Signal Hound reported this week one of their customers, Australian company Innovative Drone Solutions, is using Signal Hound’s compact signal analyzer with an airborne drone to characterize the radiation patterns of tower antennas – it takes about 25 minutes of drone flight time and up to 10 services can be measured, and has been done with broadcast technologies such as AM, FM, AM, VHF and UHF DVB-T.
Signal Hound specializes in USB-powered signal analyzers of its own design, after starting as a test equipment repair company. Read more about the set-up for assessing tower antenna RF on Signal Hound’s blog, which also has a paper from Innovative Drone Solutions’ RF engineer Jason Schreiber on how the system works.
–Anritsu now has optical time domain reflectometer modules available for its Network Master Pro MT1000A all-in-one portable testers, further expanding the capabilities of that instrument for testing various aspects of fiber installation. OTDR testing is necessary to confirm optical fiber has been installed properly for fiber-to-the-antenna, metro, access and long-haul networks. Anritsu supports different installation-specific modes, such as a FTTA mode, with the Network Master Pro to simplify the testing process.
–Keysight Technologies continues to expand its offerings with an eye toward “5G” testing, with new features on its M9703B AXIe high-speed digitizer/wideband digital receiver that support more streaming and recording channels as well as up to 320-megahertz of instantaneous bandwidth. Keysight said the new solution is relevant to 5G as well as radar, satellite communications and aerospace and defense applications, and will allow recording of “a long duration of large frequency bands on multiple phase coherent channels,” according to a statement by Pierre-François Maistre, R&D project manager for the Wideband Digitizer Components group of Keysight’s CMS Division. Maistre added the new capability “allows users to characterize all emitters and distortions in the RF environment, including their timing relationships to other RF systems and enable an accurate post data processing, which is used in 5G channel sounding applications.”
Keysight also this week launched software designed to support compliance and validation testing for the new DisplayPort 1.3 spec for audio/video interconnection between a computer and home-theater system or computer/monitor; added a new document on connector and cable compliance testing procedures for USB type C; and said its equipment will be used to outfit a new lab for electrical engineering students at the University of Sheffield.
-The MIPI Alliance recently held a testing workshop in Taiwan focused on interoperability testing as well as verification of better power efficiency and data performance for its specifications. Read more details on the event here; another event is planned for next summer.
-The University of Texas at Austin will be relying on Ixia for network visibility and traffic filtering for security assessment. The university will be using Ixia’s Net Tool Optimizer NTO 7300 for visibility and security across its physical networks, and also opted for the company’s Application and Threat Intelligence Processor in order to classify and exclude from scrutiny traffic from social media and streaming applications like Netflix, Facebook, and Hulu – which UT says is a large portion of its traffic. Being able to filter out that traffic from security scrutiny will reduce the burden on security services, as well as security costs, according to Ixia and UT.
