Measurement and the networked future

The increasingly interconnected world is setting new demands on test and measurement suppliers. The authors outline how the industry is rising to the challenge. Instrument manufacturers must always be at the leading edge of the technologies they are involved in, why they play a critical role in establishing new communication standards and protocols. Just about any device that is subject to test and measurement is likely to be connected to some form of network. Testing these networked elements presents a whole new set of problems for the test and measurement engineer, especially for those individuals unfamiliar with modern communications technology. Looking ahead, most test and measurement instruments will be connected to a network. This represents a natural progression for design engineers, both in the way they use instruments and in the way they access data acquired or analysed by an instrument. In future, an engineer will no longer have to move from an office to a lab environment just to check the execution of a test suite-the check will be performed over a network. Similarly, access to an instrument won't be restricted to a single engineer in one location-the whole engineering team will concurrently view the instrument set-up and acquired data, regardless of the physical location of the individual team members or system under test.