Live video production company LiveU is working with a number of mobile network operators around the world to test the use of 5G for live sports and entertainment video streaming. The company announced this week a new hardware unit for global newsgathering and live sports coverage, which includes support for sub-6 GHz 3G and 4G operations — as well as integrated 5G modems.
Samuel Wasserman, LiveU’s CEO and co-founder, said that with 5G rolling out worldwide in major cities, the LU600 solution “takes full advantage of the faster speeds and guaranteed high bandwidth provided by next generation 5G networks.” He added that the company is “working closely with leading telecom operators worldwide to validate our equipment with emerging 5G networks to make maximum use of the bandwidth and other benefits.”
In the U.S., LiveU says it is working with AT&T to test the “real-work impact and performance enhancements” that 5G provides, using LiveU’s units; the two companies recently put together a 5G-based production of the NBA Summer League, LiveU said. In South Korea, LiveU used SK Telecom’s 5G network for a live broadcast of an orchestra performance to five countries. The company also said that it is working with KT and “participating in 5G tests and events with other leading operators, including Vodafone in Italy.”
“We’ve already seen how cellular bonding has largely replaced satellite transmission for live news coverage. With the power of 5G, the potential is even larger for every type of live sports production,” Wasserman said.
In related news, Sinclair Broadcast subsidiary ONE Media 3.0 recently conducted field testing on the use of LTE in conjunction with advanced broadcasting techniques in order to achieve hybrid delivery of 1080p high-definition content.
In other test news:
-Drone-based communications company and Softbank JV HAPSMobile said it has successfully conducted a test flight of one of its solar-powered drones, the Hawk30. The test took place at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California in restricted airspace.
Junichi Miyakawa, representative director and CTO of SoftBank, who is also president and CEO of HAPSMobile Inc., described the test flight as a chance to “see Hawk30 take flight in front of us and witness its grace in the air.”
Hawk30, he added, is “designed to provide a high-altitude communications platform, and will be used to provide telecommunications connectivity from the stratosphere as an airborne base station. While this successful test flight represents just the first step, we’re moving forward with tests in the stratosphere and long flight duration tests lasting several months up to half a year.”
Now, the company will move the Hawk30 to Hawaii in preparation for testing later this year which will leverage Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum in Hawaii for testing of a high-altitude drone-based LTE system.
-Crowd-sourced network and application performance data and analytics company Tutela has been acquired by telecom market data firm Comlinkdata. Full story here.
–Keysight Technologies says it has the first single-box, multi-channel test solution for wideband millimeter wave measurement. This involves new functionality being added to the company’s UXR oscilloscope series, with a supported frequency range up to 110 GHz — but Keysight said that it is offering a “unique bandwidth pricing model that matches typical RF equipment, in which the price correlates with the analysis bandwidth needed – eliminating the need to purchase the full frequency range the oscilloscope hardware supports.”
Brad Doerr, VP and GM of digital and photonics R&D for Keysight’s Communications Solutions Group said that the UXR “is the first oscilloscope on the market to address mmWave technologies and advanced applications such as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) with up to four channels, for the price of a 25 GHz scope.”
Pricing on the instrument starts at $170,000. More details available from Keysight here.
Keysight also said this week that its test solutions are being used by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering to improve the design and test validation efficiency of antenna-in-package engineering, which has become an area of focus as heterogeneous integrated RF front-end modules are developed that utilize millimeter-wave-based 5G, or are used in applications such as autonomous vehicles. “It is not easy to integrate all the high-frequency components together with the base-band circuitry into a module while the test validation for this complex ‘package’ is also an issue, e.g. it always takes time to change adaptors, measurement settings, remove fixture factors, etc.,” Keysight said. CP Hung, vice president of ASE corporate R&D, said in a statement that the test company’s PNA network analyzer hardware and software are enabling ASE to “efficiently characterize active and passive components and simplify setups from hours to minutes.”
-Is 5G a “battery vampire,” as some have claimed, or is it actually more power efficient than LTE? Signal Research Group recently took to the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota with a 5G-equipped Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone to test the device’s battery performance on Verizon’s 5G millimeter wave and LTE network. Read more here.
