Wireless technologies and their success in the market is the big challenge facing test and measurement, says Beniot Neel, v-p and general manager EMEA at Agilent Technologies.
"Viewing the next horizon in electronic test and measurement, clearly wireless technologies are going to become even more embedded into our everyday life," says Beniot Neel, v-p and general manager EMEA at Agilent Technologies.
"It can be seen in the exponential growth in smart phones, wireless security and remote monitoring such as seen in medical communications.
"These devices are demanding more bandwidth, more complex functionality, and complicated and reliable power management. All of this requires high performance, high quality test and measurement devices, which must be ready long before the test standards are adopted or products are available.
"However, there is an interesting occurrence happening in the electronic food chain, with the industry’s needs falling into the ultra-high performance camp,” the core” and the maximum price/performance camp, “the edge”.
"The former is driven by the most advanced R&D requirements while the latter is driven more by the evolving needs of high volume testing, producing more with less.
"The main driver of this split are “edge” devices. They reside at the edge of the network. I use this term liberally to identify any device – such as a sensor, radio, medical or process monitor – that is connected to the network.
"The number of edge sensors will grow exponentially – just think of all of the opportunities to connect devices to the network.
"The “core” on the other hand will grow at a slower rate – but is vital in sustaining the growth of edge devices.
"As edge devices – mainly smartphones – they demand more bandwidth for video streaming.
"The “core”, high performance computing and switches will continue to require leading edge electronics.
"The test and measurement challenge will be ability to enable all of these technologies to succeed and transition capital from existing processes and practices."