In a move that boosts the trend toward software-defined, modular testing solutions, Cobham Wireless (formerly Aeroflex) and National Instruments have teamed up with a focus on combining their strengths in PXI.
Under the partnership, NI is acquiring Cobham’s line of PXI modular hardware and will be Cobham’s primary provider for PXI instruments. NI will manufacture the equipment and supply the Cobham-branded equipment exclusively for sale through Cobham’s sales channels. In addition, the companies are going to incorporate NI’s PXI instruments, including its vector signal transceiver with LabView FPGA, into Cobham’s connectivity and cellular testing systems. Cobham will become part of NI’s partner network and its preferred partner for cellular and connectivity applications.
“With increased test complexity and faster design cycles, we chose to build our RF and wireless test systems based on NI’s industry-leading PXI modular instrumentation technology,” said Ian Langley, SVP and GM of the Cobham Wireless business unit. “The combination of LabView FPGA and the NI vector signal transceiver enables us to deliver products and solutions to our customers with optimum performance and the lowest cost of test.”
• Rohde & Schwarz said that it has “successfully verified combining various frequency bands in mixed-mode TDD and FDD mixed-carrier aggregation.” In a test utilizing its CMW500 wideband radio communication tester, the company was able to simulate an LTE network with both time division duplex and frequency division duplex, and transfer data to a device under test on “multiple aggregated carriers in different duplex modes.”
This functionality for joint operation of TDD and FDD LTE is a feature of LTE Release 12, and Rohde & Schwarz said that its test platform is the only one that currently supports radio frequency and protocol testing for carrier aggregation in a simultaneous TDD/FDD system.
“Mixed-mode TDD/FDD will … enable [operators] to use carrier aggregation to combine FDD and TDD cells. This not only gives network operators more flexibility in band and spectrum selection, they can also offer higher data rates to subscribers. Carrier aggregation was previously used to combine multicarrier signals with the same mode (FDD or TDD),” Rohde & Schwarz noted. The set-up will be on display at the company’s booth at MWC.
R&S also launched new models of its three-path diode sensors this week for power measurements on a variety of wireless signals; a new LAN interface also allows remote power measurements over large distances.
• Cenx, which provides service orchestration for software-defined networks, said it has successfully demonstrated voice over LTE via a virtualized network infrastructure in testing with Spirent. Spirent’s Landslide mobile core test system provided a test environment for the virtual EPC and end-to-end testing, including POLQA voice-quality measurements for VoLTE. Cenx’s Cortx service orchestrator handles the analytics based on those metrics and enables drill-down into the data. Cenx added that “in the event of degraded performance due to severe VoLTE traffic load, the user is able to sectionalize the issues between the physical and virtual domains, and take corrective action which could involve dynamically scaling the VEPC functions.”
Spirent also said this week that its mobile device intelligence business unit, Mobilethink, had its Device Guides solution selected by Digicel for deployment in call centers, online and in some retail stores to provide troubleshooting for common mobile device issues. Device Guides is based on a database of more than 90,000 devices from more than 120 manufacturers, according to Spirent, and the solution provides interactive guides and comprehensive documentation for both self-care (including mobile access) and customer service agents as well as the ability to add custom content – such as for specific mobile apps or services.
• Keysight Technologies reported revenue up 4% from a year ago to $701 million, with net income of $70 million, in its first quarter operating as an independent company. Ron Nersesian, Keysight president and CEO, said he was “very pleased” with the company’s performance and that Keysight’s employees “did an exceptional job in executing the separation with no significant issues.” Keysight is expecting even stronger results in its next fiscal quarter, projecting revenues between $720 million and $760 million.
The company this week also launched a new vector network analyzer that it says enables a tenfold improvement in test time and relies on the company’s PNA and PXI series software architecture. Keysight claims to be the first VNA vendor with a software platform that spans both bench top and PXI-based VNAs. The new E5080A ENA vector network analyzer has a color touchscreen and a wider dynamic range than the company’s E5071C ENA.
Keysight announced a new test set for high-volume manufacturing of femtocells that use Broadcom’s BCM617xx Series small cell chipsets. The E6650A EXF, a single-box tester, is validated for the Broadcom chipset series and designed for use on manufacturing test floors.
• BT said that it will upgrade its XDSL test system from JDSU to add an IPTV option in order to assure quality delivery of BT Sport channels over BT’s IPTV service.
• In related test and measurement news, Comcast Labs is partnering with Boulder, Colo.-based Boomtown, which provides support to tech startup companies, for an “Internet of Things” lab to provide users with access to “the latest hardware and software in this market” in order to “explore interactivity and communicate across virtually every major traditional and mobile operating platform.”
