The global test and measurement (T&M) market grew at a slower pace in 2012 as compared to the double-digit growth rates it registered in 2010 and 2011. According to Frost & Sullivan, growth in the segment over the past year was fuelled by the increasing adoption of smartphones. Global smartphone sales, which reached $345 million in 2011, are expected to touch $1.22 billion by 2018. The increasing proliferation of mobile devices, including smartphones, is expected to continue to drive growth for general-purpose test equipment companies and semiconductor test manufacturers.

The increasing global expenditure on research and development (R&D) presented various business opportunities for T&M companies in the past year. In fact, the growing focus on returns on R&D investments, which are measured in terms of improved product quality and sales, fuelled the demand for testing and test equipment in R&D applications.

Of the several trends witnessed in this space in 2012, a notable one was the miniaturisation of T&M equipment. The minute components of consumer electronics require the T&M equipment to be very small. To accommodate this demand, T&M vendors have begun manufacturing miniature equipment. However, the high cost of production poses a challenge to the growth of this market.

Also, according to National Instruments, there is a greater emphasis on software-centric ecosystems to ensure faster and more accurate measurements. Today, all system developers and integrators, building on standard software platforms, are using commercial off-the-shelf technology to extend the functionality of complex hardware into applications. The level of productivity and collaboration delivered by software-centric ecosystems is expected to impact the test system design over the next three to five years.

Another major trend is that many T&M vendors are forming alliances with other hardware and software vendors to offer more targeted instruments for specific types of measurements.

A common trend across various global markets was the increasing utilisation of used T&M products and solutions. This was mainly because second-hand equipment is up to 40 per cent cheaper than new equipment and, as in the case of new equipment, comes with product support and a warranty. Hence, the used-equipment market, which has been witnessing medium growth, remained stable over the past year.

Key players

According to Frost & Sullivan, the main players in the T&M space include Danaher, Agilent Technologies, Teradyne, Advantest, National Instruments, Anritsu, Yokogawa, Aeroflex, Electro Rent, LeCroy, LTX-Credence and McGrath RentCorp.

Danaher

The company’s T&M segment provides electronic measurement instruments and monitoring, management and optimisation tools for communications and enterprise networks. Danaher’s key T&M brands include Fluke Networks, Fluke, Arbor Networks, Keithley Instruments, Tektronix and Tektronix Communications.

Agilent Technologies

Electronic measurement is Agilent’s largest business segment, with a revenue contribution of over 50 per cent. To expand its T&M product portfolio and customer base, Agilent recently purchased the assets of AT4 Wireless’s test systems business. AT4 wireless is a global provider of testing services and solutions for wireless communications. The wireless test portfolio from AT4 enables Agilent to offer its customers a broader set of test solutions, especially in the long term evolution (LTE) market. In addition, the acquisition expanded Agilent’s wireless test footprint by adding near field communication/radio-frequency identification and Bluetooth test solutions for conformance to industry standards and R&D.

Teradyne

Teradyne’s main area of operation is to supply automatic test equipment to test semiconductors, wireless products, and data storage and electronic systems. The company’s divisions include the Semiconductor Test Division, the Systems Test Group and the Wireless Test Division.

Key trends

North America

According to Frost & Sullivan, the total calibration services market in North America generated revenues of $948.2 million in 2011. While the adverse economic conditions of 2008-09 led to flat market growth, revenues were not impacted. During 2011-18, the market is expected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 5.4 per cent, although revenue growth would differ by segment. For example, third-party service providers are likely to witness higher revenue growth than original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and in-house laboratories. The factors that would impact market growth significantly include a stricter compliance environment and increased competition in key end-user industries.

Europe

The T&M equipment market in Europe witnessed steady growth over the past year, and is expected to generate revenues of Euro 381 million by 2017. This is expected to be fuelled by the demand for power meters, spectrum analysers, network analysers, logic analysers, electronic counters and multimeters.

Most of the R&D activities in Europe are concentrated in Germany, as advanced technologies present in the country are setting global standards in research, development, production and services. This helps to ensure that the region garners increasing market share in the overall T&M equipment market.

