Keysight’s $1.6 billion purchase of Ixia is already bearing fruit. The combined company has announced a new emulation system that it says is the first in the industry to provide simultaneous cellular and Wi-Fi testing.
“User experience testing in mobile devices requires evaluation of application performance under real world conditions,” said Satish Dhanasekaran, president of Keysight’s communications solutions group. “This solution combines the technologies of Keysight and Ixia to provide deeper understanding of coexistence challenges as devices interoperate across LTE and Wireless LAN systems.”
The combination of test equipment for cellular and Wi-Fi systems is a reflection of the way many operators and enterprises are now deploying wireless. Outdoor densification of cellular networks is introducing small cells to areas that may already have Wi-Fi hotspots, and indoor small cells and distributed antenna systems are almost always a complement to existing Wi-Fi. Simultaneous testing of Wi-Fi and cellular will become even more critical as operators deploy LTE in the same unlicensed spectrum currently used by Wi-Fi access points.
The new system includes Keysight’s flexible test automation platform with built-in test cases. The company said the system tests all layers of the network, from data transmission to the physical layer.
Keysight’s acquisition of Ixia closed much faster than expected, and the two companies have been one since April of this year. When Keysight announced its plan to buy Ixia in January, CEO Ron Nersesian said the California company would increase Keysight’s number of software research and development engineers by 65%, and expand its addressable market by $2.5 billion. Keysight’s total revenue for the year ending October 31, 2016 was $2.9 billion.
