White papers

The E&T white paper programme

A collection of authoritative technical product reports and white papers, providing solutions and benefits and enabling you to increase your knowledge across a range of engineering and technology disciplines.

For further information or to submit a product report or white paper of your own for consideration in the programme, please e-mail us.

  Explore the benefits of new ADI circuits for designing smart industrial field Instruments

This circuit is a complete smart industrial, loop powered field instrument with 4 mA to 20 mA analog output and a highway addressable remote transducer (HART®) interface. It allows features such as remote calibration, fault interrogation, and transmission of process variables, which are necessary in applications such as temperature and pressure control within industry. This circuit has been compliance tested, verified, and registered by the HART Communication Foundation (HCF), providing circuit designers with a high level of confidence using one or all of the components in the circuit.

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Data acquisition technology outlook 2013

  The Data Acquisition Technology Outlook keeps you informed of the latest and future technologies being developed to improve how engineers and scientists acquire, analyze, and present data. With more than 35,000 companies around the world using NI tools, National Instruments has been leading the data acquisition market for over 30 years with innovative software and hardware for building data acquisition systems. Additionally, NI works closely with leading technology providers to ensure that NI data acquisition products incorporate the latest and greatest technologies. Using this ecosystem of customers and partners, NI created the outlook to highlight some of the most pressing trends and technology challenges engineers who build data acquisition systems face.

Featured content includes:

• Big analog data and data acquisition: differentiation is no longer about who can collect the most data, it’s about who can quickly make sense of the data they collect.
• Moore’s Law at work in data logging: with the digital world we live in becoming more complex, we are demanding more from the systems recording the physical and electrical phenomena of today and tomorrow.
• Emerging bus technologies: new bus technologies are poised to evolve data acquisition systems and address the challenges of future measurement applications.
• Mobile technology’s influence on data acquisition: mobile access to measurement applications is no longer a nice addition, it is an expectation.

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Why choose an embedded system for your next application

Many system integrators and end customers continue to choose standard PC platforms for certain types of embedded applications. Standard PCs of the past did have some advantages over custom designed embedded platforms, especially for applications that required “PC-like” performance and capabilities at a low off-the-shelf cost. However, they now have hidden costs as the embedded technology landscape is changing dramatically and today’s high performance, low power embedded platforms, like those being enabled by AMD, offer low risk, and superior TCO for long-lifecycle applications.

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Car2x: how automotive OEMs and suppliers are successfully completing production Car2x projects

Car2x systems present entirely new challenges for managers in product development departments. For one, the Car2x ECU under study must communicate with a large number of vehicles and beacons in its environment. This increases the number of information exchanges and their complexity compared to previous network development in production vehicles. For another, IP standards have now made their way into the vehicle; however, this is uncharted territory for most developers using the IEEE 802.11p air interface. These challenges can already be overcome with tools that are adapted to this interface.

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Test bench for complex ECU networks: verification of object-recognition algorithms

ECU tests may be very complex depending on the work area and the range of functional features. This is even more relevant when testing must cover a network of five to nine ECUs whose functionalities are inseparably intertwined and vary according to the vehicle type, features and special customer wishes. That is why EvoBus has started up a new component test bench based on the VT System from Vector. Its flexible, automated tests enable a high level of test coverage and precise reproducibility of all test cases.

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Simulation of coupled electromagnetic/thermal systems using CAE software

Electromagnetic induction heating occurs in electrically conducting materials when they are in the presence of time varying magnetic fields. This phenomenon is utilized in a wide range of industrial applications.

Simulating induction heating effects using Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software requires the solution of both electromagnetic and thermal field distributions. Often a transient solution is required to determine the temperature distribution as a function of time, and this can be complicated by the characteristic wide disparity between the time constants of the electrical and thermal systems.

This paper will illustrate examples of coupled electromagnetic/thermal field simulations for both steady-state and transient conditions.

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The complete guide to building a measurement system: download this 10-part tutorial from NI

Download this how-to guide from National Instruments that covers everything you should consider when building your data acquisition (DAQ) system. Compared to traditional measurement systems, PC-based DAQ systems, consisting of sensors, DAQ measurement hardware and software, exploit the processing power, productivity, display and connectivity capabilities of industry-standard computers, providing more a powerful, flexible and cost-effective measurement solution.

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Managing AUTOSAR development with IBM Rationale software

Most of the innovative functions integrated into today’s vehicles are delivered through the electric and electronic systems or E/E systems for short. E/E systems are composed of dozens of electronic control units with millions of lines of code running on them. Standardising the development of the electronic control units represents a great opportunity for the industry to achieve efficiencies and cost savings to promote innovation, research and development. A systems engineering approach based on the IBM Rationale software platform for automotive systems can help your organisation achieve significant advantages. This paper reviews opportunities in this field. 

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ISO 26262 Functional Safety

Work on ISO 26262 Functional Safety – Road Vehicles became available to the public in 2009 and is the latest standard for functional safety in the automotive domain. However, functional safety is not new to the industry as the IEC 61508 was the functional safety standard used for almost a decade. ISO 26262 is intended to be applied to one or more electric/electronic (E/E) systems that are installed in series production passenger vehicles with a maximum gross weight of up to 3.5 tons, although not commercial vehicles nor special vehicles, e.g. for disabled people. disabled people. For these kinds of vehicles IEC 61508 is still used.This white paper focuses on ISO 26262. For those who are familiar with IEC 61508, the new standard might look like old ideas in new packages. Experts in requirements engineering and requirements management may find that CMMI1 or SPICE2 are more precise in managing their requirements.

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Modelling AUTOSAR systems with a UML/SysML profile

The AUTOSAR initiative aims to create standard core solutions that enable reuse and scalability of functional modules between platform variants. This Paper provides an overview of the fundamental concepts of AUTOSAR, such as the AUTOSAR System, AUTOSAR Software Components, the AUTOSAR Virtual Functional Bus, and the AUTOSAR Run Time Environments. The Paper also reviews details of a UML/SysML-based AUTOSAR profile for capturing the AUTOSAR System —including the interacting AUTOSAR Software Components — and discusses how using UML the AUTOSAR System Model can be extended to include effective model organisation, requirements capture, and behavioural/algorithm modelling.

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Evolution of automotive system requirements increasing need for collaborative design management

To maintain schedule adherence and satisfy complex development requirements, engineering organisations are turning toward software and system lifecycle management solutions to promote efficiencies and synergies within their automotive systems development process. Standards like AUTOSAR and GENIVI (system development) and ISO 26262 (safety), are driving automotive system manufacturers to improve their development processes. Key foci of this Paper include: Trends in automotive software/system engineering, and comparison to other embedded industries; How process standardisation is influencing re-evaluation of tooling strategies; How system complexity is driving adoption of software and system modelling tools; How convergent evolution of system design solutions enables greater automation synergies.

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