Design, realization and deployment of eventually large, PC-controlled, instrumentation-based systems are the core activities of T&S line.
As a service-provider, Skytechnology offers its services in form of:

• competences (at client site)
• turnkey systems

Upon agreement other forms of collaboration may be find; Skytechnology is available also for feasibility studies on customer request.

With the term ‘complex systems’ we refer to assemblies of instruments whose operation is typically controlled by means of an application, running on a PC. Alongside this very common scenario, there are also situations in which the application is actually distributed on different targets of different types. In these cases, emphasis is posed on synchronization and coordination.

So, whether speaking of measurement, test, simulation, distributed, M2M systems, our point of view unifies the vision and the approach to all these different systems.

Systems are supported on entire project lifecycles: from design to assembly/implementation, verification and release/deployment.

Today’s trends show an increasing use of optical components: correspondingly systems involve an always growing number of optical instruments, like broadband or monochromatic fixed and tunablelaser sources, attenuators, scramblers, filters, polarization controllers, switch, multiplexers, power meter, optical spectrum analysers, DCAs, BER and error detector systems.

Alongside with the above listed, ‘traditional’ electrical instruments are used: oscilloscopes, multimeters, signal analyzer, power meters, electronic loads, acquisition boards, power supplies, etc..

Due to the great disparity of involved instruments, a corresponding number of connections and control busses may be found on large systems: from the standard de-facto IEEE488.2, to traditional serial communications; from slow modem connections to high speed wifi links; from electrical bus to fiber-optic transmissions; from CAN based protocols to Ethernet; from open standards to proprietary protocols.

Our systems integrate parts and instrumentation of different manufacturers. Whenever possible, COTS components are used, thus permitting cost cuts and long maintenance lifecycles. When specialized tasks are required, and no viable commercial solutions can be pursued, custom components may be integrated.

Skytechnology support the customer also on design and realization of custom components, either by offering its competences direct in customer’s site, or with turnkey systems.

Integration is found in many aspects of complex systems: the most evident is the number of types of instruments involved, as well as their connection busses, as aforementioned.

A second aspect is the number of development tools needed, along with the ability of using them: in fact, although some environment are de-facto standards (like LabVIEW or TestStand, for production environment), many other languages are found, and used, on test systems: from C to C++, VisualBasic (mainly for interfaces), Pascal/Delphi and Ada (especially for SILx compliant application).

The third, and most important aspect, is related to the necessity of ‘putting it together’: Skytechnology has the necessary heterogeneous competences needed when facing problems from the many points of view required from system integration.

A distinctive point of Skytechnology is the internal availability of competences needed when designing or validating complex systems.

Competences span from FPGA design and realization to analogic hardware development; from firmware development to DB design and implementation, from risk analysis to V&V systems.

This in-house set of competences gears-up systems definition, and allow our clients to face a single supplier, a lean structure and a flexible approach which in turn brings to cost savings.

T&S competences can support customer on following areas:

Along the years, we have designed and realized different types of systems:

· Functional test of analog and digital avionic radar
· Calibration, characterization and test of optical submarine DWDM amplifiers
· On-board data collection, visualization and analysis for railway coaches maintenance
· Magnetic signature measurement system for military navy units
· EOL test systems for automotive burglar alarms
· Radar target-simulators
· Test of 10Gbit/s optical transponders
· Test of telecom devices (POTS, mux-demux, etc)
· Functional (product validation) and EOL (production) test of automotive dashboards
· EMC test application (emission and susceptibility) for military electronic devices
· Validation system for dialysis devices

Tools and Technologies