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the FPGA after testing is complete. Additional data will also be
returned if the prescribed option(s) produce them.

Benefits and Impact of Military Testing
with Synthetic Instruments
The need for testing high speed electronics in an automated
setting is now emerging in the military environment. As the
military adopts more advanced digital electronics, both custom-made and COTS, the need for testing high-speed buses
will become acute. The US Navy's CASS, or even eCASS, the
US Marine Corps' Automatic Test System (MCATES), the US
Army's Integrated Family of Test Equipment (IFTE), and the
US Air Force's Versatile Diagnostic Automatic Test Station
(VDATS) utilize traditional test instruments that apply and collect digital responses at speeds around 10 Mbps. The COTS we
are seeing today are 1,000 times as fast, with the USB 3.1 (USB
3.2 Gen 2) communicating at 10 Gbps. Replacing military ATE
with new ATE that can operate at these speeds is not feasible
economically or logistically. Procuring commercial ATE that
address these speeds is also prohibitive as they compromise the
goal of using the same ATE for all testing by each of the services.
The SI approach we described here is more practical than
acquiring an all new automatic test system as technology improves and higher speed communications are implemented.
The benefit of having a new test instrument in the form of SIs is
an extension of the virtual instrument concept that revolutionized the test instrument industry in the late 1990s. Starting with
the VXI instrument on-a-card concept, we now have PXI instruments on-a-card with even smaller footprint and at much lower
price tags, while performance has increased considerably. Test
instruments in the form of SIs is the natural next step. What we
present in this paper is not only a way to tackle today's needs
but a method through which scaling is also possible.
Another benefit of the concept is not readily apparent but
should be mentioned. In traditional automatic testing, the
instruments that apply stimuli and collect responses are unaware of the UUT for which they will be used, and therefore,
the test engineer needs to program them to perform the desired function. That programming activity is unique for each
UUT, and every UUT requires the test engineer to start from
scratch. Vendors developing SIs will reduce the TPS development burden throughout the military testing community.
Finally, we should reiterate that NFF is a wasted expenditure that the test community needs to tackle. More accurate
tests will reduce actual faulty units being returned to the aircraft or military systems because they were determined to be
NFFs. If the ATE is incapable of detecting UUT failures related to high-speed signals or higher complexity operations,
the UUT having that failure is likely to create greater logistical
complications because of NFFs. More accurate test capabilities
in the field will mitigate that problem and make military systems more supportable, despite increasing complexities.

Summary and Conclusions
High-speed testing is already imperative in the commercial world and is quickly becoming necessary in the military
August 2020

world. Unlike the commercial test requirements, the military
has been dedicated to a single ATE for decades. Because of this,
military ATE will be incapable of managing increasing speed
and complexity. Yet this same ATE must continue to support
electronics designed in the coming years. Our solution is to
create an interface that complements the military ATE with the
features it lacks. We proposed using SIs, and we suggested embedding them in FPGAs that operate at state-of-the-art speeds.
Rather than rely on basic signal generators and voltmeters, this
approach can utilize more sophisticated test instruments, such
as bit error rate testers. BERTs allow us to detect jitter, noise
and bit errors at speeds in the Gbps range. Additionally, more
sophisticated SIs capable of testing SerDes and USB 3.0 PHY
can be implemented within the FPGA. We illustrated how
such SIs can be embedded in the FPGA to provide these testing capabilities
The approach we propose is being developed by our team,
in collaboration with military and commercial testing companies. Our first demonstration of this capability was for the
5 Gbps USB 3.0. Besides high speed, this bus has a complex
protocol as well as complicated electrical requirements. We believe that other bus standards, such as Ethernet, PCIe, SATA
and HDMI can also be addressed with this approach.

Acknowledgment
Part of the research for this article was funded under N6833516-C-0434 and under N68335-18-C-0165 through an SBIR
awarded by NAVAIR and the US Department of the Navy. We
also want to thank our consultants, Craig Stoldt and Dr. David
R. Carey, for overseeing our efforts and keeping us grounded
on the needs of the military testing community.

References
[1] M. Rozner Jr., "Synthetic Test Systems, The Future of Test -
Available Today, Part 1," Aeroflex, 2003. [Online]. Available:
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1196003.
[2] C. T. Nadovich, Synthetic Instruments, Concepts and Applications.
Burlington, MA, USA: Elsevier Inc., 2005.
[3] M. Siddiq, "Synthetic Instruments - An Overview," Masters
Thesis in Electronics and Telecommunications, University of
Gavle, Sweden, Jan. 2008. [Online]. Available: https://pdfs.
semanticscholar.org/79ed/df36f4c5b066b7c360b83ef07c13b24ec06f.
pdf.
[4] E. H. Dare III, "Automated test equipment synthetic
instrumentation," in Proc. IEEE Autotestcon, pp. 175-179, Sep.
2005.
[5] D. Carey, R. Lowdermilk, and M. Spinali, "Testing software
defined and cognitive radios using software defined synthetic
instruments," IEEE Instrum. Meas. Mag., pp. 19-24, Apr. 2015.
[6] L. Y. Ungar, N. G. Jacobson, and T. M. Mak, "Creating reusable
manufacturing tests for high-speed I/O with synthetic
instruments," in Proc. IPC APEX, 2019.
[7] D. Lewis, "SerDes Architectures and Applications," National
Semiconductors, presented at DesignCon 2004.
[8] R. Nelson, "AUTOTESTCON keynoter urges drastic cut in 'no
fault found,'" Evaluation Engineering, Nov. 2015.

IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 25

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1196003 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/79ed/df36f4c5b066b7c360b83ef07c13b24ec06f.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/79ed/df36f4c5b066b7c360b83ef07c13b24ec06f.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/79ed/df36f4c5b066b7c360b83ef07c13b24ec06f.pdf

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