Instruments that stretch with the customer (continued)
A continuation of our interview with Aeroflex CTO Francesco Lupinetti, which appeared in the April 2006 Viewpoint column.
-- Test & Measurement World, 4/1/2006 2:00:00 AM
Click here to read the first part of this interview.
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Francesco Lupinetti Chief Technology Officer Aeroflex Plainview, NY Francesco Lupinetti is the CTO and VP of engineering for Aeroflex Test Solutions. Joining Aeroflex in 2000, Dr. Lupinetti's background includes more than 25 years of experience in research, product development, engineering, general management, and business development. He has served with such companies as Ericsson, Italtel S.p.A., The Mitre Corp., and Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Lupinetti received BSEE, MSEE, and PhDEE degrees from Mississippi State University. In a recent telephone conversation, contributing editor Larry Maloney asked Lupinetti about Aeroflex, its product lines, and the communications test industry. |
Q: What is your company’s involvement in military radio?
A: One opportunity we’re pursuing is to provide test solutions that will help the military adopt commercial communications systems. In addition, Aeroflex has been very active in the ongoing development of the military’s Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS). This new family of software-defined radios will provide a common platform for wireless applications, ranging from single-purpose terminals to multichannel voice and data radios supporting narrowband and wideband waveforms. One development challenge is to make sure that JTRS is compatible with wideband CDMA. Several customers working on the JTRS projects have adopted our family of broadband signal analyzers and signal generators, which are very valuable to engineers working with the wide ensemble of waveforms found in JTRS.
Q: Have you also introduced new testers for commercial radio applications?
A: Yes. For a market like PMR—public mobile radio—we have our new 3900 digital radio test set series. In this portable test set platform, based on CompactPCI, software options expand the measurement and signaling capabilities for systems that use advanced digital modulation and protocols. We launched this product for the TETRA market, but this test set is also capable of testing other private mobile radio systems, such as the P25 digital radio system from Motorola.
Q: What’s the potential for growth in testers for homeland security?
A: Applications are increasing in both number and complexity. What’s interesting to us is that many of these applications involve the so-called triple play of voice, data, and video. Plus, these applications must be linked in a mobile, wireless network. To serve the test needs of this environment, which looks very much like a mobile Internet, we offer modular platforms and software that cover applications all the way up to 40 GHz.
Q: How does Aeroflex view the future of synthetic instruments?
A: Our company pioneered synthetic instruments, which I define as measurement-based, software-configurable, modular instruments capable of doing concurrent measurements on the same block of sampled data. We’re currently completing our fourth-generation features in our development roadmap for synthetic instruments, and that will keep us at the forefront of this technology. If you look at devices that are being tested today, there’s a need for controllability, observation, complex analysis, variable format reporting, and a high degree of measurement configuration. Synthetic instruments meet all those challenges, so I see a very bright future for this technology.
Q: How is Aeroflex addressing cost control in testing?
A: We know that the cost of DUTs is going down, so we must strive to make our test solutions more affordable as well. Internally, we follow a continuous improvement process to reduce production costs and keep our prices competitive. More recently, we have been tailoring the number of modules in specific test setups to more closely meet specific customer needs. An example is our low-cost PN8000 phase noise tester. In other cases, such as the PN9500 mentioned earlier, we combine multiple features in one tester to eliminate the need for other instruments. We are also continuing our migration to fully modular instruments, such as the PXI-3000 series for mobile phones and other general-purpose wireless test. This approach enables the customer to easily update and upgrade, rather than replace, the entire system.
Q: In terms of company focus, how do you see Aeroflex test solutions faring versus your firm’s microelectronic products?
A: If you look at the past fiscal year, the test and measurement division accounted for about 60% of sales. Although the company certainly looks to exploit opportunities in both sectors, I don’t see the split changing much from the current 60/40 ratio.
Q: How about opportunities in the global marketplace?
A: We still think that North America is a very good market for test solutions. The US now has the opportunity to be the leader in broadband. But the fastest growth certainly looks to be in the Asia Pacific region. If you believe the analysts, 50% of wireless users by 2010 will be in that region. We also see good potential in South America, especially Brazil. However, in assessing the market, you also need to distinguish between highly industrialized countries, where customers want sophisticated communications systems, and emerging countries, where the demand is for more basic systems.
Click here to read the first part of this interview.
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