A universal structure model for switches and its application to automatic test system

Abstract

Various types of switches are widely used in aerospace automatic test industry, such as toggle switch, tree switch, mux switch and matrix switch etc. Different types of switches have different drivers and development methods. To simplify the implementations of drivers and reduce the cost and time associated with developing new test systems. This paper proposes a universal model to define different types of switches. Based on such model, we develop a test system targeting various types of switches. In this system, we use backtrack searching algorithm to find the path between ends of switch. These different switches can use one kind of driver. To improve the interchangeability of instrument, the software architecture was built with IVI (Interchangeable Virtual Instrumentation) - COM (Component Object Model) driver architecture. Our test system has been verified in actual PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation) system and VXI (VME eXtensions for Instrumentation) system.