The paper outlines the content and organisation of the generic concepts and principles of measurement and instrumentation. It argues that recent changes of technology and the political, economic and social environments demand a review of those principles and considers the resultant challenges and lines of advance. It distinguishes between measurement and instrument science. It considers the challenges presented by applications of measurement outside the physical sciences. It highlights the effect of advances in computing and the resultant convergence the principles of measurement and instrumentation and the sciences underlying systems and information. It considers special problems of sensing and actuation. It points to the design orientation of measurement and instrumentation principles and applications of the systems approach to measurement and instrumentation. It examines indirect measurement. Problems of errors and uncertainty are pointed out. Finally it points to the approaches of knowledge management.

Modern building technologies (for example prestressed concrete to produce beams, floors, bridges, or installation, testing and monitoring of ground anchors) require the use of accurate force machines (hydraulic jacks). One component of successful building works is a correct and accurate calibration procedure of hydraulic jack for tensioning cables or anchors. This article analyzes two different calibration methods: By means of hollow load cell and thread bar and calibration in the closed frame.
We analyze these methods using different accessories and their influence on the uncertainty of calibration results. As a very important part of calibration procedure is a correct choice of the calibration mathematical model (interpolation curve force-hydraulic pressure and hydraulic pressure-force), there is a need to use a special software. Such is the developed software FORCE-401-S which permits to communicate the measurement line "load cell-amplifier-computer"; to choose the correct interpolation polynom; enable to compute the errors and uncertainty values and build the table of calibration results.
The calibration procedure is performed according to the standard ISO 7500-1 "Verification of static uniaxial testing machines - Part 1: Tension/compression testing machines - Verification and calibration of the force-measuring system". We recommend to widen the definitions of this standard and to include calibration of non-force units scaled devices (as an example pressure gauges).

The main scopes activities of international organization for standardization in field of metrology are described. Correspondence of activity IMEKO, ISO and IEC TCs is analyzed. The main principles of harmonization of national standards with the international standards in field of metrology are defined. Possibility of interactions of IMEKO, ISO and IEC TCs are determined.

The paper describes a PC application for processing results in calibration of special weights used by Mass laboratory of National Institute of Metrology.
The application named "GS 2007" is friendly used, complex and safe application. It realizes the necessary functions for calculating the mass and uncertainty of the special weights, according to OIML R 111, including the uncertainty analysis, to optimize the measurement process.
The application allows data recording, interactive dialog, the visualization and the printing of the results.

The measurement of in-phase/quadrature (IQ) imbalance parameters of radio frequency direct downconversion receivers by tone test is considered. The receiver is excited by a radio frequency sinewave, and the digital baseband output is used as the sole basis for the determination of the IQ imbalance parameters, which are the gain imbalance, quadrature skew and local oscillator leakage. A set of parameters is estimated from the baseband output of the direct downconversion receiver and the required parameters are then calculated by a transformation. The universal software radio peripheral (USRP) is a widespread hardware for research, education, and development regarding future wireless communication receivers. A set of USRPs are tested. It is shown that for the receivers studied, gain imbalance and quadrature skew may be predicted accurately (that is, < 0.1 dB and < 1 deg, respectively) by employing baseband data covering a handful of full periods of the excitation stimuli. The work also shows that local oscillator leakage may suffer from systematic bias error of the order of 15 dB. To obtain leakage estimates with an uncertainty in the order of one dB, the measurement time has to be increased by two orders of magnitude.