Also, post the economic downturn, manufacturing activities in this space have shifted from the adversely affected Western Europe market to Eastern Europe. This has led to steady demand and ensured that Europe continues to account for a substantial revenue share of the overall T&M market.

The economic downturn significantly affected this market, with revenues declining by nearly 20 per cent for most segments in 2009 as compared to the previous year. The climate of economic turmoil caused end-users to reconsider purchasing new test equipment, thereby giving rise to the used T&M equipment market. Currently, the market is highly fragmented, with a number of local participants, brokers, OEMs, traders and resellers catering to customers’ demands. At the same time, it is expected to receive a boost from OEMs attempting to provide warranty and terms similar to those offered with the purchase of new T&M equipment. However, ensuring the availability of equipment is a major challenge in this space, as is the presence of brokers in the market, which leads to a lack of transparency.

China

According to CCID Consulting, China’s T&M market expanded significantly with a 13.5 per cent year-on-year increase to reach RMB 7.41 billion. This growth can be attributed to its stable economy, growth of the terminal product (such as smartphones) market, and continuous introduction and commercial use of next-generation telecommunications standards.

Competition in the Chinese T&M market intensified last year with foreign vendors making inroads into this space and actively building distribution channels to cover major as well as second- and third-tier cities. They urged distributors to enhance their technical support, market development and other services. They also explored new application areas for their products and extended their operations to cover new products. Meanwhile, domestic vendors introduced new products, improved market promotion and enhanced cooperation with the downstream application sectors.Vendors also started focusing on the second-hand T&M equipment market and the leasing market.

Over the next three years, China’s T&M market is expected to witness higher accuracy and intelligence in electrical measurement instruments, integration of product functions, and an increasing role of distribution channels in brand building.

Issues and challenges

According to National Instruments, “big analog data” has emerged as a challenge for the existing automated test and analysis systems. The volume of T&M data is fuelling a growing need in global companies to offer access to this data to an increasing number of employees, which requires network gear and data management systems that can accommodate multi-user access. This in turn drives the need to geographically distribute data and its access. A popular approach to providing this distributed data access is adopting cloud technologies.

Also, as per the Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation, the steady shift to LTE advanced technologies and the in-

creasing use of smartphones is challenging T&M systems to stay ahead of advancements in performance and innovations in radio frequency (RF) components. Thus, T&M system designers will be required to provide faster, rugged and best-in-class testing environments.

Despite the fact that test solutions are becoming more complex, end-customers will continue to expect lower overall test costs per unit. In order to accomplish this, test equipment must enable lower overall test time, which can be achieved by using RF components with a fast settling time.

Tektronix is of the opinion that the growth in wireless sensor networks (expected to touch 645 million chipsets in 2015, as per ABI Research) will entail several T&M challenges for engineers. This is because  engineers need to ensure that RF systems interact with the rest of the device electronics. Interference from RF sources in the environment and other electrical signals in the system also must be analysed. The growth of RF means that designers will need an oscilloscope, a logic analyser and a spectrum analyser, entailing significant additional expense. In this context, an affordable mixed-domain oscilloscope, combining a mixed signal oscilloscope with a spectrum analyser, is the most viable option as it reduces pressure on the equipment budget and adds the critical element of a single integrated view across various test criteria.

The road ahead

According to industry analysts, several technologies and trends will drive growth in the T&M space in 2013. For example, according to Rigol Technologies, advances in the areas of field-programmable gate array circuits and digital signal processing will enable manufacturers to rapidly develop several advanced products. This will allow new and economical products to be used for applications that previously required more advanced and expensive application-specific integrated circuit-based instruments.

Also, the trend towards deploying expensive instruments with more memory is expected to change, as the memory capabilities of oscilloscopes priced under $1,000 have now increased substantially. In this context, the emphasis will be on advanced analysis capabilities.

Testing Tools

Focus on advanced T&M products and solutions

With the introduction of next-generation technologies and the transition from circuit switched to packet switched networks, operators are increasingly demanding innovative instrumentation products to test networks and ensure an optimal end-user experience. Constant innovation in network protocols and standards requires test and measurement (T&M) solutions to continually evolve for efficient functioning.

