Editor’s Note: The ability to test network and device features and functions is an important piece of technology development and deployment. RCR Wireless looks weekly at test and measurement news to see what’s afoot.
—Teradyne subsidiary LitePoint said it has reached a milestone of supporting test solutions for 300 and counting cellular and wireless connectivity solutions. The company’s IQfact+ solution library covers the most commonly used wireless standards, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, ZigBee, Near Field Communications (NFC) and others.
—Cobham Wireless — formerly Aeroflex — has a new option for measuring power quickly. The company said its Option 194 on its PXI 3030 series RF digitizer achieves a 57% reduction in servo loop time when applied to an LTE signal, and has given customer RFMD an overall 10% reduction in test time.
RFMD designs and manufactures RF solutions and uses Cobham Wireless’ test solutions on amplifiers, switches and other RF components. Cobham Wireless said the company has been integrating its equipment into product test systems since 2005.
“Option 194 gives RFMD a much faster way of making power measurements by using the on-board FPGA on the RF digitizer,” said Tim Carey, senior product manager for Cobham. “Fast power measurement is extremely beneficial when testing cellular or WLAN power amplifiers as well as in many other applications. Measurements such as ACLR, EVM and efficiency are made at a constant output power. Reaching the desired output power is an iterative process, which normally adds significantly to the measurement time.”
—Tektronix launched what it said is the first wireless solution for managing large numbers of lab instruments, the TekSmartLabTM TSL3000A. Designed for colleges and universities to be able to quickly set up and manage up to 120 instruments (30 test benches), the TekSmartLabTM solution converts USB ports on test instruments into a wireless interface via a Wi-Fi USA converter. Tektronix noted that most pieces of test equipment don’t have LAN ports that would allow cabling, and the use of Wi-Fi eliminates cables anyway. Tektronix is the world’s leading manufacturer of oscilloscopes.
“Centralized control of instruments dramatically improves the classroom and lab experience for students, instructors and lab managers,” said Michael Ewald, GM, Bench Products, at Tektronix. “TekSmartLabTM eliminates many repetitive manual tasks, saving valuable class time. Features such as intuitive laboratory layout emulation, automatic instrument configuration and push-button report generation mean that professors and students can focus on learning and not shuffling paper or configuring their tools.”
—Anritsu’s Shockline series of vector network analyzers won a leadership award from Frost & Sullivan.
–In other test and measurement news, JDSU reported its results this week — read more about those here.
