LXI Newsletter
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From Bob Stasonis, LXI Marketing Co-Chair:

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the LXI Newsletter! Our goal here is simple – to keep you aware of how LXI has made test system development easier. By standardizing and extending LAN, LXI offers you new possibilities in test systems—local, remote, distributed, time-aware. After all, it’s about your time.

We will present articles by industry leaders on specific applications and explain how LXI instruments are an integral part. In this issue, Neil Forcier of Agilent talks about how LXI instruments can be controlled for remote applications using Wi-Fi. Tom Sarfi of VTI Instruments explains how LXI was able to replace an obsolete switching system to give a longer usable life to a legacy test system and allow it to adapt to newer testing requirements.

Finally, we will highlight the latest LXI instruments that have been approved by one of our LXI Conformance Certification labs. To learn about the other 1,700 plus instruments that are available, please visit our searchable Product List.

We hope you find our quarterly newsletter informative and useful. For more information, go to http://www.lxistandard.org.

Tips for Remote Testing
Using LXI Devices and WiFi

By Neil Forcier
Agilent Technologies

In our global society we continue to become more and more connected wirelessly to data and information. The basis or foundation of our global connectivity is Ethernet or LAN which is a hard wired networking standard. The demand for wireless connectivity has led to an explosion in low cost wireless devices that provide connection to an Ethernet network from anywhere. In this article we will discuss how we can use these various off the shelf wireless devices with LXI instruments to do wireless remote testing. First we will look at wireless testing from a local perspective, where our instruments are located in our work area or nearby in a lab. From there we will look at wireless test from a long distance perspective where our instruments are located a mile away or across the globe.

When controlling LXI instruments there are three basic connection configurations that are commonly used. The simplest is connecting the computer or controller directly to the LXI instrument using a LAN cable. The second is creating your own local network using a LAN switch or router which allows control of multiple instruments from the same controller. The controller and the desired instruments are connected via LAN cables to the switch or router. The third method is to connect all the instruments to an existing network such as your company’s intranet (if your IT department allows it).