Test program structure and development on the Common Test Station

Abstract

As with all Automated Test Equipment (ATE), providing the ability to efficiently develop high-quality test programs has been a primary goal during the development of the Common Test Station (CTS). The CTS is currently under development by HMSC and was recently identified by the US Department of Defense Automated Test System (ATS) Executive Agent as a designated ATS family. The modularity and configurability of the CTS design end Its capability to support a wide range of test implementations, from real-time measurement and data collection to traditional stimulus-response test sequencing, have played a significant role in the structuring of test programs. Consideration was also given to the entire Test Program Set (TPS) development process in order to efficiently coordinate the availability or test requirement and hardware design data into the test program software development effort. To accomplish this in the most cost effective end flexible manner, a CTS test program is structured around a collection of databases that provide instrumentation, test requirement, test path end test sequencing data. The CTS Executive provides the tools necessary to create and modify the databases required by the test program.