Yokogawa first to add PSI5 bus analysis support to oscilloscope

-New DLM series test function aids automotive designers working on complex Air Bag sensor systems -

Yokogawa announces support for Peripheral Sensor Interface 5 (PSI5) bus analysis on its 8 channel DLM4000 and 2 and 4 channel DLM2000 oscilloscopes. Yokogawa's PSI5 support is a first for the industry, and makes its oscilloscopes uniquely useful for automotive designers and engineers.

The Peripheral Sensor Interface 5 (PSI5) is a widely used open standard based interface for in-vehicle communications in the automotive industry and a key application area is in the control of Air Bags. These systems play a major role in passenger safety and continue to increase in capability and complexity, so a reliable communication bus is critical. The effect of a non-functioning or malfunctioning Air Bag is extremely serious and can be life threatening.

Yokogawa's comprehensive PSI5 analysis firmware option offers several trigger and protocol analysis features. The feature can trigger on sync pulses, start of frame or specific bit patterns, and up to 400,000 events can be stored. The sensor data is decoded, and the firmware option provides a range of search criteria, including start of data, any frame in a specified slot, bit patterns, value comparisons and a range of errors such as frame, clock, start bit, parity/CRC, frame number and slot border, simplifying and speeding up system debugging.

The ability to provide specialised analysis of PSI5 communication performance on an oscilloscope is of particular interest to anybody involved in vehicle Air Bag development and implementation or any other application of PSI5 to communicate with safety-critical sensors.

The new PSI5 testing firmware sits alongside other automotive firmware options available on Yokogawa's DLM oscilloscope range that provide automotive engineers with a single piece of equipment for tasks from simple waveform display to analysing automotive serial busses such as CAN, LIN & SENT.

Terry Marrinan, VP of Sales and Marketing at Yokogawa Europe BV, said; "Yokogawa was the first oscilloscope manufacturer to provide automotive serial bus analysis for CAN bus in 2003. We are therefore very pleased to again be the first to offer support for PSI5 testing."

PSI5 analysis can be installed in a new DLM4000 or DLM2000, or as an upgrade to an existing unit. Existing Yokogawa DLM-series users can try the new PSI5 testing function for a free 30-day trial period.

More information about the Peripheral Sensor Interface 5 (PSI5) bus can be found at psi5.org.