I think it is no surprise to anyone that the Automotive Industry is one of the most innovative areas of manufacturing in the world. Be it finding a way to create a low cost vehicle for emerging nations to designing autonomous vehicles, the Automotive industry continues to add new features and enhancements to their products. As much is this new innovation is based on Electronics, the issue of testing and verifying new designs and building fast and accurate production test systems creates new opportunities for the Test and Measurement Industry.
In this Interview, Bob Stasonis explains some of the testing challenges and shows where Pickering Interfaces has helped the Automotive Industry address the challenges.
Electronic complexity in automobiles has increased rapidly. Is Pickering encountering increasing challenges in testing these automotive electronic systems?
At Pickering, we have been following these increased challenges for quite some time. Since 1988, we have been designing and manufacturing commercial and custom switching systems, as well as instrumentation, for automotive test applications ranging from simple body controllers to active safety and infotainment systems. Our customers consult with us regularly as new challenges arise.
Why are automotive companies turning to you and what are the reasons for their decisions?
Our capabilities, expertise, product breadth, and our ability to react quickly are the reasons why major automotive companies including TRW, Delphi, Lear, BMW, Tesla, Caterpillar, Magneti Marelli, Robert Bosch, Renault, Peugeot, Siemens, Continental Automotive, Johnson Controls and many more specify our PXI, PCI and LXI products for automotive functional test.
Do you offer specialized solutions for the automotive industry?
We have developed a number of modules optimized for the automotive electronics industry, but many of these solutions are also suited for a variety of applications where electronic assemblies and their faults are required to be simulated. Automotive applications have many things in common with other safety sensitive systems with increasing electronic content that requires testing.
Are there certain applications you are focusing on?
Pickering provides switching solutions for many different automotive applications. These include ABS brake modules, dashboard testing, transmission control, body controllers, airbag squibs, engine management units, BMS testing and many others.
You are best known for your switching solutions. What other products do you offer besides this?
As I stated earlier, we are primarily focused on the switching requirements for test systems, with over 1,000 modules in PXI alone. Besides switching, we have also introduced a number of products that support simulation of various signals and sensor types. We offer a range of resistor simulators, digital I/O, amplifiers, attenuators, power sources and a waveform generator.
Can you name and describe those solutions briefly?
Resistor simulators are used to emulate sensors, such as temperature sensors and strain gauges that are used in automotive systems. Digital I/O are used to emulate the signals from other assemblies such as power window switches and other body controller functions. Amplifiers and attenuators are used to condition the signals generated so they reflect the levels created or used by electronic assemblies – in addition, our attenuator modules can condition a signal so that it can be captured by the available instrumentation. Power sources (including battery simulators) can allow users to create self-contained test systems without a need for traditional bench products.
What about supporting tools?
Clients can use our Supporting cables & connectors – From simple mating connectors through to complex cables assemblies and terminal blocks, including custom cable requirements which support all of our catalog of products. In addition, our software drivers allow the test engineer to use our products in virtually any test program environment. Finally, for complex switching requirements, we have an automated switch routing software package called TECAP Switching.
Are there unique challenges in the important ECU Testing applications?
Virtually all ECUs, from simple body controllers to Engine Management Units (EMUs), need signal switch and sensor emulation for adequate testing. Switching can be diverse, ranging from high current for motor control to low level for control functions. As Automotive manufacturers reevaluate a possible move toward a 48 V power platform for ICE (Internal Combustion Engines), higher voltage switching will need to be used, and this will create specific problems in switching signals with high DC levels with more switching being done with solid state devices. With electric vehicles, 400 to 600 V may be present on ECUs.
Another trend is the idea of the “Networked Vehicle”. Now this concept ranges from interconnected vehicles using a pico-net topology, but that is still a few years away. What I mean is the routing of data inside the vehicle. This includes infotainment for the passengers (Video, music, WiFi, etc.) as well as control and status information for all of the devices in the vehicle: this includes lighting, instrument clusters, and safety equipment. It appears that the industry is standardizing on Ethernet as the medium for all this data. Because the safety systems will use this network as well, ECU testing will have more rigorous testing for faults as compared to an infotainment only network model.
What are the user benefits of Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation or HILS?
HILS can be used to simulate the reaction of an ECU to external fault conditions such as a broken wire or a faulty temperature sensor, giving you the power to thoroughly test the ECU in a virtual environment before proceeding to production level testing. Using HILS, all possible electrical short and open circuits are simulated, erroneous sensor data is applied and the ECU reaction captured to see if the design works as defined. Especially in the area of safety systems, how an ECU “limps along” when a fault occurs is equally important as normal operations. You can achieve greater reliability in a cost effective manner no matter how complex the system being tested has become.
What are the HILS products that you offer?
Our HILS products include Break-out Systems, Fault Insertion switches and Sensor Emulation, including HILS support for high-speed serial interface applications including Ethernet and CAN. We offer by far the widest range of Fault Insertion and resistor modules solutions available.
The ability to simulate the resistive nature of many of the environmental sensors in the engine compartment and vehicle cabin is important when it comes to EMU and Body Controller test. How do you satisfy user requirements?
Pickering has the largest range of programmable resistor solutions, in both PXI and PCI formats, featuring down to 2mΩ resolution on multiple channels with accuracies as high as 0.03%. We also offer the only strain gauge emulators in both PXI and PCI—now you can easily incorporate strain gauge tests on safety related ECUs.
Do you support Environmental Testing and if yes and what is so special about it?
