Test & Measurement

Welcome to the Test & Measurement section for Aerospace, your essential resource for the latest advancements in aerospace testing technologies. Discover how innovative test and measurement techniques are enhancing accuracy, reliability, and performance in aerospace engineering. Stay informed with expert insights, detailed articles, and the latest news on cutting-edge solutions shaping the future of aerospace testing. Join us as we explore the critical role of test and measurement in ensuring the highest standards of quality and safety in the aerospace industry.

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Articles

Electronics & Computers

CompactPCI Steps Into the Future

CompactPCI Serial has proven to be a beneficial technology upgrade for a number of embedded systems designers accustomed to working with the legacy CompactPCI platform. Not only does CompactPCI Serial bring...

Briefs

Test & Measurement

Measuring Impact Damage to Toughened CFRP Laminates with Time Domain Reflectometry

Laminated Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites are very effective in weight saving in aeronautical structural components. For these laminated...

Products

Test & Measurement

Arbitrary Waveform Generator

Geotest-Marvin Test Systems (Irvine, CA) has announced the GX1649 64-channel PXI arbitrary waveform generator with 16-bit amplitude resolution and an output voltage range of ±15 volts. It is suited for use in...

Articles

Test & Measurement

Phoning It In: Making Smartphones Secure Enough for Tactical Communications

You suddenly find yourself pinned down by enemy gunfire. What do you do? Whip out your smartphone and call for an airstrike? Yes, if the U.S. Marine Corps has its way.

Articles

Aerospace

An Improved SDR FPGA Verification Methodology for Emerging OFDMA Waveforms

The rapid evolution of commercial technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) is becoming more attractive for Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and public safety...

Products

Test & Measurement

Digital Electronic Caliper

Hexagon Metrology (North Kingstown, RI) has announced the Brown & Sharpe TWIN-CAL IP67 calipers, which include a built-in output connection. The main components of the IP67-compliant tool are encapsulated and...

Products

Test & Measurement

DAQ Module

The DT9838 Strain- and Bridge-Based DAQ Module from Data Translation (Marlboro, MA) features simultaneous measurements of four 24-bit analog input channels; support for full-, half- , and quarter-bridge strain gage elements ,...

Products

Test & Measurement

Digital Radio Test System

Aeroflex (Minneapolis, MN) offers the 3550 digital radio test system featuring a color touchscreen. Designed for Professional Mobile Radio (PMR), public safety, and other land mobile radio applications, the system...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Testing Modern Radios

Several techniques are now being employed to ensure efficient communications across the chaotic radio spectrum. Chief among them is Software Defined Radio (SDR), which uses software to dynamically control communications...

Briefs

Test & Measurement

Characterization of Ceramic Composite Materials Using Terahertz Nondestructive Evaluation Techniques

This work describes the use of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques to characterize defects such as rust, voids, etc. in materials,...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Radar, Electronic Warfare, and Electronic Intelligence Testing: Identifying Common Test Challenges

Radio detection and ranging (RADAR) systems, as they were originally called, have blossomed into a wide array of indispensible equipment for...

Briefs

Test & Measurement

Thermal Mechanical Fatigue Crack Growth Testing

Turbines in aircraft turbojet engines are being subject to increasingly higher temperatures to improve fuel efficiency. High turbine efficiency requires the ability of turbine blades to...

INSIDER

Defense

Gas 'Plume' Detection System Could Protect Soldiers, First Responders

A wind monitoring and modeling system being developed by the Army Research Laboratory's (ARL) White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) division could one day protect soldiers and...

Products

Test & Measurement

Drive Test Scanner

Rohde & Schwarz (Columbia, MD) has developed a multi-functional universal radio network analyzer that provides drive testing. The R&S®TSMW drive test scanner supports Long Term Evolution (LTE) formats in communication...

Articles

Aerospace

Improving Battlefield Connectivity for Dismounted Forces

The warfighter couldn’t take it anymore. His team’s mission was to sweep villages, collect fingerprints, photograph irises, and compare these biometric indicators against a...

Products

Test & Measurement

Digitizer/Signal Generator

Innovative Integration (Simi Valley, CA) offers the X6-1000M that integrates highspeed digitizing and signal generation with signal processing on a PMC/XMC IO module. The coupling of the digitizing to a Virtex6...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Using Software Defined Instruments to Address the Mixed-Signal Test Challenges of Today’s Software Defined Radios

Software Defined Radio (SDR) represents an important move forward for mobile and personal communications, promising a major...

INSIDER

Defense

Atomic Weapons Defense Testers Mark Major Milestones

Two remarkable pulsed-power machines used to test the nation’s defenses against atomic weapons have surpassed milestones at Sandia National Laboratories: 4,000 firings, called...

Application Briefs

Test & Measurement

Spectrally Compliant Waveforms for Wideband Radar

Modern radars often require the use of wideband waveforms to perform high-resolution target imaging. In microwave systems, the bandwidth can be on the order of 1.5 GHz, while in UHF systems...

Articles

Test & Measurement

An Advanced Circuit Protection Approach for RF Interfaces

One aspect that sets circuit protection for radio frequency (RF) apart from other types of applications is the range of frequencies in which RF circuits operate. With abbreviated...

Application Briefs

Test & Measurement

High-Reliability MEMS Switches for Radio Frequency Applications

The RF MEMS switch will be an important building block for a variety of wireless applications including cell phones, smart antennas, tunable filters, automated test equipment...

Briefs

Test & Measurement

Process for Testing Aeromedical Equipment

Medical devices are designed to function in environmentally controlled locations, such as stationary hospitals, and not within the harsh, dynamic aircraft environment. Yet, the same medical devices...

Products

Test & Measurement

16-Bit Data Acquisition Board

Pentek, Inc. (Upper Saddle River, NJ) has added the Model 71662 four-channel, 200 MHz, 16-bit data acquisition board with built-in digital down converters (DDCs) to its popular Cobalt® family of Xilinx Virtex-6...

Application Briefs

Test & Measurement

Measuring Radar Cross Section with Handheld VNAs

Radar cross section (RCS) is the measure of an object's ability to reflect radar signals in the direction of the radar receiver, i.e. it is the measure of the ratio of backscatter per...

Application Briefs

Test & Measurement

Handheld Scanner Keeps USAF Planes Combat-Ready

Engineers at several United States Air Force (USAF) bases now use NVision's HandHeld laser scanner to reverse-engineer complex aircraft parts, which are then accurately machined and installed....

Articles

Test & Measurement

Fiber Optic Gyroscope Technology Improving Weapons Systems Performance

Autonomous vehicles require gyroscopes for navigation and stabilization of the platform in demanding battlefield, aerospace and undersea environments. Autonomous vehicles...

Application Briefs

RF & Microwave Electronics

Low Noise Advances in RF & Microwave Signal Analysis Platforms

Spectrum measurements are essential to RF and microwave testing. The newer signal analyzers available today deliver performance far better than those of just a few years ago. The...

Products

Test & Measurement

RF/IF Digitizer

ZTEC Instruments (Albuquerque, NM) and Astronics DME Corp. (East Aurora, NY) have developed the ZR8441 RF/IF digitizer. The digitizer comes standard with a full-featured, on-instrument spectrum analyzer. Technical...

Articles

RF & Microwave Electronics

Reliable EMI Shielding Materials and RF Cable Assemblies Ensure High Performance for Handheld Test Instruments

While high-performance test equipment has been used successfully in the laboratory for many years, the trend is moving toward...