CIE Components in Electronics
Developed by the MHL Consortium, the MHL Specification defines a high-definition (HD) video and digital audio interface for connecting mobile phones and portable devices to HDTVs and other home entertainment products. Tektronix announced a comprehensive test solution based on the MHL CTS 1.1 in August of last year. As an active contributor to the standard, Tektronix has moved quickly to provide testing support for the latest MHL CTS 1.2 specification update that was released on March 2, 2012.
“Tektronix has worked closely with Simplay Labs to provide an MHL test system with enhanced value-added features,” said Joseph Lias, President of Simplay Labs. “Simplay Labs is dedicated to providing advanced testing solutions for standards-based consumer electronics products and we are looking forward to continuing our successful collaboration with Tektronix to support fully compliant, high-performance MHL products in the marketplace.”
Engineers designing and validating the MHL physical and link layers of their devices face constant pressure to become more efficient while minimising capital expenditures. The MHL protocol analyzer software is built right into the same DPO/DSA/MSO70000 Series Oscilloscope used for traditional physical layer testing to provide a complete MHL protocol and PHY test solution and enables designers of MHL technology to obtain a seamless correlation between physical and link layers, speeding up test time and lowering equipment costs by thousands of dollars.
“The MHL specification continues to evolve, making time-to-market for new products supporting the standard of utmost importance to our customers in the MHL design community,” said Mike Rizzo, Manager of Oscilloscope Solutions, Tektronix. “Not only are we closely mirroring the enhancements made to the MHL test specification, but we are delivering a solution that offers a simpler set-up, integrated PHY/Protocol support, and vastly less expensive than competitive test offerings.”
Testing efficiency is further enhanced with direct synthesis based receiver and dongle testing that provides accurate MHL signal generation, allowing the tuning of numerous parameters and attributes, necessary to meet MHL CTS 1.2 requirements. The direct synthesis solution provides easier, more repeatable test set-ups and lower cost compared to complex sink-based solutions for generating signal impairments.