Testing of multiple ECUs in an environmental chamber over a long period of time requires the sharing of external instrumentation and resources to stimulate and collect data from the ECUs over the cycles of the test. Testing can require more test access outside the test chamber than is normally required during functional test and for the results to be consistent throughout the test cycle. That can lead to demand for larger switching systems, such as our PXI BRIC range and our LXI matrices. Our range of Reed relay and Solid State multiplexers and matrices are designed for long term operations in such an environment.
What if a customer prefers to use an LXI interface?
If you prefer to use an LXI (Ethernet) interface, most of our over 1,000 PXI modules (including the BRIC matrices) can be used in our LXI modular chassis which provides LXI control of our PXI modules. We also offer our LXI matrices (60-55X family), that are directly controlled via an Ethernet connection. LXI control can be simpler in some applications, for example those requiring longer connection distances, remote monitoring, high voltage isolation from other instruments, or less system dependencies.
What kind of signal-switching modules do you offer?
Whether you are testing low-frequency audio channels, Spark Coil Firing Patterns, or the latest RF communication connections —we offer signal-switching modules that address each application. SPST relays, multi-pole multiplexers or cross-point matrices are available with voltages up to 1000 VDC and bandwidths up to 65 GHz.
What if signals to simulate peripherals are at the incorrect level for proper operation?
Some PXI instruments lack the range needed to generate or capture signals required to test ECUs. For example, signal or arbitrary waveform generators lack the amplitude necessary to drive signals that simulate peripherals, such as camshaft and ABS wheel sensors, and digitizers cannot adequately capture the primary signal of a spark plug coil during discharge. Our high voltage amplifier (41-650) features multi-channel, gain selectable amplifiers that work with many instruments including our function generator (41-620). Our high voltage attenuator (41-660) features selectable input ranges that accept up to 600 volt waveforms.
The increasing feature sets of automobiles often require the use of RF as assemblies for Bluetooth, video and adaptive cruise control. Do you offer RF and Microwave switching solutions?
We offer RF switch solutions ranging from 300 MHz to 65 GHz, so we can address the vast majority of your RF and Microwave applications with our standard offerings.
Are you capable to simulate and test switches that work under adverse conditions and how do you address this?
When testing body controllers, an important test is to see if the inputs respond to switches that are dirty and do not present a normal open/closed resistance. Our resistor modules can be used in applications where dirty contacts or leaking current can be expected from switch contamination brought on by age. The switch simulation allows automotive I/O devices to be tested for correct operation under adverse conditions.
Is testing of Battery Management Systems important?
With the increasing adoption of electric propulsion systems in road vehicles, one of the major challenges to be tackled is the effective testing of the Battery Management Systems (BMS). Li-Ion batteries have very sensitive parameters for charging and temperature ranges. We offer our battery simulator module (41-752) to facilitate BMS testing as well as high voltage switching and resistor modules for temperature sensor simulation. Take a look at our Knowledgebase for our article: “Developing a PXI solution for testing automotive battery management systems”.
The testing of ECUs such as body controllers, ABS, electric power steering and transmission control requires the connection of high current loads to the Unit Under Test (UUT). Do you offer products addressing this issue?
We provide a wide range of PXI switch modules that can support up to 40 Amp load switching within the PXI chassis. We also offer solid state switch solutions up to 40A which can switch DC signals at high current with no lifetime degradation – a significant problem for EMR based solutions. Our LXI matrix (60-600) can switch 10 Amps across up to 64 channels.
For higher current requirements, our relay driver modules (40-410, 411, 412) let the test system control relays that are not easily supported within the PXI chassis.
How would you describe future developments and what is your philosophy behind them?
We are continually expanding our range of switching products—because when it comes to test, our customers care about breadth of choice. Our philosophy of being responsive to the changing requirements of our customers have earned us a reputation for creating new designs as the industry needs them.
In order for test engineers to balance their budget with the specified testing requirements, they need choices—in other words, just enough of the correct switching for their application. Our philosophy has always been to offer the right amount of switching, with the required performance, at the right cost no matter what the application may be.
With automotive solutions being so different, do you offer any kind of customization to address the relevant switching requirements?
Our business model is to create new designs that can be used by any company in the appropriate technology space. To the customer, this means that we can design new products for a lower commitment in terms of dollars and number of units, and with little NRE charges.
In order to easily deliver these products, all module and cabling manufacturing processes are done within our two factories on flexible manufacturing lines allowing us to offer simple customization to meet our customers’ needs. No matter what the test platform, we can provide a cost-effective solution for your switching requirements. We are also the only switching system provider with in-house reed relay manufacturing capability.
What other industries besides automotive does Pickering support and where are offices located?
Besides automotive Pickering serves many industries including, aerospace & defense, power generation, energy and commercial electronics. We operate globally with direct operations in the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, France, Czech Republic and China—with additional representation by authorized agents in countries throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.
How would you describe supporting test systems with a long deployment life?
Many of our customers expect their test systems to last at least as long as the products being tested. We understand this need and pride ourselves on the fact that all of our critical components, software and cabling designs as well as our manufacturing processes are carried out in-house. These capabilities enable us to provide our customers with guaranteed long-term support and low obsolescence.
What final thoughts do you have for our readers?
Pickering Interfaces are proud of the reputation we have created over the past 28 years. We listen to our customers and create switching and simulation solutions to our customer’s toughest test requirements. We support our customer in the long run after the sale. And we will be there for future needs as the industry needs evolves.
About Bob
Bob Stasonis is a Sales & Marketing Director for Pickering Interfaces. He has written numerous papers and articles on the subject of Electronics Test. Over the last 35 years, Bob has held Technical, Sales & Marketing positions with Pickering Interfaces, Teradyne, GenRad, and Schlumberger. Bob is on the Board of Directors and past President of the PXI Systems Alliance, Board Member for the LXI Consortium, and the former VP for the American Society of Test Engineers.
