I’m at the National Instruments users conference this week in Austin, Texas, better known as NI Week. One of the key announcements made here by NI is the introduction of an RF vector signal transceiver (VST). According to the company, it’s the first of its kind.
While announcing the new piece of equipment, Jeff Kodosky, NI’s co-founder and technology fellow, made some interesting statements. I’m sure some of you would take issue with what he had to say: “Instrumentation hasn’t changed much since the 1970s. It hasn’t followed Moore’s law, and frankly, it’s embarrassing.”
Kodosky claimed that the new VST provides a paradigm shift in instrumentation, and a step function in productivity.
Charles Schroeder, NI’s director of test marketing, said that the company is taking a completely new approach to instrumentation for wireless devices. The PXIe-5644R RF VST combines a vector signal generator and vector signal analyzer with a user-programmable FPGA into one PXI modular instrument. The device makes measurements more than 10 times faster than comparable solutions while consuming less than 60W.
Using a software-centric architecture, the VST supports all the latest wireless and cellular standards, such as 802.11ac and LTE. This approach lets engineers use NI’s LabVIEW to tailor open FPGA-based hardware for their specific needs.
Features of the PXI-5644R include up to 6.0GHz frequency coverage and 80MHz instantaneous RF bandwidth. It can expand to support multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) configurations or parallel testing. In addition, the tool is squeezed into a package that fit in Schroder’s hand during the announcement. Hence, up to five I/O channels can be housed in a chassis.
Get another take on the new instrument form National Instruments.
Since they are calling it open FPGA and one of the mission goals of open FPGA is "To define develop, and promote the use of open standards for communication between application programs and FPGA technologies," I wonder if programming with NI's VST is proprietary to Lab View or will it be able to utilize other software platforms...
The other issue with power usage, besides the $/KWH is the power source. If this is going into a factory where you are just grabbing the power from the utility line, that's one thing. However, if you are using wireless because the process you want to monitor is remote or mobile or a small independent installation, the power source itself becomes more important.
I was anticipating what would come out of the aqusition of ettus research. NI has held up to what they said in the beginning, that they will stay out their business but release there own devices using the technology ettus developed. Looks good thus far. I am excited to see what will be coming down the pipe next, merging these minds together for the better.
I see your point. But there are others tings that come into play (I think). For example, if you stack five of them together in a chassis, the heat reduction is somewhat significant, thereby reducing the need for fans constantly running, thereby lowing the noise.
Rich, you mention the power consumption of the device. I find that interesting. Considering that power costs about $0.10 per kWhr, doubling that consumption is really just pocket change (or really a rounding error). I wonder how much effort they put into getting down to that consumption. Considering the cost of such devices, this is less than insignificant. This is not meant to be a criticism of you or the article, or NI. I just mean it as an observation on power consumption in general, and our facination with it where it really does not matter.
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