Understand the Importance of Measurement Software
Key takeaways:
- Multiple functional areas that affect each other and connected software to help understand these dependencies are essential for measurement software in modern industries.
- Standardization, automation, and correlation are three other key recommendations for the use of measurement software.
- The design of measurement software must ensure that it doesn't become a performance bottleneck for the instruments it's controlling.
As instruments grow more capable and performant to cater to various safety-critical and precision industries, the measurement systems that control them have also grown.
- Modern measurement software is expected to help engineers verify the functionality of state-of-the-art optical networks that are reaching sub-terahertz frequencies and integrated circuits that are advancing from the nanometer era down to the Angstrom era.
In this blog, we explore the role of measurement software in such modern advances, its operational relevance, and its future trends.
What is the role of measurement software in industrial and scientific applications?
Instrument measurement software is critical for the research, development, verification, and operations of advanced computing, networking, telecom, and other hardware infrastructure.
This infrastructure is the foundation on which digital transformation, Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are bringing improved capability and performance to the consumer devices, automotive, semiconductor, defense, and aerospace industries, among others.
Primarily, measurement software enables electronic engineers to easily record and analyze measurements from a device under test (DUT) without complex prerequisites, programming knowledge, or deep proficiency in testing.
Additionally, measurement software improves the process of testing by standardizing and automating it as much as possible. It also avoids the common human errors that affect manual testing.
The benefits of measurement software include:
- simultaneous measurements from multiple subsystems
- data analysis, correlation, and comprehension of measurements
- greater efficiency and productivity in all the test and verification stages
- accelerated product development lifecycles
- faster time to market
- lower test costs
- more collaborative, systematic, and process-driven testing across multiple teams and stages compared to the silos of traditional testing
Measurement software runs inside instruments as embedded firmware as well as on connected computers as application software. Everything in this blog applies to both environments unless specified otherwise.
What capabilities are crucial in measurement software?
Some must-have capabilities for any measurement software are outlined below.
Industry-specific and instrument-specific workflows
For maximum productivity, measurement software must support all the data collection and analysis workflows that engineers require and use.
Some of these workflows will be specific to the industry or domain. Others will be specific to the DUT and the instrument.
For example, Keysight's PathWave Vector Signal Analysis supports industry-specific workflows for measuring various signal waveforms and modulation types, including 5G/6G, IoT, Wi-Fi, and automotive radar. It also supports instrument-specific workflows. Each supported instrument's configuration can be set at a very fine-grained level. Signals can be recorded and played back.
Fig 1. PathWave Vector Signal Analysis software
Measurements across multiple functions
Electronic devices and components are required to simultaneously conform to multiple limits and standards, some of them conflicting. For example, a smartphone must be able to receive even very weak mobile radio frequency (RF) signals without consuming too much battery power for too long.
Measurement software must support such complex dependencies between different functions through features like:
- interconnected, interoperable software that can talk to each other
- automation and orchestration of measurements and test sequences across functions
- ability to control the measurements and tests across functions and software from a single master screen
- consolidated data visualization and analysis of measurements from different software
For example, Keysight’s PathWave Measurements and PathWave TestAutomation support customized measurement workflows and test sequences from multiple instruments.
Fig 2. PathWave Measurements: custom workflow designer and performance monitor
Easy, intuitive, productive user experience
Measurement software must provide productive user experiences through intuitive user interfaces. It must enable engineers to focus on their core tasks without getting distracted by software-related annoyances.
Essential features under this capability include support for diverse instruments, connecting to any of them effortlessly, configuring them easily, and acquiring readings efficiently. The software must also work on popular operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS.
Measurement and test automation
Another key capability is the ability to automate measurements and test sequences. This increases test speed and coverage. It promotes repeatability and reproducibility of the measurements and tests without high risk of human errors.
Good measurement software must have many other must-have secondary capabilities. We will cover them later in this blog.
Which instruments are commonly compatible with measurement software?
Fig 3. PathWave BenchVue
Good measurement software must support benchtop instruments at a minimum. Some software also supports handheld instruments like the FieldFox RF and microwaveanalyzers. Really good measurement software even supports high-volumedata acquisition (DAQ) systems and automated test equipment (ATE).
Fig 4. Instruments supported by PathWave BenchVue measurement software
For example, Keysight’s PathWave BenchVue consists of a suite of measurement software that supports the following major instruments, among many others:
- digital multimeters
- oscilloscopes
- spectrum, signal, and network analyzers
- function and signal generators
- power supplies, analyzers, and meters
- data acquisition systems
In the sections that follow, we explore some additional important aspects of measurement software.
How is measurement software integrated into laboratory or testing setups?
Fig 5. Using measurement software in lab and testing setups
Measurement software is integrated into laboratory and testing setups in design and manufacturing environments as detailed in the eight steps below.
1. Physical connections: The instruments are connected to computers via instrument control interfaces like Ethernet, universal serial bus, general purpose interface bus, or peripheral component interconnect, among others.
2. Software prerequisites: The middleware that measurement applications depend on are installed on all the connected computers. They include software like the virtual instrument software architecture libraries and instrument drivers.
3. Measurement software: A measurement software suite is installed on all the connected computers. It provides high-level workflows that enable design, verification, and test engineers to control their instruments remotely.
