AUTOTESTCON (Proceedings)

About AUTOTESTCON (Proceedings)

Overview: What AUTOTESTCON Is

AUTOTESTCON is the world's premier annual conference for the military and aerospace automatic test industry, sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Since 1965 it has brought together test engineers, programme managers, government and military acquirers, and the manufacturers of automatic test equipment to share new technologies, discuss innovative applications, and exhibit products and services. The Proceedings of AUTOTESTCON — the published record of each year's technical programme — carries the ISSN 0734-7510 and is issued by IEEE.

The proceedings are not a journal in the conventional sense. They are the annual published output of a technical interchange meeting: each year's volume collects the application-focused papers presented at that year's conference. There is no rolling submission, no article-processing charge, and no Journal Impact Factor. Researchers encounter the proceedings through IEEE Xplore, library catalogues and citations in the test-engineering literature, where papers are cited by conference year and title.

The subject matter is distinctive and mission-critical. Automatic test systems verify that complex military and aerospace electronics — from avionics and radar to guided-weapon systems — actually work as specified, and that they can be maintained and repaired over decades of service. The AUTOTESTCON proceedings document how that verification is engineered: test architectures, boundary-scan and built-in test, test-program sets, obsolescence management and the economics of test. For a field where a test failure can ground an aircraft fleet or delay a weapons programme, this literature is the professional memory of the discipline.

The Organising Body: IEEE and the Conference Board

AUTOTESTCON is sponsored annually by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest technical professional organisation for electrical and electronic engineering. Within IEEE, the conference is closely associated with the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS), which lists AUTOTESTCON among its sponsored conferences and publishes official notices about the event.

The conference is administered by a standing Board of Directors — a governance structure that has kept the event running continuously since the mid-1960s. This continuity matters: many technical conferences are run by rotating volunteer committees that reinvent themselves each year, but AUTOTESTCON's standing board has preserved institutional memory, exhibitor relationships and a consistent technical character across six decades. The general theme historically used for the conference is "The Support Systems Technology Conference," reflecting its origins in the support and maintenance of military electronic systems.

The sponsor relationship with IEEE is not merely nominal. IEEE publishes the proceedings, assigns them into its digital library infrastructure, and lends the conference the credibility and archival standards of the world's dominant engineering publisher. Papers presented at AUTOTESTCON enter the IEEE corpus, where they are discoverable alongside the Institute's journals and other conference proceedings.

History: Six Decades of Automatic Test

AUTOTESTCON has been held annually since 1965, making it one of the longest-running continuously operating technical conferences in electrical engineering. Its founding era was the golden age of military electronics: the Cold War drove massive investment in radar, avionics, communications and guided weapons, and the complexity of these systems was outstripping the manual, bench-level testing methods of the previous generation. Automatic test equipment — computer-controlled systems that could exercise a unit under test through thousands of measurements in minutes — was the answer, and AUTOTESTCON was created as the forum where its practitioners could compare notes.

The conference's history tracks the evolution of test technology. In the 1960s and 1970s, the papers dealt with the fundamentals of computer-controlled test and the standardisation of test interfaces. The 1980s brought the VXIbus and modular instrumentation architectures, and with them questions of test-system interoperability that still resonate today. The 1990s saw the rise of boundary-scan (IEEE 1149.1 JTAG) and built-in self-test as responses to the shrinking test access on dense printed-circuit assemblies — a theme that has featured in AUTOTESTCON technical programmes ever since, with companies such as JTAG Technologies and Huntron presenting integrated boundary-scan and flying-probe solutions at the conference's exhibitions.

The 2000s and 2010s added new layers: obsolescence management for test systems that must support platforms in service for thirty years or more, the economics of test in an era of constrained defence budgets, synthetic instrumentation, and the extension of automated-test thinking into commercial areas with a common technical base — aerospace, automotive and factory test. Through all of this, the conference retained its core identity: application-focused papers on the current issues facing military automated test, presented by the people doing the work.

Recent history has not been without disruption. The 2025 IEEE AUTOTESTCON, originally scheduled for September 15–18 in National Harbor, Maryland, was cancelled — an announcement carried on the IEEE AESS website — with the conference returning in 2026 (August 31–September 3, 2026, at National Harbor) and 2027 (August 30–September 2, 2027, Oxon Hill, Maryland) already scheduled. The cancellation is a reminder that even institutions with sixty-year histories must navigate the logistics and economics of large technical events.

The Conference Format and Its Proceedings

AUTOTESTCON's format has been stable for decades. The conference typically presents over 120 quality, application-focused papers, accompanied by an exhibition of more than 250 exhibits from test-equipment manufacturers, software vendors and service providers. Paid attendance historically ranges between 650 and 750, with an additional 1,000 to 1,200 exhibitor and companion attendees — a scale that makes the exhibition floor as important a venue for technical exchange as the paper sessions.

