LXI Large Switch Matrix for Aircraft Testing

Customer

A leading Integrator for Aerospace applications who provides functional testers for Civilian and Military Aircraft.

Application

The customer needed to replace an old specific VXI system by a generic tester which could test a range of cards for several different aircraft ECUs. This system required more than 9000 points of switching to test all the different cases. Covering a large variety of a cards with a single tester is more economic than creating several smaller testers, and logistically easier to manage.

One of the main objectives was also to reduce the size of the full cabinet and the quantity of cabling in order to get the best flexibility and repeatability at a competitive price.

Solution

Despite the fact that the customer was attracted by PXI modularity and effectiveness, the customer came to the conclusion that building a tester with 9000 points of switching will be less effective, labor cost would be higher and it would take much more space than a LXI solution. A PXI solution for the matrix switching part would require more than 18 PXI cards with 512 relays and many cabling connections between the modules to implement the full matrix.

For this application, the customer has used a PXI chassis for all the one slot resources (DMM, Serial, Scope, DIO and Avionic cards) and six of Pickering's  60-552-002 High-Density LXI Switch Matrix configured as a 384x24 using the loop thru connexions. The resulting system has much less cabling with better performance than the original VXI system and is an example of a user selecting two different platforms (PXI and LXI) to implement different parts of the system to obtain the most effective test solution.