Developing Synthetic Instruments with COTS Technoligies

As the concept of synthetic instrumentation (SI) gains momentum it's critical that commercial technologies, used to develop synthetic instrumentation, evolve to meet integrator and end user needs. In fact, if you examine the goals of SI it is obvious that most existing test system strategies will fall well short of the SI targeted goals. SI is based on the fundamental concept that most stimulus and measurement functions can be implemented in software with the use of general purpose hardware blocks, including frequency converters, data converters, and signal conditioning. SI software, which can be hosted on DSPs, FPGAs, CPUs, or a combination of each, essentially defines the instrument. This architecture provides the flexibility needed to meet the goals set forth by the DoD. This paper will discuss in detail the capabilities required from COTS products to allow not only the DoD but commercial companies to make great strides in achieving the stated goals.