In its efforts to keep pace with the ongoing evolution of networking technology, wireless testing and measurement solutions provider ETS-Lindgren has recently been collaborating with numerous vendors.
Wi-Fi 7 capability testing
In February, the company announced that it was using Anritsu’s Wireless Connectivity Test Set MT8862A to bring Wi-Fi 7 wireless device capability testing to its test chambers. Referring to Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE802.11be) as a “significant leap forward,” ETS-Lindgren notes that the new Wi-Fi standards introduce features such as 320 MHz channels, Multi-link Operation (MLO), 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), 512 Compressed Block Ack and Multiple Resource Units (RUs) to a single station.
Bringing Wi-Fi 7 wireless device capability testing to testing chambers is among the goals of ETS-Lindgren’s recent collaborations. Source: Niphon subsri, via Canva.com These innovations translate into a variety of benefits, including doubling of throughput, deterministic latency, enhanced efficiency, greater reliability, a 20% boost in transmission rates, reduced transmission overhead and improved spectral efficiency.
The Anritsu test set, for its part, uses data-link layer communication protocols to control signal per data rate. This allows radiofrequency (RF) evaluations to be performed at all major WLAN standards, including Wi-Fi 7, at all data rates — an essential feature because WLAN signal quality characteristics vary with each data rate.
OTA testing for NTN
In March, the company announced what it called an industry first: an over-the-air (OTA) test solution for devices supporting narrowband non-terrestrial networks (NTN) technology.
A feature of 3GPP Release 17, NTN enables cellular communications to be delivered by satellite for secure, reliable and high-bandwidth coverage to globally isolated locations. The initial technology provided by NTN is narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT), which supports new use cases including asset tracking, remote monitoring and emergency services. These allow mobile network operators to provide coverage to a wider geographical area and a larger number of subscribers.
The testing solution comprises ETS-Lindgren’s OTA Test Chambers and EMQuest Antenna Measurement Software along with Keysight’s UXM E7515B NTN software. The test chambers feature a high-speed, multi-antenna array test system supporting 5GNR SISO non-standalone (NSA) and/or standalone (SA) testing in the FR1 band, while the EMQuest software allows the transmitter and receiver performance of NTN devices to be assessed. The Keysight NTN software runs on the Keysight E7515x family of UXM 5G Wireless Test Platforms and emulates both terrestrial and satellite networks.
