More types of devices are relying on the ability to access satellite systems for positioning information, and that means more testing for GPS and Global Navigation Satellite System support.
Spirent Communications this week launched PT TestBench, which is new software for selecting and automating GPS and GNSS testing, with an option to include threat testing as well. According to Spirent, a lack of comprehensive test suites for positioning testing has been an issue for companies that want to add GPS/GNSS capabilities to their devices.
“Unlike a lot of  other areas, particularly in telecom where there are well-defined specs that you can do conformance test to, in the GNSS space that isn’t always the case,” said Steve Hickling, marketing lead for military government, space and GNSS systems at Spirent. “There are for some specific cases, but users are often left on their own.”
Rahul Gupta, senior product manager with Spirent, said “more customers are asking us for guidance on how to do the testing, how to construct the test plans. This addresses that market need where customers are wanting test suites and automated tests.”
Grand View Research expects the GPSÂ industry to grow at a compound annual rate of more than 15% between 2016 and 2024, driven in large part by smartphones and other mobile devices and the applications they enable, from Google apps to Uber, Lyft, navigation and other use cases. For GNSS specifically, the 2015 report from the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency predicts more than 7 billion devices will be using GNSS by 2019. Most of those devices, the GSA said, will be smartphones.
“It really is growing in importance, and there is a growing respect for the importance of GNSS technology,” said Hickling. “It is now integrated in a lot more devices than it has been previously, and a lot of services are depending on it in ways that we might not have thought of in the past.”
In other test news:
–Rohde & Schwarz acquired French cybersecurity company DenyAll. Headquartered in Paris, DenyAll specializes in application security and the ability to ensure secure access to web applications. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The company will continue to be led by its current management team and CEO Jacques Sebag.
Rohde & Schwarz called the purchase “a significant step towards Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity’s goal to build the leading European cybersecurity vendor.”
Ammar Alkassar, CEO of Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity, said in a statement that “Web applications are a main enabler for the upcoming cloud business models and thus, driver for the digital transformation of virtually all industries. Providing adequate solutions for securing this transformation is crucial for its success. By including DenyAll’s strong vulnerability management, web application firewall and access management solutions into our portfolio, we are enabling these key prerequisites for business innovation in a compelling way.”
–Future Market Insights expects the market for simulation and test data management to boom over the next few years, driven by the aerospace industry as well as the automotive vertical. According to a new report, FMI is forecasting the test data management market will grow at a 12.5% compound annual growth rate between 2016 and 2026, and reach revenues of more than $480 million by 2026. The software segment is expected to account for the majority of that figure, or about $355 million.
FMI said the significant increase in the market is due to “increasing demand for data management software to protect against loss of data generated from simulation and test software, increasing efforts to reduce time-to-market company’s product and [the] need to manage and analyze data generated from simulation and test data management software.”
–The European Telecommunications Standards Institute plans to hold its first network functions virtualization “plugtest” event starting at the end of this month. The two-week testing event will be hosted by 5Tonic Laboratory in Madrid, Spain, and has technical support from Telefónica. ETSI said 20 virtual network functions, 10 management and orchestration solutions and 10 NFV platforms will be tested for interoperability, and the resulting data will be fed back into ETSI’s standards work.
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