Test & Measurement: Agilent supports Cat 7 chip development, names Keysight CTO

The ability to test network and device features and functions is an important piece of technology development and deployment. RCR Wireless News looks weekly at the test and measurement space to see what’s afoot.  
—Agilent Technologies has had a busy week. The company said it has successfully verified full Category 7 data throughput of sustained, bi-directional 300 megabit per second downlink/100 Mbps uplink data throughput on a chipset design, relying on downlink and uplink carrier aggregation.
The chipset came from Marvell and was verified using Agilent’s new E7515A UXM wireless test set, which the test company said is now shipping in volume.
Meanwhile, Agilent also named a CTO for its electronic test and measurement spin-off dubbed Keysight Technologies. Jay Alexander, who has held various leadership positions in Agilent’s electronic measurement group, will serve as CTO for Keysight. He most recently served as VP and GM for Agilent’s oscilloscope and protocol division.
Keysight is expected to begin operating separately from Agilent in August 2014.
Agilent also said this week that GIT Japan, which has a center for ultra-wideband chipset and module development, has chosen Agilent EEsof EDA’s Advanced Design System.
Agilent EEsof EDA is the company’s business for supplying software for electronic design automation.
And last but not least, Agilent announced that its T3111S NFC Conformance Test System has been validated for testing near field communications forum logical link protocol and simple NDEF exchange protocol. The two protocols enable peer-to-peer communications via NFC. Agilent says the test platform is the only one that combines validated NFC Forum analog RF, digital protocol, LLCP and SNEP in one integrated system.
—Aeroflex announced its results this week; read the details here. 
—Rohde & Schwarz recently introduced what it says is the world’s first network analyzer with 24 integrated test ports. The R&S ZNBT allows multiple devices to be tested in parallel in order to support high throughput on production lines. It covers 9 kHz-8.5 GHz frequencies and provides simple functionality (all functions accessible in no more than three operating steps) and fast analysis.
— Spirent Communications and reverberation chamber OTA testing specialist Bluetest recently teamed up to provide a MIMO OTA solution for operators who are trying to figure out how to validate MIMO performance when there isn’t an industry standard for it yet. The test solution integrates Spirent’s flagship VR5 channel emulator with Bluetest’s RTS60 reverberation test system.
I moderated a panel a few weeks ago on MIMO OTA testing at the 2014 LTE Innovation Summit (you can watch the panel here)
There is considerable controversy on whether anechoic or reverberation chamber testing is the best approach, and that has delayed the development of a standard.
Alfonso Rodriguez, senior RF and systems engineer with Spirent, is confident that more than one approach will be standardized because each one offers particular strengths, depending especially upon the frequency bands involved. You can hear more from Rodriguez, and Bluetest’s technical marketing manager Derek Skousen, in this video.

Also this week, Spirent announced a new cloud-based, software-as-a-service subscription for app testing with ArmorHub.