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Design mingles with test as Agilent’s Solomon touts measurement focus

The design emphasis came despite a presentation titled “A singular focus on measurement” from Darlene J S Solomon, CTO and VP of Agilent Labs.

By Rick Nelson, Editor-in-Chief -- EDN, 6/12/2009 6:19:00 AM

Agilent Technologies demonstrated several design and test technologies for RF and microwave research, development, and manufacturing at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium 2009 in Boston this week. The design emphasis came despite a presentation titled “A singular focus on measurement” from Darlene J S Solomon, CTO and VP of Agilent Labs.

During her presentation, Solomon noted that Agilent has been serving the RF/microwave industry for over 60 years, having introduced a signal generator in 1943. Agilent’s offerings have expanded drastically over the years, she said: The company has tested more than half of the world’s cell phones, she noted, and addresses such far-flung application areas keeping food and water safe, aiding the discovery of new medicines, making the world safe from crime, and advancing the understanding of disease.

She cited the quote “To measure is to know” (which she attributed to Maxwell although it’s also been attributed to Lord Kelvin) as well as Adm Grace Murray Hopper’s quote, “One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.” She didn’t draw a direct link between design and test, but she did link science and measurement, saying “Science is inextricably linked to new measurement tools,” with measurement advances driving advances in fundamental knowledge, which in turn drive technology improvements, thereby enabling additional measurement advances in a virtuous circle. “Measurement is integral to our technology surrounded lives,” she said.

Solomon cited three specific areas of focus at Agilent:

• Nonlinear RF/microwave measurements using X-parameters. Efficiency requirements are driving designers to operate active components in nonlinear regions, she said, making S-parameter measurements, which have been the fundamental microwave measurement approach over the past 40 years, insufficient for adequately characterizing devices. She called X-parameters (a superset of S-parameters) the breakthrough solution for measuring large and small signals, and she outlined how Agilent’s nonlinear vector network analyzers and EDA software support X-parameter techniques.

• LXI synchronization. “Increasingly, complex measurement and control problems require coordinated, integrated data acquisition and signal generation, she said, which can be accomplished using the time synchronization features embodied in the LXI standard. She cited applications ranging from flight test instrumentation (where LXI can cut the need for lengthy analog cable runs) to cellular backhaul measurements (which can help providers replace T1 and E1 lines with Ethernet) as ones that can benefit from LXI. She also cited estimates from Frost & Sullivan saying that shipments of LXI-capable instruments would rise from just over $200 million in 2007 to about $650 million in 2012.

• New paradigms in data visualization and analysis. “Until recently,” she said, “test and measurement systems have focused on getting best data.” But now, she added, customers must “be able to effectively use complex data sets to make decisions as quickly as possible.” Test and measurement is a rather conservative discipline, she said, which means that, for example, today’s oscilloscope screens look much like those of many years ago, despite the addition of color and features such as eye diagrams and histograms. She pointed to gaming processors and multicore processors as enablers for better data analysis and display capabilities and demonstrated what she called a Signal Lens, which, in the demo she presented, aided the analysis four hours of ECG data representing a million data points.

Solomon concluded by discussing new measurement modalities in which electrical, physical, chemical, and biological measurements, once the domain of their respective and exclusive sets of instrumentation, are converging, especially at the nanoscale. “Biology is all about complexity and has been functioning at the nanoscale for billions of years,” she said, adding that “now we can begin to measure and understand that complexity”—which has implications for biology as well as electronics. “Convergence implies multimodal measurement,” she said, explaining that Agilent’s new scanning microwave microscope permits surface topography measurements, and it supports investigation of electrical properties at the surface and even below the surface, thereby enabling evaluation of semiconductor materials without destructive analysis.

She concluded by saying, “Smarter, faster, smaller, and lower-cost solutions are what we are after.”

MicroApps sessions on the show floor

On the show floor Tuesday through Thursday, Agilent offered 19 of what it calls “MicroApps sessions” on topics including front-to-back MMIC design flow, nonlinear network analysis, wideband signal analysis, and simulation and design of software-defined radios. “Agilent’s solutions help engineers accelerate their innovations in wireless devices and networks, such as 3GPP LTE and WiMAX,” said Barry Alcorn, US marketing program manager in Agilent’s electronic measurement solutions unit, in a press release. Here are some of the highlights:

• Nonlinear device measurements using the Agilent PNA-X nonlinear vector network analyzer (NVNA), based on the PNA-X, measures nonlinear device characteristics and gives accurate insight into the nonlinear behavior of active devices using Agilent’s NVNA application software and new calibration phase references. Agilent’s award-winning PNA-X NVNA includes a 13.5 GHz model and the industry’s first 43.5- and 50 GHz NVNA.

• Active-device test using the Agilent PNA-X Series network analyzers to measure an amplifier’s gain, gain compression, harmonics, IMD, and noise figure.

• Scanning microwave microscopy (SMM) using Agilent’s 5420 atomic force microscope (AFM) in conjunction with Agilent’s vector network analyzer to make high spatial resolution measurements of materials and determine, for example, dopant densities in semiconductors when studying sidewall diffusion.

• Electromagnetic analysis using EMPro 2009 3-D electromagnetic (EM) design and simulation software integrated with Agilent’s Advanced Design System (ADS) to allow design simulation and cross-verification of all types of EM analysis problems without the extra cost, stops, and starts associated with leaving the design flow to perform analysis with separate point tools.

• Front-to-back MMIC and RF module design using Advanced Design System 2009 Update 1, which supports electromagnetic analysis, X-parameter simulation, and statistical design and yield optimization while providing wireless standards-based design verification libraries.

The company also demonstrated wideband vector signal analysis and digital troubleshooting using Agilent’s Infiniium 9000 series oscilloscopes, and it highlighted its PSG E8257D option 521 microwave signal generator, which delivers output power in excess of 1 W over most of its frequency range.

www.agilent.com