Matrix Adaptor for Instrument Interface Interchangeability in ATE

Two critical aspects of automation of test systems are the ability to operate different test instruments through a controller and their seamless integration. Instrument interchangeability is a key factor in test automation as it can make automation easier and overcome the obsolescence of instruments, thereby extending the overall lifetime of an automatic test equipment (ATE). This becomes more important in fields such as aerospace and nuclear systems where the test systems and test programs have operational lifetimes covering several generations of test instrumentation. Across the generations, a feature that changes in the instrumentation side is the instrument interface. Various instrument interfaces are developed such as RS232, GPIB and in recent times USB, Ethernet and so on. This many a time necessitates the need to ensure compatibility with the interface available at the controller side. A novel product called matrix adaptor is proposed here to overcome this limitation and guarantee an interface independent communication between the controller and test equipment. The proposed product can be used to adapt any interface on the test instrument side to any other on the controller side, and novelty of the idea is that the same product can be used for achieving more than one type of interface conversion at the same time. This work elaborates on the design considerations for such a product and gives the implementation details of a proto model with USB, RS232 and GPIB interfaces.