Cable company Charter Communications plans to build a 100-node private network at its offices in Centennial, Colorado, using the Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum at 3.5 GHz to test the technology’s ability to support an enterprise network located mostly indoors.
According to an Special Temporary Authority application approved this week by the Federal Communications Commission, Charter said that it will install about 100 base stations and use about 500 fixed and mobile devices during the testing.
“The number of devices is largely driven by the operational environment Charter intends to trial, that of an Enterprise Campus deployment of private LTE,” Charter said, with 95% of the base stations installed as indoor devices in Charter-occupied buildings. Those base stations’ “already low emissions should barely penetrate the building exteriors, and therefore contribute nearly nothing to the aggregate noise floor outdoors,” the company added. The devices will also be primarily operated indoor and only during specific testing periods to figure out the network’s response to loading, Charter said. In general, the company said it wants to conduct the CBRS testing to explore coverage, capacity, and propagation characteristics, get a better understanding of the technology and “network potential in the band.”
Charter said it plans to install on existing structures or poles both indoors and out, as well as in its wireless lab. It will use Federated Wireless’ Spectrum Access System, but noted that there are not any fixed satellite service earth stations operating in proximity. Charter said that the CBRS devices being tested will be operated by its employees during working hours, and that it “will evaluate propagation characteristics, conduct connectivity and throughput testing, and include assessment of inter-cell interference, mobility characteristics, Spectrum Access System compatibility and individual performance of multiple vendors’ devices.”
The permission for testing is effective as of June 5 and runs through December 3 of this year.
On a related note, three more companies — Commscope, Federated Wireless, and Google — recently joined Nokia in being approved as Certified Professional Installer Training Program Administrators for the CBRS band. The CPI program administrators are approved through the Wireless Innovation Forum; WInnForum said that more than 20 professional installers for CBRS have already been certified.
Richard Bernhardt, chair of the CBRS Operations Working Group within WInnForum, called certification of professional installers “a critical element” for initial commercial deployment.
“Establishment of the certification program is one of the final steps toward full launch of the CBRS band,” Bernhardt added.
In other test news:
–Keysight Technologies saw record revenue growth of 10%, with revenue reaching $1 billion in its fiscal second quarter, up from $990 million a year ago. Net income was $153 million, from just $64 million during the same period last year. All of Keysight’s three segments saw growth; its Communications Solutions Group’s revenues were up 8% to $676 million, driven by 5G research and development and 400 GbE testing in data centers; its Electronic Industrial Solutions Group’s revenues were up 6% on strength in automotive, general electronics and next-gen parametric testing; and its Ixia Solutions Group posted a whopping 32% in year-over-year revenue growth, reaching $118 million in quarterly revenue compared to $90 million in the previous fiscal second quarter. Keysight said that was driven by application and security sales, as well as “large visibility renewals.”
“Keysight delivered another record quarter with both revenue and earnings exceeding the high-end of our guidance,” said Keysight President and CEO Ron Nersesian. He went on to the say that the company “saw growth across most end markets as customers continued [research and development] investments in next-generation technologies. We are capturing a significant portion of the demand we see in the marketplace with our broad and differentiated portfolio of solutions, software and services.”
Nersesian said that Keysight is complying with the U.S. Commerce Department’s recent changes in regulation on technology exports to China — and that while it will have “some impact on [Keysight’s] revenue,” the company still expects to see revenue growth between 7-8% for the year. The company also announced plans for a $500 million share buyback program.
Keysight also this week launched a new phase noise test system aimed at “power users,” with models in three frequency ranges, starting at 50 kHz and going up to either 3, 26.5 or 40 GHz. The test company also said that after last week’s PTCRB meeting in Helsinki, Finland, its 5G Conformance Toolset was the first with submissions for 5G New Radio non-standalone radio frequency test cases at millimeter wave frequencies for PTCRB validation approval, in addition to 5G NR standalone protocol tests for sub-6 GHz frequencies. PTCRB serves as the mobile device certification forum for U.S. mobile operators.
-PCTel is introducing a new 5G/LTE network testing offering, its 5G New Radio-capable MXflex scanning receiver for testing 5G in sub-6 GHz frequencies as well as legacy wireless networks. The instrument offers sub-6 GHz 5G NR signal decodign at up to 30 channels/second, the company said, as well as concurrent measurements of 5G NR, LTE (4×4 MIMO) and UMTS — with no slowing of measurement speed, PCTel said.
Rishi Bharadwaj, PCTEL’s COO, said that the 5G MXflex “enables operators to test all of their sub-6 GHz technologies with a single box, in a single walk or drive test.” It will be released this summer, with 5G testing capabilities also available as a field upgrade for owners of PCTel’s MXflex scanning receivers.
-Enterprise monitoring company Centreon Software Systems recently forged a technology alliance with network and performance monitoring company Accedian. Accedian’s SkyLight PVX solution is now integrated with Centreon EMC for end-to-end IT monitoring, the companies said, in order to help companies improve digital user experience in networks with combinations of physical, dynamic hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
“We recognize that multi-cloud computing workloads are expanding, and digital multimedia users are becoming the norm,” said explains Marc-Antoine Hostier, chief sales officer for Centreon. “As a result, ITOps are paying more attention to end users’ quality of experience. By interconnecting views with Accedian’s SkyLIGHT PVX, Centreon is raising the bar and setting new best-in-class standards to meet the evolving IT monitoring needs of today’s enterprise customer.”
–Viavi Solutions launched two new offerings for cable and fiber network qualification and troubleshooting, the DSP TDR Time Domain Reflectometer and the OCC-4056C DWDM Optical Channel Checker. Both are rugged, handheld solutions aimed at helping technicians locate cable faults to restore service — which Viavi noted is more important than ever, as cable operators position themselves to take on a larger role in mobile backhaul for 5G networks.
The DSP TDR can accurately location cable breaks or faults, Viavi said, reducing the amount of time it takes to repair the problem and limit the length of cable that needs to be dug up for repairs; it uses “step” technology rather than “pulse” technology, the test company said, for improved accuracy on fault detection. Viavi described the DWDM optical channel checker as an all-in-one field tool for rapid confirmation of channel presence frequency and power levels, validation of new wavelength routes, and isolation of issues.
–Teledyne Defense Electronics and Teledyne Scientific are highlighting new products and presenting technical papers focused on power amplifier-related technologies at millimeter wave and terahertz frequencies — including millimeter wave transistor technologies for 5G and defense applications — at next week’s International Microwave Symposium in Boston, Massachusetts.
–Renesas Electronics introduced its new RX23E-A Group 32-bit RX microcontrollers, which are designed for manufacturing and test and measurement equipment and enable high-precision measurements of analog signals for temperature, pressure, weight, and flow; the company said that the MCUs are the first Renesas solutions to enable such signals to be measured with better than 0.1% precision without calibration.
