Nothing can be more frustrating than having a frustrated customer. The customer needs quality service in the shortest possible time and any glitch in the communication infrastructure can make a customer spew out venom toward the service provider. In this complex and competitive scenario no company is in a position to have an angry customer on its hands, especially when there is a plethora of options available in the market.

Today, companies need to detect a fault and mend it before the customer even notices it. And this need has been realized by the test and measurement players who have developed a LAN extension for instrumentation (LXI) that can be installed at remote locations. Through this device data can be monitored from a control room miles away from the spot where there may be some fault. The palpable example that can explain the difference is detecting fault or measuring data at the top of the towers manually and through LXI-enabled T&M. Therefore, time saving is a unique feature of LXI.

“LAN capability is an additional feature and a boon for system integrators. Instruments supporting LAN provide flexibility to system integrators and allow application programing on a single platform. A major advantage of remote control over a network (LAN) is that more than one user can access the T&M equipment over a network and can control it remotely,” says Ramarao Anil, head, Product Support and Application, Rohde and Schwarz.

Besides, continuous monitoring and automated measurements is made easy with a click. The numerous benefits of LXI is convincing T&M companies to convert their products to LXI. Gradually, LXI adoption in various T&M product segments is increasing but at the moment there are only few segments that have LXI for sure.

“Some of the T&M instruments that we think should be LAN capable are signal generators, spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, audio analyzers, and power meters,” says Ramarao.

Transition from GPIB
Test and measurement is required in all types of processes, simple or complex. The industry had been looking for a successor of GPIB for instruments. The answer came in the form of LXI after almost three decades of the GPIB regime. This transition started taking place in the 90s from GPIB to Ethernet. Using Ethernet, an instrument can be connected to more users as compared to instruments with GPIB.

Ethernet is generally the output interface of all the data devices today at 100 Mbps speed or 1 Gbps. These are high-speed routers that can provide a rate of 10 Gbps. The Ethernet data out of these interfaces can be easily mapped at the next generation synchronous digital hierarchy (NG-SDH) system. It can also be transported over the optical network with the same merits of the SDH technology. This makes the network of data devices much more perfect and easy in spite of its diverse geographic location.

“Going a step above, Ethernet by itself acts as the carrier technology. Recent addition of protocols like BFD, LACP, xSTP, and CFM make Ethernet ready for the carrier. Besides this, Ethernet is an ideal interface for triple play services in the network and user space. The transport of Ethernet over NG-SDH, carrier Ethernet technologies, and triple play services necessitates more rigorous testing for these protocols and traffic over the Ethernet interface,” says MJ Mombasawala, senior technology consultant, Agilent Technologies India.

Standardization
With standardization of a product come many benefits, one of them being cost saving. Cost saving can be done at various stages and is possible when an instrument has an open standard so that it can be upgraded as per need. Standardization of products is also required as over a period of time technology of legacy instruments becomes obsolete and, thus, expensive to maintain.

When the change from GPIB to Ethernet started taking place, many standards and interfaces were proposed. In 2004 Agilent Technologies and VXI Technology proposed-forming of an open consortium for standardizing-LXI-enabled T&M. This led to formation of LXI consortium to ensure interoperability and a consistent user experience by developing, supporting, and promoting the LXI standard. LXI consortium develops its standards through a consensus development process, and conforming to the LXI standard is wholly voluntary. The LXI consortium has more that forty members, comprising most of the leading players who follow the LXI standard.

LXI is said to be only for applications that are distributed, require scalability with low initial cost, synchronization over IEEE 1588, comsume lesser rack space, and, more importantly, for systems built on the synthetic instrument concept.

On the operating system front, LXI is largely independent. It depends on vendors to provide IVI drivers which they deem fit, be it Linux or Windows OS.

Benefits on Offer
The basic feature that results in growth of a technology is its use. This has been the main reason why LXI is overtaking GPIB.

The LXI standard specifies automatic negotiation of LAN transmission speed and duplex communication to ensure successful instrument interaction. LXI-enabled T&M supports automatic IP configuration through a DHCP server, often available in managed corporate networks and in cable or DSL routers. It also recommends support for DNS. There are various other benefits of using LXI.

• LXI is based on standards: Ethernet (IEEE 802.3), TCP/IP protocols, LAN cables, Web browsers, IVI-COM drivers, and standard rack sizes.
• Seamless migration from product development through manufacturing: Engineers can use traditional instruments during the R&D phases when user interface is important. When moving to manufacturing, they can migrate to smaller, faceless LXI modules that use the same software and test routines developed on standard instruments.
• Delivers flexibility with a modular approach to intrumentality: You can purchase the instrument modules desired without the need for a card cage, slot 0, or proprietary link. In the case of RF instruments, LXI brings the benefits of synthetic instruments (modules that can be mixed and matched to form traditional instruments).
• LAN offers new capabilities: The LAN industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year employing thousands of engineers to improve the speed, performance, and capabilities of LAN. There are more engineers working on LAN alone than in the entire test and measurement industry. Today, LAN offers capabilities that extend far beyond the crude point-to-point connectivity offered by MXI, GPIB, and other test-industry standards. Peer-to-peer communications, remote operation, synthetic instruments, and simultaneous operation are a few examples.

India Scope
It has become more important for telecom players to ensure quality of service to their subscribers, as there is dual pressure on them. The market pressure already exists for all kind of businesses but in the communication field there is a defined benchmark from Trai as well. In a survey conducted a few months back by VOICE&DATA, it was found that only three companies-Aircel, BPL, and MTNL-were above the Trai benchmark. Rest of the companies still need to work on their infrastructure to ensure quality to at least meet the Trai benchmark.

The booming Indian telecom market has been recognized worldwide, and the CAGR of wireless subscribers in India has been about 87% since 2003. The recent announcement of the 3G policy has also put telecom players on their toes for expanding and improving infrastructure. These new 3G services will create demand for new and complex infrastructure. Hence, there is huge business expected to come from services like broadband, triple play, and IPTV, for which infrastructure needs to be expanded. India has shown heavy growth in business for telecom T&M instruments, and off late, in the adoption of LXI.

“Among Saarc countries, India remains the top destination, followed by Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The increasing popularity and adoption of desktops and laptops, which connect to each other through Ethernet LAN, is driving the growth and usage of LXI technology. This is especially true for the enterprise segment today as many companies are increasingly getting computerized. Banks, airlines, stock exchanges, credit card companies, and courier companies are all major users in this area,” says Shankar Roy Chowdhury, manager, Marketing Operations, Agilent Technologies India.

He further attributes the growth of LXI to the call center industry, as they extensively use IP telephony to keep costs down.

“In addition to enterprise users, next generation SDH systems are now getting deployed by service providers, this will further drive the growth of gigabit LANs,” adds Chowdhary.

Prasoon Srivastava
prasoons@cybermedia.co.in