Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

Follow-up on wireless test
September 26, 2006

Yesterday I posted comments about wireless test opportunities before facilitating a roundtable discussion at a Frost & Sullivan executive congress titled ”Industry Outlooks and Growth Strategies 2006." I’m not too adept at facilitating a discussion and reporting on it at the same time, but I’ll make an effort here.

The analysts, vendor representatives, and potential test-equipment customers in attendance were pretty much in agreement with my assessment with some well-taken exceptions:

• Despite the buzz surrounding the synthetic-instrument concept, fully integrated portable box-level instruments (such as handheld spectrum analyzers) will remain the equipment of choice for field service.

• Like PXI instruments, box-level fully integrated instruments internally tend to be modular, and there’s no theoretical reason why vendors can’t do with PXI what they do with their own proprietary modular architectures. But the proprietary architectures tend to have been designed with RF/microwave applications in mind, and vendors can have an easier time tailoring them to new applications. Consequently, proprietary box-level instruments tend to have better parametric performance than their open-architecture counterparts.

• In addition to the applications I cited yesterday, attendees pointed to significant wireless opportunities in the health industry, including patient monitoring. They also cited surveillance, smart-building, and intelligent maintenance applications.

By the way, don’t forget the wireless helmets.

Posted by Rick Nelson on September 26, 2006 | Comments (0)