4. Measurement triggers: Typically, measurements are started when some condition in or outside the DUT is detected. A common technique to implement this type of orchestration is to connect the condition-detecting setup to the external trigger ports of the instruments.
5. Measurements: The measurement software is configured to acquire data from its connected instruments either periodically or in single-shot mode. For high-frequency instruments, the readings are stored locally in the instrument's high-speed cache. This is because the external connections to the computers may have too much latency that prevents real-time reporting.
6. Data transfer: The instruments transfer their cached readings to the connected computer. The measurement software running on the computer receives this data.
7. Data storage: The software is responsible for data validation and data management by saving the received measurement data in local, network, or cloud-based storage.
8. Data presentation and analysis: The measurement software then reads that data and presents the readings according to the configuration requested by the user and relevant application metrics.
How does measurement software contribute to data acquisition and analysis?
Measurement software contains data analysis software components that help in various aspects of data acquisition and analysis as laid out below.
- Synchronized control over multiple instruments: The precise orchestration of measurement and test sequences across multiple instruments is an essential capability that enables better data analysis. Each instrument is connected to a different part of a DUT. By orchestrating triggers and actions, measurement software can measure functional changes along with power consumption changes and then correlate them to understand exactly what's happening in the DUT.
- Automation: The ability to automate measurement and test sequences enables data acquisition in high-volume environments like production lines. Additionally, automation enables repeatability and reproducibility of observations.
- Precise control: Measurement software provides precise control over when and how to take measurements. For example, it supports various triggers like rising or falling edges. The software must use its algorithms to detect if the readings have become stable before recording the values or starting the next step in the sequence.
- Process improvements: Measurement software enables the readings to be easily shared through the cloud, exported to various data formats, or exported to other software (like Microsoft Excel) for offline sharing. This can improve the productivity of distributed teams. Teams located in other cities can start their data analyses quickly. Measurement software also reduces the product development cycle time, the time to market, and the operational costs of data acquisition and analysis.
How does measurement software enhance the accuracy and reliability of test measurements?
Measurement software can set the calibration parameters of some instruments. This can help improve the accuracy of the readings.
Automated measurement and test sequences help to improve the reliability of the readings. That's because automation enables the repeatability and reproducibility of the measurement and test results.
How is real-time data processing relevant to measurement software?
Real-time data processing is the immediate analysis and visualization of data as it is being collected. This can help to quickly identify trends, anomalies, or issues in the measurements being taken. By providing real-time feedback, measurement software enables engineers to make timely decisions, adjustments, or configuration changes during the measurement process. This helps achieve more efficient and effective testing procedures and better results.
What considerations are important when selecting measurement software for specific applications?
Consider the following aspects when selecting measurement software for a specific use case.
- Application-specific workflows: Does the measurement software include domain-specific and application-specific capabilities that'll make the testing easier? Any clumsy hacks or workarounds are likely to reduce productivity.
- Customizability: Does the measurement software allow customization of itself and the test configuration to focus on the specific application's needs?
- Performance requirements: Does the measurement software support the required rate of reading?
- High-volume testing demands: For high-volume environments like production lines, are the efficiency and execution speed of the measurement software good enough to prevent production bottlenecks?
- Interoperability: Does the measurement software ship with modules that allow it to work with a variety of instruments, including those of other vendors?
How does measurement software address standardization and calibration?
In this context, standardization means that different product line teams working within the same functional area must use the same list of test instruments and test software. A functional area is something like RF or power, which are relevant across defense, automotive, and avionics product lines.
Standardization typically occurs separately within each test function, focusing on efficiency through the reuse of software test cases and architecture.
Measurement software for a functional area must provide the instrument control, data formats, visualization graphs, and analyses required by all the product line teams. By implementing standardization, the entire functional team, and sometimes the entire organization, can share test methodology and software proficiency. By combining automation with standardization, teams can reduce the time they spend on each stage in the product development cycle.
Calibration procedures can be facilitated by measurement software as follows:
- Detect if an instrument is out of calibration or is due for calibration and alert the engineer.
- If possible, provide basic recalibration procedures that'll help the engineering teams remain productive without much downtime.
What trends or advances are shaping measurement software development?
Measurement software has to stay in lockstep with any capability and performance leaps that happen in its target industry. Here are a few such technology advances that increase the demands on the measurement software as well.
- Semiconductor industry: There's an ever-increasing demand for faster computing performance, particularly with the adoption of artificial intelligence in various industries. Semiconductor companies are exploring smaller and smaller process nodes to pack more transistors in tinier areas. They're exploring transistor designs like gate-all-around field effect transistors, various extreme ultraviolet lithography techniques for chip fabrication, chiplet-based designs, and more. All these require measurement software that can interoperate with computer-aided design (CAD) and electronics design automation software to help engineers understand and verify these advances.
- Telecom: 5G and 6G technologies are aiming for new high-frequency bands, millimeter wave bands, and higher data bandwidths. Measurement software must support those performance and capability improvements.
- Digital technologies: Optical networks are reaching sub-terahertz frequencies. This also imposes extreme performance requirements on the measurement software.
Benefit from the versatility of Keysight measurement software
In this article, we explored different aspects of modern measurement software solutions and the demands on them. Keysight's instrumentmeasurement software products provide unmatched features and performance across defense, aerospace, automotive, and semiconductor applications.
Contact us for insights on optimizing your test processes with our measurement software.