Synopsis of the Keynote Address

Byron "talks metrology"... and asserts that Agilent also "walks" it !

Byron J. Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of Agilent's Electronic Products and Solutions Group, was the keynote speaker at NCSL International's annual conference in Washington, DC.

NCSLI is a worldwide association of laboratories and organizations that maintain or have in interest related to measurement standards and calibration facilities. The conference was attended by 1200 people from 34 countries, representing national laboratories, military, service providers, various sectors such as wireless and aerospace, and commercial equipment manufacturers like Agilent Technologies.

Byron addressed the conference theme, "The New Economy: What Role Will Metrology Play" and touched on a number of topics, ranging from gallows humor regarding the economy, HP and Agilent's long standing relationship with the original NCSL and on to the highly technical issues of microwave measurement uncertainty.

A floral tribute at the event celebrates 40 years since the founding of the organization.

This event celebrated the 40^th anniversary of NCSLI, and the 100^th anniversary of the U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST). Hewlett-Packard was a founding company member of NCSL, and has contributed two Presidents to the organization since 1961, John Minck and Dave Abell. David Packard and John Minck also received the organization's highest honor, the Wildhack Award. HP and Agilent's collaboration with NIST ranges from early experiments with flying atomic clocks to current collaborations on non-linear network analyzers.

Touching on the highly technical, Byron shared complex equations that expressed the specifications and measurement uncertainties for the new E8254A Microwave Synthesizer Source. He emphasized that instruments this complex would require new methodologies for test and calibration, and shared some of the work on test architectures being developed within Agilent. Making the point further, he challenged the industry to develop practical methods to implement the new calibration and testing standard, ISO17025, while recognizing the challenges associated with complex electronic instruments such as the E8254A.

Just in case anyone in the audience doubted it, this is one of the equations that was used to illustrate the complexity of metrology. It's the power measurement uncertainty algorithm that's being modelled in Agilent's test software to calculate uncertainty "on-the-fly".

Addressing future trends, Byron discussed how measurements and embedded sensors will become ubiquitous, constantly monitoring the environment and aiding the design of more efficient vehicles and appliances. He emphasized that we're quickly approaching what he calls "Moore meets Maxwell" in that digital devices begin to look more like microwave components as the bit density and speeds continue to increase. This challenges metrology in that measurements become a combination of the physics of the parameter as well as the sophistication of the software architecture that binds the application together.

Closing his speech, he returned to the conference theme of the role of measurements in the economy and challenged the attendees to look at their contributions from the point of view of how it aids the success of the businesses they are in, and not just the academic challenge of increasingly accurate measurements.

Audio Recording

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Transcript

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Further Information

• NCSL International