News briefs

Concurrent with Productronica 2005, Rohde & Schwarz held a dedication ceremony for a new 16,000-m² R&D facility at its headquarters in Munich, Germany. Friedrich Schwarz, company president and CEO, told the assembled gathering that the facility would create a work environment that supports the creativity of R&S employees. The 65-year-old executive also announced that he would step down from his positions in January.

In what represents a difference from typical operations in the high-tech industry worldwide, Schwarz said the billion-dollar company remains committed to keeping production close to home. About 90% of the manufacturing, he said, is done within 100 to 150 km of the Munich headquarters—close enough for quick response to manufacturing problems but far enough to discourage undue interference in production operations.

The new R&D space will help to house the 460 new employees the company has hired since its 2002/2003 fiscal year plus the 200 additional employees it expects to hire during its current fiscal year. Schwarz said the brisk pace of hiring is made possible by consistent year-on-year double-digit growth, even during the downturn following the burst of the Internet bubble. The company focuses on four areas: test and measurement, radio communications, broadcasting, and radio monitoring and location. www.rohde-schwarz.com.

Agilent Technologies has acquired privately held Molecular Imaging, a manufacturer of nanotechnology-measurement tools. The acquisition counters a trend toward divestitures at Agilent, but it supports what Bob Burns, VP of Agilent's Nanotechnology Measurements Division, called a sharpening focus on Agilent's test-and-measurement roots.

Based in Tempe, AZ, Molecular Imaging is known for its PicoPlus family of modular atomic force microscopes (AFMs), which are used to measure the properties of materials at the nanometer scale. Because of ties between Molecular Imaging and Arizona State University, Agilent has no plans to move the Molecular Imaging operations. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. www.agilent.com.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are developing tests for a crash-avoidance system that should reduce the number of rear-end, road-departure, and lane-change accidents. NIST says that about 1,836,000 such accidents occur annually.

The crash-avoidance system is being developed under the auspices of the Department of Transportation (DOT). Called Integrated Vehicle-Based Safety System (IVBSS), the system is intended to simultaneously detect and warn drivers of any of three forms of crashes.

NIST has designed test procedures that are being used by a contractor to measure the performance of the safety system and its components, such as sensors and warning algorithms. The tests will determine the system's ability to warn drivers of a possible collision, detect a moving vehicle in adjacent lanes, and identify the presence of parked cars or other roadside objects and determine the available maneuvering room.

DOT will use the test data to decide whether the warning system performance is adequate to proceed with installing the system in about 10 vehicles for tests on the highway. DOT plans to complete the field operational test in approximately four years. www.nist.gov.

TUV Rheinland of North America, an independent testing and assessment service, has acquired a new 10-m fully anechoic chamber in its Santa Clara, CA, facility. With the chamber and its 4-m turntable, the company can perform tests on equipment weighing up to 8800 lbs. TUV Rheinland of North America says that almost any configuration of power can be supplied for the test, including three-phase AC power up to 100 A and 48 VDC up to 150 A for testing to EMC requirements such as FCC, VCCI, BSMI, CE Mark, and CISPR 11. www.us.tuv.com/testing.

Aeroflex has released a new measurement suite for WLAN applications and has expanded the features of its existing GSM/EDGE measurement suite. Both suites enable users of the company's 3030 PXI RF digitizer family to speed up testing during the development and manufacture of WLAN and cellular devices.

The WLAN and GSM/EDGE measurement suites support spectrum, modulation, and power measurements with a single PXI test system. The WLAN suite analyzes 802.11a/b/g and PHY (physical layer) RF transmission parameters, and it enables the 3030 digitizer to perform OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access, or multiuser OFDM) and DSSS (direct-sequence spread-spectrum) power, spectrum, and modulation measurements in accordance with 802.11. The suite also analyzes 802.11 RF transmission parameters by using digital IQ data derived from the 3030.

The GSM/EDGE suite now includes receiver as well as transmitter testing, adding receiver-reference-sensitivity measurements to its ability to measure a transmitter's average RF power, burst profile, modulation quality (phase error or error vector magnitude), frequency error, and spectrum due to modulation and switching.

Prices: WLAN Measurement Suite for PXI—$3146; GSM/EDGE Measurement Suite—$3146. Aeroflex, www.aeroflex.com.

With the introduction of two new digital mulitmeters (DMMs), Agilent Technologies has expanded upon the features of its widely used 34401A DMM, which was released by Agilent's forerunner—Hewlett-Packard—in 1991. The new 6½-digit 34410A and 34411A (shown) improve reading speeds and system throughput by up to 50X over the earlier model, and they feature a dual display that lets you see two measurements, such as voltage and current or voltage and frequency, simultaneously.

In addition, the 34401A and 34411A can store far more measurements than their predecessor, which had a capacity of 512 readings. The new models can store 50,000 measurements in nonvolatile memory, and the 34411A can also store 1 M readings in volatile memory.

Where the 34401A could trigger only on a pulse or software command, the 34411A lets you trigger on signal characteristics such as signal levels, and you can set pre- and-post-triggers like you can with an oscilloscope. Other enhancements include a Web server and the addition of USB and Ethernet ports to the rear panel. Using the Web server, you can set the meter, get readings, and recall instrument settings with a browser. Because you can set up the DMM to log the instrument commands it receives from the server, you can use those commands in application programs when you need to automate measurements.

Prices: 34410A—$1595; 34411A—$1995. Agilent Technologies, www.tm.agilent.com.

APEX, February 5–10, Anaheim, CA. Focuses on assembly processes and equipment. Sponsored by IPC. www.goapex.org. Measurement Science Conference, February 27–March 3, Anaheim, CA. Promotes education and professionalism in measurement science. Sponsored by The Measurement Science Conference. www.msc-conf.com.

To learn about other conferences, courses, and calls for papers, visit www.tmworld.com/events.