“Industry's First” LXI Class A family of scalable RF/microwave switching products and design tools
(Technology News, 24 Apr 2008 )
VTI Microwave, a business unit of VXI Technology, Inc., has introduced its EX7000 family of scalable open architecture RF interface unit (RFIU) subsystems developed to reduce non-recurring engineering costs, and aid in repeatable product development. These commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) units provide an expandable standard interface between RF/Microwave instrumentation and the unit(s) being tested. Using the powerful LXI Class A interface, the EX7000 family of products can be used with virtually any test instrumentation and provide web-based control for easy operation and maintenance from anywhere in the world. VTI Microwave offers customers a unique combination of hardware, an extensive best-of-class vendor source database, and thoroughly tested development tools for the selection, integration and system testing of their RF/Microwave products.
Recognizing the industry challenges of high NRE and compressed delivery schedules, VTI Microwave worked with its customers to develop the EX7000 platform. This family of products offers an open-architecture solution that accommodates virtually any selection of relays, attenuators, combiners, splitters and switches, and reduces development engineering hours of microwave test systems by 30 – 60%.
For the first time in history, the RF/Microwave test industry can leverage industry standards for custom RF/Microwave assemblies with the EX7000 platform. These products provide many COTS benefits including IVI drivers, which utilize “path-level” programming and remove the need for custom software drivers. Automatically generated graphical user interfaces (GUI’s) can be accessed from any web browser worldwide – again reducing software engineering hours. Ethernet control with industry standard triggering and synchronization allows custom switch assemblies to be tightly integrated with the unit(s) under test and RF/Microwave instrumentation. On-board web servers support control and serviceability from anywhere in the world.
The EX7000 family of products range from OEM interfaces and relay drivers, to custom enclosures with power-supplies and control, as well as standard modular switch solutions. These products, combined with VTI Microwave’s engineering, production and worldwide support capabilities, provide customers with products and solutions for any phase of their development cycle.
