Modular, Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), Software Defined Synthetic Instrumentation has unique, intrinsic features that make it particularly well suited to address the difficult and often exceedingly expensive problem of testing Software Defined (SDR) and Cognitive Radios (CR). With modular, COTS Synthetic Instruments that comply with open standards, equipment vendors and manufacturers, test organizations, laboratories and end users can develop and deploy automated and sophisticated test systems for today’s SDR and CR.