With indoor 5G expected to be a major part of opening up new enterprise and industrial use cases and seen as essential to operators’ 5G competitiveness, Rohde & Schwarz featured an indoor 5G demonstration in partnership with network planning company iBwave and equipment provider Anokiwave.
The demo, which utilized an experimental license at 26 GHz, was held as part of Rohde & Schwarz’s 5G Expert Days workshop at the German test company’s Munich headquarters. It used the R&S SMW200A signal generator for 5G NR signal transmission through Anokiwave’s 24/26 GHz Active Antenna Innovator Kit for beam control; the network was planned by iBwave. R&S said that the network performance was measured with a backpack set-up that included its autonomous 5G NR network scanner (its R&S TSMA6 with an integrated PC), a downconverted R&S TSME30DC that covers the 28 GHz frequency band, and the company’s drive test software R&S ROMES4.
“While 5G [New Radio] pre-commercial trials are currently ongoing in several countries mostly in outdoor environments, indoor trials, especially in mmWave frequency range, are still rare,” Rohde & Schwarz noted.
In other 5G testing news this week, Keysight Technologies and Qualcomm said that they had successfully achieved a 5G New Radio standalone IP data transfer, relying on Keysight’s 5G network emulation and a Qualcomm-powered smartphone form factor test device.
Keysight said that the data download was achieved with a network configuration of 3GPP Release 15.3.0 5G NR technologies, and that it is an “important milestone” in enabling operators to deploy standalone 5G NR.
Contacted by RCR Wireless News to ask about the frequency and frequency and channel width emulated and the throughput and latency observed, Lucas Hansen, senior director for Keysight’s 5G and Wireless business, said that that information could not be shared but noted that the company’s solutions “are ready and capable of supporting industry needs in the FR1 bands from n71 in the 600 MHz lower frequencies to n79 up at 5 GHz.”
Keysight has put out a number of recent announcements focused on 5G chips and device testing, including its recent work with MediaTek on performance validation of end-to-end 5G multi-mode devices, and its submission earlier this month of a 5G non-standalone Testing and Test Control Notation version 3 (TTCN-3) conformance test case for 5G NR device certification. Keysight said that it is the first 3GPP conformance test case at 28 GHz using an over-the-air testing methodology.
In other test news:
–Tektronix launched a new, single-person data streaming and visualization service that is aimed not just at handling engineering-related data, but uses such as internet of things device performance, home or office monitoring, GPS trackers, energy use and manufacturing line data collection.
The Initial State service can handle data streaming up to 1,800 events per minute (180 API calls), email, SMS triggering and private or public sharing of its data and dashboards, according to Tktronix. Initial State is cloud-based and “includes data streaming and beautiful visualizations,” according to the company, and the serice starts at $9.99 per month or $99 per year. It it free for students.
Tektronix acquired Initial State Technologies earlier this year. Tektronix said that the platform processed over 100 billion data points in the past year with zero downtime, and that it offers enterprise-grade security on AWS infrastructure.
“We see the Initial State data platform as solving a very important problem for engineers, namely how to make sense of mountains of data and share results and analysis broadly at scale. As such, the Initial State platform will be a significant enabler for our customers as we expand into design validation analytics and workflow enablement,” said Chris Witt, VP and GM of the Time Domain Business Unit at Tektronix.
-The overall market for non-destructive test and inspection is bouncing back from a two-year slump, driven by a new focus on big data analytics and the industrial internet of things, according to analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. Frost said that “the convergence of various technologies such as big data, predictive analytics, digital twin, cloud computing, and smart factories is enhancing growth opportunities in the market, giving rise to several new business models. Vendors are making concerted efforts to convert big data to smart data and shift the market from the traditional time-people business model to more proactive performance-based business models.”
“Industrial internet of things and artificial intelligence-based NDT capabilities are altering market structures and driving the transformation of traditional business models,” said Prem Shanmugam, senior consultant for Measurement & Instrumentation at Frost & Sullivan, in a statement. “Automation companies are increasingly repositioning themselves as service providers, while sensorization and predictive analytics have enabled vendors to develop innovative business models.”
-Spirent Federal Systems said this week that it is the “the first and only company” to provide a solution for simulating classified GPS signals. Its new M-Code solution, SimMNSA, has received security approval from the Global Positioning System Directorate, Spirent Federal Systems said. M-code was developed as part of GPS modernization to ensure secure military communications (read more here from GPS World). The company partnered with Rockwell Collins in 2017 to develop software that uses the Modernized Navstar Security Algorithm (MNSA), to add to its Spirent GSS9000 series simulator. The M-Code simulation capability will be available only to authorized used of the GSS9000 series.
–MACOM introduced a new phase noise amplifier, which it said is part of a new portfolio of wideband, ultra-low phase noise amplifiers for use in test and measurement and other applications. The MAAL-011151 supports a frequency range from 2-18 GHz. Graham Board, senior director of product marketing at MACOM, said in a statement that the company is “investing in a growing portfolio of signal generation components that encompasses high-performance comb generators, mixers, and more” and that MACOM will expand the new line-up with amplifiers that cover additional frequencies.
