Several federal agencies have agreed to explore collaborative testing to develop better methods of spectrum sharing, and are establishing a new joint testing network.
The Department of Commerce and Department of Defense have established the National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network as a part of the Center for Advanced Communications. The CAC is a joint effort of two DoC agencies: the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (home of FirstNet).
Let’s recap all those acronyms: the DoC and DoD agreed to have the NASCTN as an adjunct to the CAC, which is a partnership between NIST and NTIA.
NIST, NTIA and the DoD are working on a charter for the NASCTN that will be developed over the next six months, and more federal agencies and private sector participants are going to be invited to join. NASCTN is expected to “play a critical role as we work toward fulfilling the administration’s commitment to making available an additional 500 megahertz of spectrum for commercial use by 2020 while safeguarding capabilities that are vital to federal interests,” according to a statement by Lawrence Strickling, NTIA administrator and assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information.
The key functions of NASCTN are to facilitate and coordinate spectrum sharing and engineering capabilities; create a “trusted capability” for evaluating technologies that enable spectrum sharing; conduct outreach on spectrum sharing testing and modeling needs; and balance information dissemination with protection of classified and proprietary information.
The agencies said that NASCTN “will rely on a network of members who will supply and share intellectual capacity, modeling and simulation capabilities, laboratory facilities and test ranges. Initial NASCTN projects will likely include finding mutually agreeable ways for spectrum users to share specific bands of spectrum and rapidly resolve pressing challenges to co-existence. For example, NASCTN will facilitate access to suitable federal testing facilities and resources to accurately measure and model potential harmful interference between government users and commercial wireless systems.”
– Teradyne has added LitePoint instrument options to its J750 test platform and the new system is already in use at multiple manufacturing sites, the company said. Teradyne, which acquired LitePoint several years ago, now has expanded the J750 LitePoint options to include the IQxel-M8, IQxel-M and IQxstream instruments and they can be added to an instrument base of more than 4,000 of the 750 systems that are deployed globally.
Teradyne said that the new offering “addresses the technical and economic challenges of testing wireless connectivity and other [radio frequency system-on-a-chip] devices” by providing up to 32 independent RF ports for testing and leveraging LitePoint’s RF measurement science and dedicated processing for shorter testing times.
“The continued integration of wireless connectivity technology onto microcontrollers and other mobile devices requires production test equipment that can deliver the added RF measurement performance and still achieve a low cost of test. J750-LitePoint was designed to address this challenge”said Jason Zee, consumer and LPA business unit manager for Teradyne, in a statement.
Teradyne also said that new high density instruments are available for both the J750 and the IP750 systems to ramp up the ability to test wafer and image sensors in parallel.
– EXFO expanded its fiber testing portfolio with a fully-automated wireless fiber inspection probe, the FIP-435B. Used in conjunction with a smartphone or tablet that has EXFO’s ConnectorMax2 Mobile application (available on Google Play), EXFO said that the probe only needs to be connected to the connector port and it will “automatically detect the connection, locate and center the fiber image, adjust and optimize the focus and capture, run the pass/fail analysis as per selected standards and even save and report the results.
“The whole process takes just slightly longer than cleaning a connector port, making it difficult to justify overlooking this critical step,” the company added, saying that the new probe will be particularly useful for fiber-to-the-antenna installation due to its simplicity and LED on the probe that gives a pass-fail indication without having to check the smartphone.
“By introducing a fully automated wireless inspection solution compatible with smart devices, EXFO is making this critical tool completely accessible to all field personnel involved in fiber networks. Now equipped to perform first-level troubleshooting tasks, we’ve empowered them to remove the most common source of issues,” said Étienne Gagnon, VP of EXFO’s physical-layer and wireless division, in a prepared statement.
– Speaking of apps and testing, Global Wireless Solutions has launched a new iOS app for speed testing. The free GWS Speed App is a consumer version of its enterprise benchmarking solution and allows users to get insight on network latency and website loading speeds as well as perform upload and download tests. The results can be shared with others, and GWS also collects anonymized versions of the data.
“We see consumers using our app to keep network operators honest (when it comes to the quality of the mobile data service they’re getting), and operators provisioning consumers with it in order to diagnose any problems they might be having,” said Paul Carter, CEO of GWS, in a statement. “In other words, the app we’re launching today is a transparency tool that has the potential to make both operators and their customers happier.”
– Anritsu has a new two-port, plug-and-play calibration unit for its ShockLine vector network analyzers.
– In another sign that industry interest in 5G is ratcheting up, Bell Labs has announced a new consulting service for telecom operators to get “advice on a path to the networks of 2020”, or the approximate timeframe for 5G. Bell Labs has made predictions that include metro video traffic will increase 9-times by 2020, and that global demand for content on mobile devices will drive 31-times traffic growth by 2020; 56% of which will be covered by Wi-Fi.
– Along the lines of 5G, Rohde & Schwarz announced some work in 5G channel sounding in partnership with the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute at the NGMN industry conference this week.
The company also launched a 40 GHz version of its SGU100A RF upconverter, which it says is the smallest microwave device of its kind on the market; and announced new software for configuring measurement on multi-port devices-under-test using its vector network analyzers.
R&S’s SwissQual subsidiary also has a new white paper on voice over LTE benchmarking that looks interesting.
