Building Instrumentation Automatic Test System

With the development of instrument technology, the functions of the modern instruments are more and more powerful, which result in the complex instrument structures. The performance of ATS (Automatic Test System) and trouble shooting system has been the important factor in the modern instruments development.At abroad, the criterion of ATS has already been formed by many institutes and organizations, such as the military department of United States. The ATS which based on bus criterions such as VXI and GPIB can greatly reduce the cost of system constructing, developing, maintaining and upgrading. Furthermore, the work efficiency has been improved obviously. However, in China the research which is only in a small-scale is in the primary phase, and there is no uniform criterion to construct large-scale integrated ATS and no universal ATS. With the development in test field, the high speed, exactness and convenience have become the urgent requirement for the test system, so it is necessary to work out a universal ATS.The main task of this paper is to develop a universal test system for all intelligent instruments, based on the VI technology, the VISA technology, the IVI criterion and the database technology. This test system can test the instruments, extract and save the test results. Moreover, it can simulate IVI instruments, and inquire the information in the database. It is proved that the test system presented in this paper has initially realized the currency and integration of testing, and run steadily with the cooperation of the database.This paper gives an overview of the criterion of the VISA and IVI, and the functions of VI in testing. It also studies the development of the database and the database access in the development environment. After that, the working principle and process are proposed in the paper. Finally, actual examples are given to prove the efficiency of the test system and explain the function of each sub module of the system.