Support Past and Emerging Infotainment Test Needs on a Single Platform
Watch this webcast and learn how our software-defined AST-1000 supports past and emerging infotainment test needs on a single platform to reduce your test times and test in a more cost-effective way.
Transcript
00:00:00 Together with National Instruments, Averna Technologies has launched the AST-1000, an all-in-one RF signal source for infotainment covering all the major terrestrial global navigation and connectivity wireless standards in a single customizable solution. It has the quality and user interactivity needed for design verification and validation as well as the pricing and automation capability necessary for manufacturing test solutions. The goal is to allow you to support past and emerging infotainment test needs on a single platform to reduce your test times and test in a more cost effective way. The AST-1000 extends Averna's infotainment offering through the PXI platform for radio tests and adds support for navigation, audio and video and non-signaling connectivity through to strategic partnerships. In fact, the AST-1000 is the only NI-based platform certified for both Sirius, XM and HD radio testing.
00:01:08 Because of the flexibility of the AST-1000, based on the second generation VST technology, the waveforms and measurements are entirely software-based allowing new measurements to be added without requiring a hardware upgrade. Radio testing is provided through the console application and is accessible as RF toolkits that include complete test coverage and the ability to interact with and modify the terrestrial standards in a number of ways including frequency, modulation and even introduce basic impairments to test all aspects of your radio. Examples include, generating a tone, playing a wav file to exercise an FM channel or sending traffic and RDS messages and this spans to XM and Sirius radio, AM digital audio broadcast, as well as a number of other wireless formats. The entire system can be automated through the toolkit's APIs allowing you to seamlessly move from a user interactive mode to full system automation.
00:02:14 On the navigation side, GNSS has certainly become more complex over the years as more countries have launched their own satellite constellations. Whether you're focused on GPS, the US standard, or serving European, China, Japanese or Australian markets, you're covered with a particular constellation of interest or all of them if you need multi-constellation support. Additionally, you may need to generate complex scenarios enabled by the m3 GNSS engine whether it's the effects of driving through a tunnel, being in a large city where some of the satellites are blocked in the urban canyon, or just the multipath effects that you might find in a residential area. The GNSS tools provide a complete set of tools for evaluating the functionality and accuracy in both ideal and non-ideal scenarios where a vehicle's infotainment system may be used or find itself in use in the field. When it comes to audio and video testing capabilities, it really comes down
00:03:18 to making sure that you're providing the highest quality entertainment for not only the driver but also for your passengers. The AST-1000 supports all major terrestrial video standards allowing you to generate signals so that you can analyze the quality of the resulting audio and video output. While the generation side is RF, the flexibility of the PXI form factor allows audio and video test solutions to be integrated into the same chassis providing a platform for further integration into a common and compact test platform. The flexibility of the PXI platform and the AST-1000 allow you to add additional modules to add additional capability to your test system for a wide variety of standards and test needs. Automotive OEMs have a broad range of test needs and have chosen the AST-1000 for multiple RF transceivers. When you're doing multi-signal tests in a simultaneously generated environment. You can also add CAN to the system, enabling communication
00:04:24 as well as power supplies, switches, and other digital control or data acquisition elements to the AST-1000 system. To exercise all of the crucial elements and subsystems within a greater infotainment system or across the automobile and when all of these elements are integrated together you can begin to reach the full potential of the AST-1000. Taking a quick look at the software design philosophy, it's really an operator first design approach that’s user-oriented in nature. At the highest level, Averna provides a test executive that allows you to easily configure and execute tests which can be set up with a simple barcode scanner, for instance. This layer provides user interface that might be customized for a manufacturing environment where speed is critical. This folds into NI TestStand, which is the ideal solution for test sequence management including instrument control and duct control and reporting. Other tools are also supported such as
00:05:29 Qualcomm's test manager called QDART and those provided by other vendors which use SCPI commands for instrument communication providing a quick convenient way to perform DUT control as well as to interact with your test instrument. The next layer down is the AST user console. This console can be scripted using TestStand, or you can use it independently as an interactive user interface. For instance, if you're in a design or design validation scenario and you need to debug something in the system, you can use these interactive interfaces in the lab to easily access all the different parameters that you might want to tune your test system to or your radio to so that you can create custom signals for your device under test. That's where the powerful user interface really comes into play. And of course, all of this is supported on the AST-1000 hardware platform which connects most often through the RF ports directly to your device under test.
00:06:35 This hierarchy of software and toolkits really gives you the power to dig into the software and the platform at whatever level you need. So at the end of the day the AST-1000 can be used as an independent instrument or be part of a turnkey test solution for infotainment. The complete set of user panels and user callable APIs mean that you can directly interact with the system or you can fully automate your test system and with the power of PXI you can expand the system to tackle more complex testing needs. As we move toward the connected car of the future, the infotainment system is really a part of a larger network within the vehicle. In fact, it's part of a larger network of interconnected electromechanical systems. So while we've been focusing on RF, this platform reaches well beyond just the infotainment system to test many other aspects of the vehicle.
00:07:34 At Averna, we have built test systems that combine RF, robotics, vision, mechanical assembly, optical tests, and even utilized our build-to-print capability to aid in the tests of a wide variety of electromechanical systems across the vehicle. Whether you're trying to test at a system level, a module level, or even at a PCB level, the 450 person global team at Averna has resources in every region that can help you to reduce your TAKT time and improve your test coverage across your vehicle's many different intelligence systems. Feel free to contact us.