Increasing density of components on circuit boards, and the use of finer pitch packaging, is forcing defence firms to investigate more novel forms of test.
Defence giant Thales UK, for example, has just selected a boundary scan system from XJTAG of Cambridge to test its software defined radio boards.
Gary Delamare, a senior engineer at Thales UK, explained: "The baseband boards in our MSN 8100-H are densely populated and use fine pitch high density connectors, as well as large and expensive BGA/FPGA devices, all of which make the boards difficult to test by traditional methods."
The MSN 8100-H software defined radio (SDR) is the first European operational software radio, said Thales. It is designed for naval and ground based applications and will be used on the Royal Navy’s next class of Destroyers, the Type 45, scheduled to enter service in 2009.
"It made sense for us to use the JTAG chain for debug and testing, as more and more devices on our boards were JTAG-enabled and we opted for the XJTAG system as it was the best and most cost-effective solution," said Delamare.
XJTAG takes the IEEE 1149.1 standard a step further than basic boundary scan. The firm can use the scan chains in JTAG-enabled components to test non-JTAG devices, so long as they are connected to a bus or signal line that links to the JTAG parts.
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XJTAG's Karl Miles (FAE), Simon Payne (CEO) with Thales UK's Simon Holder
(hardware design manager) and Gary Delamare (senior engineer)
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"The XJTAG system has enabled us to cut the development time for debugging and testing boards by around 20 percent and it has provided the basis for a common design for test strategy, spanning development, first article build, production and field service," said Simon Holder, hardware design manager at Thales UK’s Crawley facility.
For XJTAG, the choice by Thales signals a shift in the way defence firms carry out test. "It's major contract for us - the first in the defence sector," said Simon Payne, chief executive at XJTAG. "Defence is now seeing an increasing number of applications highly populated with fine pitch, high density connectors and BGAs."
www.xjtag.com
www.thalesgroup.co.uk