Evaluation Engineering - 18

AUTOMOTIVE TEST

Adnan Khan, senior business development manager at Anritsu: "The most impactful trend in the last year has been 5G.
Many automakers are testing 5G now to
learn about the technology and get ahead
of the curve since it takes years to bring
an automobile to market. Compare this to
mobile devices that are introduced every
6-12 months, and you can understand the
need to take such a proactive approach
to understanding 5G. With 5G, it is the
first time that standards are developed
based on use cases, a few of which are well
suited for automotive. Enhanced mobile
broadband has benefits in infotainment
applications, such as the ability to more
easily and quickly download movies and
gaming apps into cars, as well as maps
and firmware updates. Another use case
will be low-latency mission critical communications, such as C-V2X."
Tom Chambers, automotive segment
manager at Teradyne: "From a test perspective, the key challenge is that the
automotive industry is faced with a 'perfect storm' of new technology driven by
ADAS/AD, EV, and infotainment, faster
time-to-market, COT pressure, and a
constant drive toward higher quality.
Teradyne automotive ATE customers
have responded by adopting new processes and tools. These companies are
driving higher voltage stress levels and
more accurate leakage testing to detect
defects. We also see increasingly rigorous
process changes to ensure the test plan
is flawlessly implemented on ATE. This
includes use of tester instrumentation
alarms, tools that convert test specification to a test program, as well as an
increase in auditing tools to validate that
the customer's standards are universally
applied to all devices."
Sudipto Bose, general manager of automotive and time domain solutions at
Tektronix: "The biggest trend impacting
automotive design is the convergence of
connectivity, autonomous, safety, and
electric technologies. These technologies
are forming the building blocks for nextgeneration vehicle development, bringing
new testing challenges and more rigorous
testing requirements to ensure reliable

18

EVALUATION ENGINEERING OCTOBER 2019

Sponsored by

A desktop setup of Tektronix' signal separation
software.

and safe operation of the vehicle. The test
challenges include increasing complexity, longer testing cycles, traceability, and
communication infrastructure reliability
and robustness."
Fred Weiller, automotive & energy solutions marketing manager at Keysight
Technologies: "The demand for technology acceleration and integration pushes
established automakers and their challengers to operate more like an agile
development software startup than a
traditional slow-moving heavy metal
company. To streamline development
and contract the concept to market availability timeframe, the industry needs to
adopt the DevOps (development and operations) practices of the software market
by connecting testing in R&D with the
manufacturing operations through an
integrated TestOps software platform
such as Keysight PathWave."
Bjorn Sjodin, VP of product management
at COMSOL: "Automotive companies have

a greater need to simulate electrical engine components; new types of power systems, including wireless power transfer,
batteries, and battery thermal management; as well as new wireless technologies that are internal and external to the
vehicle. New challenges arise when lighter
materials are chosen for the design, including corrosion at junctions of different
metals and composite material strengths.
Autonomous vehicles come with a need
for simulating new types of optical and
RF systems, such as LiDAR."

Tools
Electronics content in vehicles spans
everything from powertrain and engine
control modules to infotainment, radar,
ADAS, and V2X systems. What specific
tools do vendors of automotive test solutions offer to address some of these areas?
Maeyer and Wyatt, Averna: "With the
number of components built into one
vehicle, the requirements for test are
practically limitless. Over time, Averna
has developed hundreds of customized
test and assembly stations covering
everything from top to tires. We have
a dedicated vision lab and we have designed solutions for everything from dashboard to transmission valve inspection
to camera module assembly using active
alignment-a huge contributor to ADAS
and radar. The active alignment process
for optical device assembly is a very deliberate and thorough process and must be
done flawlessly considering the potential
consequences."

A touchscreen simulator,
created using the Application
Builder in COMSOL's
Multiphysics product suite, can
be run anywhere by connecting
to the COMSOL Server software
from a web browser.
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Evaluation Engineering

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