The proceedings volume for each year collects the presented papers. Typical editions contain well over a hundred papers, organised around the conference's technical tracks: automatic test systems architecture, test-program-set development, boundary-scan and design-for-test, RF and microwave test, obsolescence and sustainment, test economics and programme management. Because the papers are application-focused — written by engineers solving real test problems on real programmes — the proceedings read as a yearbook of the industry's state of practice rather than a collection of theoretical advances.

The conference is held each fall in varying cities around the United States: Baltimore, Schaumburg (Illinois), National Harbor (Maryland) and others have hosted recent editions. This rotation, combined with the standing Board of Directors, balances local organising energy with institutional continuity.

Technical Themes Across the Proceedings

Certain themes recur across decades of AUTOTESTCON proceedings, and they define the intellectual content of the series:

Automatic test system architecture. How to build test systems that are flexible enough to handle multiple units under test, fast enough to meet production and depot throughput requirements, and open enough to accept new instruments. Papers cover modular architectures, standardised interfaces and the perennial tension between general-purpose and application-specific test hardware.

Boundary-scan and built-in test. As circuit density has made physical test probing impractical, the industry has moved test intelligence onto the chip and the board. JTAG/boundary-scan papers — a staple of the proceedings — describe how to achieve test coverage when you cannot touch the signals, and how to integrate boundary-scan with flying-probe and functional test for maximum coverage.

Test-program-set (TPS) development and transportability. A test program written for one tester's hardware should, in principle, run on another. The proceedings contain decades of work on TPS standards, transportability and the cost of re-hosting test programs when testers become obsolete.

Obsolescence and sustainment. Military platforms serve for decades; the commercial test instruments they were designed around do not. Managing the obsolescence of automatic test equipment — and the test programs that run on it — is one of the most practically important themes in the proceedings.

Test economics. What does test cost, and what does inadequate test cost? Papers on the economics of test, return on investment for test automation and the cost of test escapes connect engineering decisions to programme budgets.

RF, microwave and mixed-signal test. Testing high-frequency and mixed-signal assemblies presents specialised challenges, and the proceedings carry a steady stream of papers on RF test techniques, calibration and measurement uncertainty.

Publication Details

• Proceedings title: Proceedings of AUTOTESTCON (IEEE AUTOTESTCON)
• ISSN: 0734-7510
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), United States
• Publication type: Annual conference proceedings; not a journal
• Frequency: Annual — one volume per conference year, held each fall since 1965
• Sponsorship: IEEE (associated with the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society)
• Peer review: Papers are reviewed through the conference technical programme
• Article-processing charge: Not applicable
• Impact Factor: Not applicable — proceedings series do not receive a Journal Impact Factor
• Digital archive: IEEE Xplore

Because the proceedings are event-driven, each year's volume is a snapshot of the industry at that moment. The series' value compounds over time: six decades of proceedings constitute an unmatched longitudinal record of how automated test engineering has evolved.

Indexing, Metrics and Interpretation

The AUTOTESTCON proceedings appear in IEEE Xplore and in engineering indexes, and aggregator sites list the series with metrics such as an H-index in the mid-20s and an SJR around 0.1. As with all proceedings series, these figures should be read carefully: they aggregate citations to conference papers, which are cited differently from journal articles — often by practitioners, in standards documents and in programme technical reports that citation databases capture unevenly.

The proceedings' real influence is in the test-engineering community itself. A paper on TPS transportability or boundary-scan integration may be cited modestly in the academic literature while being read, photocopied and implemented by hundreds of test engineers — influence that no citation count captures. When evaluating the series, its standing as the premier archival record of its field matters more than any single metric.

Accessing and Citing the Proceedings

The primary archive is IEEE Xplore, where AUTOTESTCON proceedings are indexed by year and searchable by title, author and keyword. Access typically requires an IEEE Xplore subscription or institutional access, though individual papers can be purchased. University and corporate libraries with IEEE subscriptions provide the most convenient access; the proceedings' ISSN (0734-7510) identifies the series in library catalogues.

Citations to AUTOTESTCON papers follow standard IEEE conference-proceedings format: authors, paper title, "in Proc. IEEE AUTOTESTCON," year, pages. Because the conference name has been stable since 1965, year-based citation is unambiguous. Researchers tracing a technical thread — say, the evolution of a particular test standard — can work backwards through the proceedings year by year, which is one of the series' great strengths as a research resource.

For Prospective Authors

Papers enter the proceedings through the conference's call for papers, issued each year ahead of the fall event. The technical programme committee solicits application-focused contributions on the current issues facing military and government automated test, with an expanded scope into commercial areas sharing the same technical base. Abstracts and full papers undergo review, and accepted papers are presented at the conference and published in the proceedings.