Besides, there is an increasing demand for testing equipment that is future-proof and backward compatible with legacy networks. In this regard, T&M manufacturers have launched several products/solutions, including software-defined instruments, protocol analysis-based network optimisation tools and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-enabled instrumentation equipment.

Traditional versus modular instruments

In the past, the traditional instrumentation approach was deployed for specific T&M tasks; however, its testing capabilities are increasingly becoming redundant due to the growing demand for instruments that support multiple tests. A traditional test instrument is equipped with a fixed user interface and inbuilt programmed software and, hence, is not capable of testing multiple applications.

On the other hand, software-defined modular instrumentation is gaining popularity as it offers flexibility, scalability and higher speeds. A modular instrument is essentially a generic hardware that acquires and generates raw data while the software is stored on the user’s PC, which allows user-defined measurements and analysis.

One major advantage of modular instrumentation is that it allows test engineers to customise their measurement algorithms and user interfaces to meet specific application needs as well as integrate testing with the design process, thus reducing development time. In addition, modular instruments with FPGA can be reprogrammed through algorithms. Further, modular instrumentation requires only the addition of hardware for conducting multiple tests unlike traditional test instrumentation, which requires an overhaul of the entire system (hardware, software, user interface).

In terms of overall size, modular architecture is better than traditional architecture as the former shares the PC, chassis, power supply and the display device across all instruments, whereas in the latter every instrument requires all these components separately. In terms of speed capabilities, modular instruments leverage technologies such as multi-core processors and PCI/PCI Express, and deliver higher bandwidth and lower latency than traditional instruments.

Next-generation networks

In order to ensure superior end-user experience on 3G and long term evolution (LTE) networks, operators are increasingly demanding sophisticated equipment for conducting real-time tests on such technologies. Further, ensuring the operational readiness of LTE networks is imperative not only during the initial launch, but also as the network and services mature.

In this regard, vendors have started incorporating innovative solutions in their test equipment to support multiple input, multiple output (MIMO), which enhances network performance. For instance, Anritsu’s MD8430A signalling tester comprises four RFs to support 2x2 MIMO while Azimuth Systems and EB Elektrobit are deploying channel emulation technology to test MIMO performance.

Optical communication testing

Optical systems are already dominant in core networks and their deployment is set to increase in access networks as well, with the increasing demand for high speed broadband services. Optical communication systems need to be tested from the development phase to the deployment phase. T&M requirements in optical communication systems are broadly classified into two categories – testing of optical networks during installation and commissioning, and testing for research, development and manufacturing.

New products

Agilent Technologies has launched the E6670B EXT wireless communication test set and the comparison E6617A multiport adapter. The combination of the test set and the multiport adapter is designed to enhance test throughput and reduce testing costs in the manufacture of smartphones and handsets. The product offers capabilities such as full cellular band coverage up to 3.8 GHz (including LTE-TDD Band 43) and support for fast-sequenced test modes in the latest chipsets.

Anritsu Corporation has launched the MT8820C Radio Communication Analyzer. The analyser evaluates LTE frequency division duplexing (FDD)  Band 22 (3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz) and LTE-time division duplexing (TDD) Band 42/43 (3.4 GHz to 3.8 GHz) frequencies used by LTE-enabled smartphones and devices. It has a radio frequency range of 3.8 GHz to support evaluation of LTE-FDD Band22 and LTE-TDD Band42/43 LTE smartphones as well as mobiles.

National Instruments (NI) has launched an embedded measurement and logging platform, NI CompactDAQ, for executing data acquisition, online analysis and logging software. The NI CompactDAQ is powered by an Intel Core i7 dual-core processor, and offers 2 GB RAM and 32 GB of non-volatile storage. It facilitates mixed-measurement tests while logging data directly to the system, eliminating the need for an external PC. It has an eight-slot chassis that offers over 50 C Series I/O module options. Users can mix and match a variety of I/O and sensor types including AI, AO, DIO and CAN to help create custom measurement and logging systems.

Going forward, innovation in communication technologies and standards will drive the demand for sophisticated T&M equipment. Further, emerging security concerns associated with the transmission of significant amounts of data will require T&M vendors to embed security testing features in their products and solutions.