Agilent Technologies has
opened up a 5-meter semi-anechoic chamber at its facility in Santa Rosa, Calif., expanding its on-site electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) capability testing capacity for making sure that products conform to emerging standards for electromagnetic emissions and interference (EMI).
The 1,300-square foot semi-anechoic chamber is part of an expanded 3,800-square foot EMC lab with additional EMC test stations. Agilent said that typical products that would require EMI testing in Santa Rosa include network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, signal sources and modular products.
“The closest resource for our requirements of this caliber had been more than 100 miles away, so this new chamber provides substantial savings for us in time, travel and expense,” said Guy Séné, president of Agilent’s Electronic Measurement Group. “An on-site, state-of-the-art facility enhances our test efficiencies, ensures compliance with international standards, and reinforces our commitment to swiftly delivering products with the highest quality and reliability.”
The chamber is equipped with dual antennas and two standards-compliant N9038A MXE EMI receivers; it supports simultaneous measurements of vertical and horizontal polarization up to 18 GHz.
—JDSU is aiming to help speed the testing of LTE cell site sectors by allowing engineers to lock onto a single Physical Cell Identifier (PCI) using a commercial handset. JDSU is building on its RANAdvisor solution by extending its UTRA Radio Frequency Channel Number (UARFCN) locking capabilities to the commercial device, thereby allowing engineers to lock onto the correct LTE cell site sector and eliminating handovers that would require the test to be repeated. Users can select a PCI value of 0 to 503 in PCI Lock Mode and RANAdvisor will not hand over to another cell regardless of network conditions, according to JDSU.
JDSU also announced two new acquisitions and strong quarterly results this week — read more here.
–Olga Yashkova, program manager at
Frost & Sullivan‘s test and measurement practice,
writes in EE Times that the demand for machine-to-machine test equipment will increase as that market segment, and that installation and maintenance equipment will account for most of the growth.
The test equipment industry has no specific instruments for M2M, Yashkova noted, and test equipment manufacturers are expected to produce new handheld products such as spectrum analyzers which will be used in M2M installation and maintenance.
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ElectroniCast Consultants put out a study this week on the global market for Optical Time Doman Reflectometers (OTDRs) that are used in fiber optic test and measurement. In 2013,
the firm said, use of handheld OTDRs and OTDR modules was $282.2 million, up from $259.4 million the previous year.North America represented 39% of the market in 2013; that market is expected to shrink in size but “increase substantially in value” by 2018, according to ElectroniCast. North America, in 2013, represented a 39 percent market share of worldwide consumption of hand-held OTDRs and OTDR modules used in the hand-held devices. The firm expects the Asia Pacific region to take the leadership position in 2017 and slip to second-place in 2018 due to product saturation in China.“Last year the telecommunications application held over 75% of worldwide market share of hand-held OTDR device units and OTDR modules used in hand-held test units; however, the fastest annual growth will be in private enterprise networks,” said Stephen Montgomery, the director of the ElectroniCast market study. “The use of OTDRs for the deployment and maintenance of optical fiber in private enterprise networks is forecast to increase at nearly 30% per year, as fiber optic testing within LANs (local area networks) and data centers (DCs) increase, driven by critical high-speed data applications,” Montgomery add