The programme values practicality. Successful AUTOTESTCON papers describe real test problems, real architectures and real results — including quantitative data on coverage, throughput, cost or reliability. The audience is expert and unsentimental: test engineers who will adopt a technique only if the evidence convinces them. Papers that combine technical depth with honest reporting of constraints and lessons learned do best in this environment.

The exhibition that accompanies the conference is worth noting for prospective participants: with over 250 exhibits, the show floor is where test-equipment vendors demonstrate new products and where informal technical exchange flourishes. Many long-standing professional relationships in the test industry began at AUTOTESTCON exhibitions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AUTOTESTCON a journal?
No. It is an annual IEEE conference, and its proceedings are the published record of each year's technical programme. It does not publish issues or accept rolling submissions.

What is the ISSN of the proceedings?
0734-7510.

How long has AUTOTESTCON been running?
Annually since 1965 — six decades of continuous operation, administered by a standing Board of Directors and sponsored by IEEE.

Is there an article-processing charge?
No. It is not an author-pays journal; papers enter through the conference's peer-reviewed technical programme.

Does the proceedings series have an Impact Factor?
No. Conference proceedings are not assigned Journal Impact Factors. Aggregator metrics describe aggregate citations and should not be mistaken for journal-level indicators.

Where can I read AUTOTESTCON papers?
The primary archive is IEEE Xplore, accessible through institutional subscriptions. Libraries catalogue the series under its ISSN.

What happened to the 2025 conference?
The 2025 IEEE AUTOTESTCON, scheduled for September 15–18 in National Harbor, Maryland, was cancelled; the conference was scheduled to return in 2026 and 2027.

Who should attend AUTOTESTCON?
Test engineers, test-program developers, programme managers, government and military acquirers of test systems, and vendors of automatic test equipment and software — anyone whose work touches the verification of military, aerospace or related electronic systems.

Landmark Contributions and Technical Lineage

Across six decades, certain AUTOTESTCON papers have become touchstones that later work builds on. The early proceedings established the vocabulary of computer-controlled test — test-program sets, interface standards, fault isolation — at a time when the field was inventing itself. Papers from the 1980s on modular instrumentation and the VXIbus architecture shaped a generation of test-system designs and still inform discussions of test-system openness and interoperability today.

The boundary-scan literature in the proceedings deserves special mention. As printed-circuit assemblies became too dense for physical probing, the industry's answer — moving test access onto the silicon itself via IEEE 1149.1 — was worked out in public at conferences like AUTOTESTCON. Papers describing the integration of boundary-scan with flying-probe test, analog signature analysis and functional test document a pragmatic engineering truth: no single test technique achieves full coverage, and the art lies in combining methods economically. Vendors presenting at the conference's exhibitions — JTAG Technologies, Huntron and others — turned these ideas into products, and the proceedings record both the theory and the productization.

The obsolescence-management papers form another lineage of lasting value. Military test systems routinely outlive the commercial instruments they were built around, sometimes by decades, and the proceedings contain the community's accumulated wisdom on re-hosting test programs, emulating obsolete instruments and planning test systems for sustainment from the start. This is knowledge that cannot be found in textbooks — it exists in the proceedings because it was learned the hard way, on programmes with real deadlines and real consequences.

The Exhibition: The Conference's Second Engine

AUTOTESTCON has always been two events in one: a technical conference and a trade exhibition, and the proceedings should be read with the exhibition in mind. With more than 250 exhibits at typical editions, the show floor is where test-equipment manufacturers demonstrate new instruments, software vendors show test-development environments, and service companies offer obsolescence-management and TPS-development services. Many of the technical conversations that matter most at AUTOTESTCON happen at booths rather than in paper sessions — an engineer with a failing test strategy can walk the floor and compare solutions in an afternoon.

This dual character is reflected in the proceedings' tone. Papers are written by people who will meet their readers at the next exhibition, and the community is small enough that reputation matters: claims are expected to be backed by data, and techniques that do not work in practice are challenged quickly. The result is a literature with an unusually high signal-to-noise ratio — application-focused, evidence-driven and grounded in the economics of real test programmes.

Working Backwards Through the Proceedings

For researchers new to the field, the proceedings reward a particular reading strategy: pick a technical thread — a standard, a technique, a programme — and follow it backwards through the years. Because the conference has run continuously since 1965 with a stable scope, almost any topic in military automated test has a traceable lineage in the proceedings. The evolution of a test-interface standard, the rise and plateau of a test methodology, the changing economics of test automation: all of it is documented year by year.

This longitudinal quality also makes the proceedings valuable for historians of technology. The shift from manual to automatic test, the computerization of the test floor, the response to shrinking test access, the sustainment crisis of ageing test systems — these are episodes in the larger story of how complex technological systems are kept working, and AUTOTESTCON's proceedings are among the best primary sources for telling it. Few engineering literatures offer six decades of continuous, application-focused documentation of a single technical practice.