems and Products Have a Life Cycle

Definition

Development

Production & Deployment

Operation & Support

COTS Electronics Have Their Own Life Cycles

EIA-724, Product Life Cycle Data Model for microelectronics

Sustainment-Dominated Life Cycle

Long operation and support phases
Operation & Support

Extended Life Cycles

Source: EIA Engineering Bulletin, Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages Management Practices

Life Cycle Management Practices

Definition Development Production & Deployment Operation and Support

Proactive/Strategic Modular open architectures Technology roadmapping Planned system upgrades Technology insertion planning Life cycle analysis and monitoring Formal lifecycle strategy Reactive/Tactical Alternate source Substitution Redefine requirement Emulation Lifetime Buy Redesign Reverse Engineer Reclamation
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Modular Platform based on COTS Technologies

System Software Architecture

Hardware is the most common cause of obsolescence issues Changing software to deal with hardware obsolescence is the biggest source of cost and disruption Good software architecture is key to mitigating obsolescence issues

Key Investment Areas for NI

System Software Stack

Modular HW platform based on COTS technology

Heterogeneous Computing/Graphical System Design
FPGA

Multicore Processors

Long term support

Technology Investments

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Software Provides the Flexibility for Abstraction or Drill Down as Required

Software is the core of a [Synthetic Instrumentation] test system, it is the task of the software to define and control the hardware

Frost and Sullivan 2006 World Synthetic Instrumentation Test Equipment Report

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Modular Test Software Technology

Test Management Software
TestStand NI Switch Executive Combine/Manage Tests across Environments

Test Development Software

LabVIEW LabWindows/CVI Visual Studio .NET & Measurement Studio

Add Test to HW Control/Interface

Services & Drivers

NI-DAQ NI-DMM NI-SCOPE
NI-FGEN NI-HSDIO Other

Hardware Abstraction
IVI VISA
Abstract HW-specific Implementation

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Modular Architecture TPS Software

Operator Interface
NI TestStand API

Sequence Editor
Databases

NI TestStand Engine
(ActiveX server)

ATML, Reports

VEE, Java

LabVIEW

CVI

.NET

C/C++

ActiveX

HTBasic

ATLAS

Other

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ATML Document Schemas Development

Test Description

Test Result

UUT Description

Test Adapter

Test Configuration

Instrument Description

Test Station

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PXI: Hardware platform based on COTS

Riding Moores Law
PCI Express Multicore Processors FPGAs Data Converters

Enabling High-Performance Automated Test

Rugged, modular form factor High-speed data movement Timing and synchronization Optimization for parallel execution
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Expanding Measurement Capabilities

NI PXI-4071 7-digit FlexDMM Industrys fastest, most accurate 7-digit DMM

28 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 1 10 100 1K 10K 100K 1M 10M 100M

NI PXI-5922, 24-bit, 15 MS/s Industrys highest resolution digitizer

Accuracy (Bits)

PXI-5186, 8-bit, 12.5 MS/s, 5 GHz BW Industrys highest performance Digitizer

Phase Matrix 26.5 GHz Signal Analyzer

1G

10G

100G

Sampling Rate (S/s)

NI Products, 1995
Traditional Instruments

NI Products, 2004
NI Products, 2010

NI Products, 2005

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Heterogeneous Computing
Graphical System Design

Task Parallelism

Data Parallelism

Pipelining

Multicore Processors

FPGAs
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IP to the Pin Technology

Driving user-defined software IP as close to the I/O pins of reconfigurable (FPGA-based) instruments as possible. Downloadable FPGA IP : Control logic Data transforms Waveform creation Digital protocols Encryption Math algorithms RF signal processing

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Software Defined Test Example

Digital Protocol Test
Application
Presentation

Session
Transport Network Data Link Physical
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Software Defined Test Example

Digital Protocol Test

Data Link Physical

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Software Defined Test Example

Digital Protocol Test

NI FlexRIO Adapter Module

NI FlexRIO FPGA Module

Interchangeable I/O Data Link Virtex-5 FPGA Analog or Digital 132 digital I/O lines NI FlexRIO Adapter Module Physical Up to 512 MB of DRAM Development Kit (MDK)
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Software Defined Test Example

SDLC Test System

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Life Cycle Planning Fundamentals

Definition Development Production & Deployment Operation & Support

Know the life cycle of your system or product Know the life cycle of the COTS components youre using in your tester or embedded system Leverage open, modular platforms Good software architecture is key to mitigating obsolescence issues
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