Yokogawa Technical Report / English Edition 2006 No.41

Yokogawa periodically publishes the Yokogawa Technical Report, which contains articles that take a detailed look at the technologies employed in Yokogawa's products. At this site you will find links to all of the reports that have been published since 1997 as well as links to PDF files containing the full text of selected articles from each issue.

abstract

YOKOGAWA CORPORATE R&D STRATEGIES FOR THE YEAR 2015

NAGASHIMA Akira^*1
^*1 Director, Chief Technology Officer Executive Vice President of Corporate Research and Development Headquarters

THE PROGRESS OF CORPORATE R&D HEADQUARTERS

ASAKA Takao^*1
^*1 Administration and Technical Information Department, Corporate R&D Headquarters

Our corporate research and development department started in 1971 and conducts development work geared toward future business operations. This paper introduces how the results of such R&D have contributed to the company.

MICRO-MEASUREMENT AND MANIPULATION TECHNOLOGIES

ISOZAKI Katsumi ^*1 IMAMURA Makoto ^*2 FUKUSHIMA Kazuhisa ^*3 TANAAMI Takeo ^*3
^*1 Advanced Technology Research Center, Corporate R&D
^*2 Advanced Device Development Div., Corporate R&D
^*3 Biotechnology Project Dept., Corporate R&D

We have been developing original semiconductor and MEMS devices to achieve the functionality of measurement and control equipment that requires much higher quality and performance than consumer-use products. Typical examples are timing generators for LSI test systems, analog-to-digital converters for oscilloscopes, and resonant differential pressure sensors for process use. We are expanding the coverage of MEMS technology to glass, resin and compound semiconductors, as well as to other applications including micro-reactors and biotechnological diagnosis cartridges, though our basic strategies for device development remain unchanged.

TECHNOLOGIES FOR MANAGING FIELD-UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

NOGUCHI Akira ^*1 OKABE Nobuo ^*1 YAMAGUCHI Kenji ^*2 YAMAMOTO Shuji ^*1 OHNO Takeshi ^*1 OHTANI Tetsuya ^*3
^*1 Ubiquitous Field Computing Research Center, Corporate R&D
^*2 Administration & Technical Information Dept., Corporate R&D
^*3 Instrument & Control Research Center, Corporate R&D

We have long been developing field computing technologies for industrial systems. The new paradigm of ubiquitous computing is also making inroads into the domain of field computing. In this paper, we describe our vision for field-ubiquitous computing from three aspects: 1) establishment of a network infrastructure based on open standards, 2) computing architecture for more flexible system expandability and common computing platforms for field facilities and 3) operation support technologies using online plant models.

PHOTONIC MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES

MIURA Akira ^*1 MATSUURA Hiroyuki ^*1 WADA Morio ^*2 YAKIHARA Tsuyoshi ^*1 KODAKA Hirotoshi ^*1 IKEZAWA Katsuya ^*1
*1 Photonics Business Headquarters
^*2 Photonics Device Research Center, Corporate R&D

We have developed compound semiconductor devices and are supplying them to the optical communications systems market in the form of ultrahigh-speed modules. We have also built an optical packet network system using the newly added ultrafast switching devices.

The ultrahigh-speed optical communications modules comprising HBT (heterojunction bipolar transistor)-based integrated circuits, including driver amplifier modules for optical modulators, logic and photodiode modules, have achieved transmission rates higher than 40 Gbps. The yield and reliability of the integrated circuits are sufficiently high for Yokogawa to market these modules as key components for telecommunications infrastructure.

Optical packet network systems, which directly switch optical signals on a packet basis without converting them into electrical signals, are considered the ultimate goal for high-speed, high-capacity optical networks but unrealistic until around 2015.

However, we have succeeded in conducting the world’s first image transmission using the network system by focusing on its application to LANs in order to relax the technical requirements and by using the latest compound semiconductor technology.