Car Ethernet – An introduction to TC9

Allion Labs / Maroco Fan & Ken Yan

Data transmissions, video streaming, drivers, and passengers can now enjoy these in-premise entertainment activities right in their cars, all possible because of the advancing car Ethernet. To ensure a faster and stable transmission, the Open (One-Pair Ether-Net) Alliance has released conformance requirements, including TC2-100 Base and TC9-1000, for the radiofrequency validations of cables and connectors on the physical layer. In this article, we are going to introduce the test details of TC9 (Frequency within 1~600MHz) and the type of testing instruments used in the validations.

Read more

Quality Control – The Key to Successful Products

Allion Labs / Jacky Hou & Vanex Hsu

Quality Control – Validation and Verifications 

Manufacturing is a complex process that involves various stages of incoming supply control, production, verification, packaging, and shipment. Every segment of the manufacturing process is governed b strict operational procedures and quality requirements. Audit and inspection are at the forefront of product quality to avoid defects being carried out to the end of the manufacturing process. But one inspection is not enough, brands will deploy QA engineering teams or outsourcing contractors to engage in random audits and FATP to maintain high yield rates.

Read more

Four Visual Recognition Applications and Testing Solutions

Allion Labs / Kali Chen

In recent years, image detection technology has been extensively researched and developed by academic institutions to bring the quality of smart cameras to the next level. Smart cameras have become the must-have smart gadgets for home with multifaceted advantages, such as motion detection for home surveillance system. The intelligent video analysis system in smart cameras uses computer vision, machine learning and deep learning technologies to automatically interpret the key information behind images in the same way that human vision does. This visual recognition technology has been widely employed to face recognition, human motion capture, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR), and optical character recognition (OCR). In addition, smart cameras will be connected to the cloud-based platform which has implemented visual recognition technologies. It enables data to be stored cyclically in the cloud, which allows camera vendors to cut cost in host or storage equipment investment.

Read more

The Key to Better Gaming Displays—Getting Your Displays Tested and Certified

The gaming industry is growing fast with new technologies, and the gaming appliance market is also booming as the gaming industry grows. For instance, the demand of high-quality displays has been soaring these days.

According to a report released by WitsView, Trendforce, the global unit shipments of gaming displays in 2017 was 2.5 million, with an annual growth of 80%. The shipments are expected to increase by 1 million by the end of 2018, with a total of 3.7 million units on the market.

The fast-growing gaming market surely has brought more opportunities for the peripheral appliance and display vendors. However, quality has also become customers’ prior concern and thus it is important that vendors put more emphasis on quality assurance and look out for potential risks.

Read more

Validate your Smart Device with Real World Factors: Allion’s Heat Map Analysis Program

According to research firm IHS Markit, the number of IoT devices will increase on average 12% each year from 27 billion in 2017 to 125 billion in 2030. As more devices go on the Net, the limited wireless channels have become more congested that brings plenty of connectivity issues to the real-world and further deteriorates user’s experiences.

Unlike one-to-one communication of traditional devices, communication of IoT devices has become one-to-many. The performance of IoT devices should involve in three factors: product capability, network connectivity and user environment/ behavior. Vendors thus need a new methodology to verify products before launching to the market. This article will discuss a new methodology of IoT device validation “Heat Map Analysis”, which is used to perceive real-world factors and further discover and resolve common wireless connectivity issues.

Read more

Rise of Connected Car Service – IVI Speech Test Verification

Technological development is changing the auto/driving experience and creating an ecosystem that supports connectivity between automobile and mobile applications. According to China Industrial Development Research Network report, the global car network terminals can reach 66.95 million units. China’s car network terminal was only 1 million units in 2013, expected to grow to around 10 million units in 2018. The “mobile phone-car mode” network terminal increased from 19% in 2013 and will increase to nearly 50% in 2018.

Read more

The Advent of New Technology: A Trend Analysis of the Current SSD Market

Solid State Drive (SSD) has gradually become the focus for individuals who desire to enhance their storage equipment. Especially since 2016, more and more SSD vendors have applied the newly invented “3D NAND Flash” and “NVMe Communications Protocol” to their latest products. With the larger capacity, faster speed, and friendlier price, SSD will comprehensively replace Hard Disk Drive (HDD) in the near future.

Read more

High Speed Connector Development Trends and Key Points for Quality Certification

General Overview

With the rapid development of the IT industry, transfer quality, speed and application diversity have initiated a continued drive towards the development of faster transfer speeds. In order to enhance signal transfer encoding speed and shorten user waiting sessions. 1. Lowering package precision. 2. Providing full duplex transfer modes are both plausible ways to tackle the issue. In order to reach this goal, all individual components must be able to minimize signal decay, distortion and resistance towards interference.

Hence, the connector which acts as a bridge would also require an upgrade, due to the increasing role it plays in transmission quality and speed. The flow chart below shows the evolution of USB transmission speed from USB 1.0 to USB 3.1 Gen 2. Another important point to mention is the transmission mode which upgraded from half-duplex to full duplex.

Read more

DisplayPort 1.4 Early Certification Available! Grasp the Latest DP1.4 Trends, Technology and Certification Service

Video Electronics Standard Association; VESA has released the DisplayPort High Bit Rate 3 ( or DisplayPort 1.4 ) early certification program in January 2017. Authorizing Allion to provide DisplayPort 1.4 Certification and testing service; as an ATL for VESA, Allion will introduce the specifications and details of DisplayPort 1.4 Certification and testing service.

DisplayPort 1.4

DisplayPort 1.4 ( or in short DP 1.4 ) would be the latest specification presented from VESA, compared with DP1.2 the new DP1.4 incorporates the Display Stream Compression; DSC function. Hence, with a high compression rate of 3:1, it is able to support a higher resolution and refresh rate under the same bandwidth. Besides DSC, DP 1.4 includes Forward Error Correction, HDR meta transport in this new update. Therefore, allowing for better performance in video output.

Read more