Creating hybrid test and measurement system based on LAN/LXI

Various instrumentation buses have different characteristics, performances and advantages. With the development of electronics, communication and information techniques, unit under test (UUT) is more complicated today and test requirement is difficult to achieve just using single test bus. It´s absolutely necessary to create hybrid test and measurement (T&M) system which integrates multiple platforms. Hybrid T&M system combines a variety of instrumentation buses and platforms into a single system. The LXI based on LAN introduces a new concept about timing synchronization and signal trigger that is different from anyone before such as GPIB, VXI or PXI. This paper will introduce an LAN/LXI-based hybrid T&M system that integrates typical instrumentation buses. In particular, this paper focuses on the hardware connectivity and considerations of the synchronization and trigger. Then the software architecture of hybrid T&M system is discussed.