Helping engineers do more with less
[An exclusive interview with a technical leader]
Larry Maloney, Contributing Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 3/1/2007
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| Brad Byrum General Manager Test & Measurement Division, Yokogawa Corp. of America Newnan, GA Brad Byrum has more than 18 years of experience in the test equipment industry as a test engineer, application engineer, product manager, marketing manager, and business unit manager. At Yokogawa, Byrum is responsible for all marketing, product management and business operations in North America for the Test and Measurement Division. He holds a BS degree in electronic engineering technology. Contributing editor Larry Maloney spoke with Byrum about industry trends in a recent telephone interview. Brad Byrum gives additional comments on test applications for fuel cells, optical communications, and mobile phones in the continuation of this interview. |
A: Yokogawa positions itself as a technology leader. The company invests about a quarter billion dollars a year on research and development, much of it aimed at core technologies like test and measurement. Since 1915, we’ve amassed more than 6000 patents. A lot of that effort is going into developing key technologies, such as 40-Gbit components, analog-to-digital converters, sensors, MEMs, and networking technologies. This research eventually filters down into next-generation products.
Q: Can you give an example of an important new product that embodies what Yokogawa strives to do with its technology?
A: A good example is the DL9000 signal Xplorer series of digital oscilloscopes, which last year won a Best in Test award from your magazine. It boasts an acquisition rate of up to 2.5 million frames/s/channel. So, the data engine inside of it is enormously fast. But because we developed this instrument internally, we can offer this high-performance product at a very attractive price (starting around $11,000).
Our idea was to introduce a 1-GHz scope at a 500-MHz price. After the initial rollout, we also have been adding more and more capability to the product, such as power analysis, controller area network (CAN) bus analysis, and real-time analysis of Inter-IC and Serial Peripheral Interface buses.Q: What is the potential for your testers in automotive FlexRay applications?
A: The FlexRay in-vehicle control network, which can transmit and receive data 10 times faster than a conventional CAN, is expected to come into wide use in the coming years. Yokogawa has been a member of the FlexRay Consortium, formed in 2000 to develop standards for this new network.
In the test arena for FlexRay, engineers initially are looking for physical layer analysis to work out the hardware bugs, and we are providing the DL7400 FlexRay analyzer for that work. As engineers work past the hardware bugs, they begin to look at interconnect issues, such as chipset to chipset, and they need to generate FlexRay data for protocol analysis. At last fall’s Auto Test Expo, we previewed a new data generator and protocol analyzer for that task. FlexRay is clearly a growth area that we are committed to support.Q: How about other promising opportunities in automotive?
A:Higher energy costs have really pushed development of new hybrid vehicle design, and we expect that area to be very active over the next decade. Our AC power analyzers are very popular with engineers working in hybrid vehicles. They want to measure the efficiency of their drive train designs, which means analyzing the battery power source, the bus, the inverter, the motor, and the mechanical output power. Our power analyzers can show the efficiency of each phase of this drive train, as well as the total efficiency of the system.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges that test engineers face on the job?
A: You can sum it up with the phrase “doing more with less.” Engineers are constantly being tasked with covering not only their core competencies but also areas that fall outside that core expertise. So, a software engineer suddenly is asked to take on a hardware project, or a semiconductor FPGA guy gets a power-supply design job. This in turn drives engineers to depend on test equipment manufacturers to make tools that fill these gaps and make testing easier and more intuitive.
Brad Byrum gives additional comments on test applications for fuel cells, optical communications, and mobile phones in the continuation of this interview.
