Agilent Technologies Inc. announced that defense electronics firm DME Corp. is incorporating Agilent N6700 low-profile modular power systems in its Advanced Tactical Agile Communications Test Set, or ATACTS, for testing military radios in the field. Military field technicians use the ATACTS system to determine whether a radio is usable or needs to be sent back to the depot for repair.
ATACTS combines the operations of 12 to 16 different virtual test instruments into a single, compact unit. Technicians simply plug the radio-under-test into ATACTS, and the system puts it through the predefined tests.
When they were designing ATACTS, DME engineers wanted a power supply that was 1U-2U high and had three to five programmable outputs.
"We couldn't find a supply on the market that had the capability we needed and also met our size criteria, so we looked at designing our own," said Craig Hughes, DME engineering director.
"Once we discovered the Agilent N6700, we realized it made no sense for us to design our own supply. It was the right size and had the right capability."
The Agilent N6700 low-profile modular power system simplifies test-system assembly, programming, debugging and operation. Its flexibility, small size and fast command processing time make it ideal for ATE systems and production test environments.