A review of signal based measurement for both traditional and synthetic instrumentation utilising IEEE 1641 definitions

The use of signals to define both measurement requirement and capability is a key element in any system looking to provide TPS portability across different ATS platforms. With the advent of synthetic instrumentations and the plethora of traditional instrumentation classes capable of performing the same measurements, a real challenge exists to define measurement requirements so that they remain hardware independent but still can be mapped to specific resources to achieve the required functionality. This paper considers measurement through signal descriptions and their consequences; additionally the paper reviews various methods of resource capability descriptions and identifies the 'pros & cons' in order to allow the ultimate goal of automatic resource allocation