Automotive Electronics Driving Innovations in Test

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Boon Khim Tan is the general manager of the Measurement Systems Division at Keysight Technologies Inc., which is responsible for the board test and functional test systems covering the networking computing, automotive, industrial, and consumer electronics markets. In an interview with I-Connect007’s Stephen Las Marias, Tan discusses the test requirements in the automotive electronics space and the latest trends driving innovation in the sector.

Stephen Las Marias: From your perspective, how has the automotive electronics industry evolved over the past decade, and what major changes or trends have you witnessed?

Tan: The biggest change happening in the automotive electronics industry now is the increasing amount of electronic content in each automobile. For example, features such as air bags, electronic stability control and remote keyless entry, which used to be only found in luxury cars, are now making their way into entry-level models. The trends are driven by three major factors: Firstly, the move towards improving vehicle fuel efficiency and emissions, which is driven by increasingly strict regulations globally, with the aim to reduce air pollution. This is leading to the development of increasingly efficient and intelligent engine control units (ECUs) as well as hybrid electric and electric vehicles (HEVs/EVs). Secondly, the improvements to vehicular safety and reduction in the rate of accidents, which are now leading to development of driver assistance features such as collision avoidance radars and vision systems, and also the investigation into semi-autonomous and fully autonomous vehicles. Thirdly, the need for competitive differentiation among automotive makers and convenience for the users. This is leading to addition of features such as infotainment systems with navigation and remote keyless entry.

Las Marias: What are their impacts for test and measurement companies?

Tan: Test and measurement companies such as Keysight need to continuously develop test solutions that are able to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the automotive companies when it comes to testing of electronic systems. Such needs include testing of new technologies in cars such as LTE and mm-wave radar systems—lowering the cost of test, which will help in lowering the cost of parts so that automotive makers can add these parts into entry level models, not just into luxury cars—and speed and flexibility in deployment of test systems so as to allow customers to reuse their assets and quickly ramp up manufacturing test to meet external demand.

Additionally, there is a need for standardization of manufacturing test systems and global support since the same parts can be made in multiple locations globally, and to have a consistent process to ensure quality and reliability.

Las Marias: Among the many challenges today for automotive electronics manufacturers is to build reliable electronic products with increasing density, complexity and sophistication, while at the same time meeting the many automotive regulatory requirements and optimizing their investments in the choice of equipment and their feature sets. How does Keysight Technologies help your customers achieve this?

Tan: We bring 75 years of measurement expertise from our roots as Hewlett Packard, expertise and insight to automotive electronic trends, and collaboration with key market makers to help customers design and build reliable products. The challenges facing customers as they embark on new technology areas like adaptive safety include 77–80GHz radar development, where Keysight has deep expertise in spectrum analysis and radar simulation driven by our links to aerospace markets. In other areas, like building of high-density PCBAs in modern engine control units, Keysight-developed technologies like bead probes, high-current load switching and boundary scan can be deployed and customized for automotive applications. Many of the automotive electronics manufacturers operate globally and we are able to leverage our global footprint to ensure customers gets the same level of strong support in any of their manufacturing sites worldwide, and we help them optimize their cost of test by providing them with standardized solutions with long lifecycles.

Read The Full Article Here

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of SMT Magazine.