Test and Measurement News: JDSU revenue impacted in Q2
JDSU reported a net loss of $25 million for its most recent quarter, with its revenue impacted by less carrier spending, according to a statement by CEO Tom Waechter. Revenue was $437.1 million, down from $447.6 million in the same period the previous year, with profit of almost $9 million in the second quarter of 2014.
Waechter said that the separation of the company into two public businesses is on track to be completed in the third calendar quarter of this year, as previously announced. Network and service enablement, which would be the focus of one company, accounted for about 40% of total revenue this past quarter, for which its communications and optical products business generated about 60% of revenues.
• Anite has updated its Propsim F32 LTE-Advanced MIMO channel emulator to support features of LTE Release 13 and beyond. The equipment can now test in frequencies up to 6 GHz, including LTE-unlicensed and WLAN frequencies above 5 GHz, the company said, adding that it supports carrier aggregation testing of mobility and handovers as well as to test products for 3D MIMO with 16×8 bi-directional set-ups.
• Keysight Technologies continues its blitz of new products and upgrades following its spin-off from Agilent. This week it launched a new power analyzer with touch-screen capabilities, a new release of its physical layer testing software; pulse amplitude modulation with four amplitude levels, or PAM-4, testing capability for its 86100D DCA-X wide-bandwidth oscilloscope platform; and a new option for optical coherence tomography on its U5303A high-speed data acquisition 12-bit PCIe card.
The company also recently announced an educational tour of sorts, with seminars on measurement techniques that will be held around the country starting in February to allow hands-on experience with its instruments. The seminars include two free sessions, one focused on advanced measurement theory and techniques and the other on core benchtop-instrument measurements.
• Tektronix is moving some reporting and analysis capabilities into software that can be run on Windows-based PCs, tablets and servers, with the launch this week of its TekScope Anywhere product.
“By decoupling analysis tools from the oscilloscope, engineers can now do much of their work away from the lab and collaborate more effectively with colleagues around the world,” Tektronix said in a statement on the new offering. It said that the data still begins with use of an oscilloscope to collect waveform data and measurement results, but then “a set of common analysis tools are available independent of the hardware used to make the acquisition,” and that engineers can use the solution to collaborate even when separated geographically.
• And in tangential test and measurement news that qualifies as “pretty cool,” National Instruments said this week that it is collaborating with the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, to standardize all of CERN’s control systems to Linux 64-bit OSs. NI and CERN have been working on everything from the Large Hadron Collider system to an ion beam cancer therapy center, and the two organizations said they also collaborated on optimizing NI’s LabVIEW support for 64-bit Linux before it was public, so that CERN’s needs would be met in that area. Their goal of standardizing CERN’s systems includes creating more opportunities for small and medium enterprises with expertise in NI’s solutions and open-source technologies.
