Frost & Sullivan came out with a new report this week claiming the emergence of “5G” technologies will “ignite the global test and measurement market,” with smart cities and the drive to monitor international sporting events also seen as additional drivers. Communications testing will be the fastest-growing part of the telecom industry, according to the analyst group, and it projects the network testing market will reach $25 billion by 2025.
The “Internet of Things,” 5G and network monitoring were prominent areas of focus for test companies at Mobile World Congress this week – with the addition of a software focus, which is part of an overall shift within the telecom industry and one testing vendors need to meet.
“To keep pace with the end-user markets, test vendors have to shift to software upgradeable instruments; offer predictive analytics, big data analytics, virtualized testing; and adopt new business models such as software as a service,” said Prem Shanmugam, senior consultant for measurement and instrumentation at Frost & Sullivan, in a statement. “These improvements will help them differentiate themselves in a market that is rapidly being characterized by the commoditization of hardware and the increased data availability.”
Among the network testing market news this week:
–National Instruments is collaborating with the Industrial Internet Consortium and a number of big names in the industry, including Cisco, Bosch Rexroth and Intel, on a new timing focused test bed for IoT networks. NI said this is the world’s first time-sensitive testbed and will be used to showcase the use of 802.11 standards in an industrial environment.
–Rohde & Schwarz introduced its SmartMonitor solution for real-time, service quality monitoring that the company says can be accomplished on a “plug-and-play” basis. SmartMonitor relies on remotely-controlled, smartphone-based QualiPoc probes within the network and a Web application to measure end-user experience to identify service issues and network hot spots, and the software interface integrates analytics and reporting, alarms and map information, among other features.
R&S also added a 2-gigahertz modulation bandwidth feature to its SMW200A vector signal analyzer, designed for dealing with the ultra-wide bandwidths of 802.11as and 5G systems. The VSA supports a frequency range up to 40 GHz, and the new ultra-wideband option can be implemented twice in order to generate two independent wideband signals.
Looking ahead to deployments of LTE over unlicensed frequencies expected to begin this year, Rohde this week launched a conformance testing solution for LTE-U. Rohde said it also supports 4×4 multiple-input/multiple-output testing with its new Romes drive testing platform, which is already integrated with the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S7. On the hardware side, Rohde launched new broadband amplifiers for wireless communications and connected vehicle testing and a compact oscilloscope.
–Ixia is part of an effort with VMWare, CENX and Mitel to provide interoperable, real-time service assurance, particularly for IoT applications and with the ability to leverage virtualized network functions. The companies demonstrated virtual evolved packet core verification and validation this week at MWC.
–Spirent Communications launched a new probe – the Epitiro 4150 – designed for ensuring quality of experience and meeting business service level agreements for Wi-Fi, Ethernet and LTE networks.
–Keysight Technologies announced a memorandum of understanding with China-based fabless semiconductor company Spreadtrum to collaborate on advanced mobile chipsets. Keysight is dedicating a team in Shanghai to the collaboration, with a technology center expected to open this spring.
–Crestron, which creates enterprise and home automation products, opened a new test lab in Rockleigh, New Jersey, for its residential product portfolio. The research and testing lab includes “hundreds of user interfaces” for testing systems control lighting, audio/visual systems, shades, security and climate, among others. Crestron CTO Fred Bargetzi said in a statement that the company is “essentially building a series of sizeable Crestron homes” inside its engineering facilities in order to better assess end-user experience with the company’s smart home products.
–Anritsu and Qualcomm this week demonstrated 1 gigabit per second throughput speeds using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 modem, leveraging three component carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation. Anritsu supported the demo with its MD8430A network simulator, which it said can simulate three contiguous LTE cells, with cells able to be placed in either licensed or unlicensed bands and the ability to replicate advanced network scenarios with more two linked simulators.
Anritsu also was chosen by indoor systems integrator Twincomm Asia Pacific for its purchase of handheld testers and test management tools for use in distributed antenna systems and other indoor wireless network implementations in the Philippines.
–Accedian Networks showcased voice-over-LTE quality of experience monitoring in partnership with network policy vendor Sandvine, leveraging Accedian’s distributed packet broker solution for real-time monitoring across the network from the ENodeB to the vvolved packet core. Accedian also snagged a GSMA award for best technology enabler for its work with SK Telecom’s analytics and software-defined networking-enabled network.
–Signal Hound has a new blog series on understanding real-time spectrum analysis.
