Open Architecture Tools to Describe Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) Capabilities

Experience in utilization of test information standards exposes levels of allowable variance that circumvents interoperability and allows proliferation of incompatible products. The standards must provide this flexibility in order to accommodate the variety of applications for which they are intended. However, achievement of compatibility, interoperability and other objectives associated with the commonality are underlying assumptions of standards usage in general. Innovative approaches to controlling, restricting and even denying allowable variations can provide a vehicle for better achieving these objectives while still requiring adherence to the standards. These approaches can additionally improve usage of standards in regards to applications supporting definition of test hardware and instrumentation. Moreover, levels of precision and accuracy can potentially be enhanced through these same mechanisms. New strategic utilization and improvement of signal modeling related standards are focal points for these objectives. Currently standards allow users to develop widely disparate and essentially custom implementations that are still within compliance boundaries. Formulation of technical strategies that contain the independent development aspects of signal models can restrict the proliferation of disparate products developed from these standards. The innovative strategies would produce the interoperability, precision and even cross vendor compatibility the DoD is striving for.