The needs for fiber optics, and more specifically, photonics, test and measurement equipment has experienced staggering growth in the preceding years, largely due to the increase in bandwidth demands of the consuming markets. Even in light of the recent decline of the telecommunications industry, the bandwidth growth, and demand for photonics test equipment going forward is clear. As the industry wounds heal and time marches on, the instrumentation required for the testing of high speed, high-capacity optical transmission, and switching equipment (as well as their intricate supporting components) will become increasingly complex and specialized. After all, test equipment must always meet or exceed product capabilities - a serious challenge when those products are based on the latest technology. Unfortunately, the evolution and development of such test equipment for general fiber optics applications and even more challenging, photonics test & measurement does not occur at the speed of light. Fiber optics test applications have been dominated by highly specialized and high priced GPIB instrumentation with non-standard front panel interfaces and long lead times. Going forward, the PC has a large role to play as the need for robust, modular, and upgradeable data analysis continues to increase along with new technology, protocols, testing standards, and ever changing customer demands. The trend is evident in the latest set of optical GPIB instrumentation where the instrument relies on external PC software or actually houses a PC in the box. One might notice a Windows OS running on the instrument instead of traditional firmware. However, simply canning a proprietary application or embedding a single-application PC in an instrument denies the user the modularity and expandability of a standard PC platform. Enter PXI. Where once GPIB choked the flow of bulk data transfers required by the ever-increasing bandwidth and precision of measurement, now instruments can sigh with relief on the free-flowing backplane. A PXI chassis also provides for the complex synchronization and triggering between multiple measurement instruments. Coupling PXI instrumentation with a fully accessible controller PC facilitates development of test application software since data analysis routines (easily modified by products like National Instrument's LabVIEW) remain on the PC where they belong. The PXI Instrumentation can then focus on the complex hardware requirements of the data collection without trying to be an "all-in-one" solution. Instrumentation cost is reduced, space requirements minimized, and the power of the PC's programmability increased. Though many of the benefits are obvious and need no further explanation, there are many challenges to be met in bringing photonics test equipment to the PXI platform. Adding lasers and high-speed RF components to the PXI form factor leads to power consumption and heat dissipation concerns. A multitude of electrical, mechanical and now optical issues await the anxious fiber test instrument PXI developer. Fortunately the ASICs resulting from the development boom of photonics products can play a big role in test equipment size and cost reduction. The special-purpose chips reduce the once staggering number of components needed to build an instrument, helping to break the size barrier. The physics of optical paths can be inflexible at times though options exist to move the bulk of them external to the actual PXI chassis. A good deal of optical transmission and switching equipment is developed on a 6U CompactPCI backplane. Thus, possibilities exist for combining test equipment with the actual product being tested. As standards for optical equipment continue to evolve, special applications may arise that can only be addressed by PXI instrumentation. By combining optical-enabled PXI instrumentation with the power of PC platforms and custom test routines, the optical test and measurement market may get a boost in efficiency and a cut in cost of development. PXI can play a vital role in photonics companies by expediting the rapid prototyping and development projects while moving the data analysis out of the box and back to the PC. In the end, the fate of optical-enabled PXI instrumentation is in the hands of investors and large test equipment manufacturers. The big companies can choose to continue with their proprietary backplanes or adopt a more standardized and interchangeable form factor like PXI. Investors are still licking their wounds from the beating that the fiber optics industry has taken this last year. Unless they get frisky again, smaller companies are not likely to support the development of new photonics-based PXI instrumentation. PrimeTest Corporation is a systems integrator specializing in providing solutions that satisfy the automated test & measurement, data acquisition, and process control needs of many industries. We specialize in custom applications that maximize the use of commercial off-the-shelf products to provide our clients with systems that are cost-effective, reliable and adaptable. As a National Instruments (NI) Alliance member, we utilize the latest technical innovations to provide the most effective solutions to our clients. Our extensive application experience spans many industries and technologies, but we retain specialties in automotive, aerospace, and fiber optics applications.
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