At CTIA’s Super Mobility show, test companies tapped into top-of-mind issues including “5G,” the “internet of things” and indoor coverage that have been central to industry discussions at the show this week.
Rohde & Schwarz announced testing support for the low-power, wide-area network technology LoRa, aimed specifically at transmitter and receiver testing and testing with the manufacturing environment. The company spotlighted 5G-related testing last week ahead of the show, and Senet has been building out LoRa networks around the U.S. for IoT applications.
Anritsu, meanwhile, focused on new capabilities for battery life testing to enable more realistic battery usage scenarios to be played out with its Signaling Tester MD8475A. The solution supports the new CTIA battery life test plan, and engineers’ ability to test the battery impacts of email, SMS, gaming, web browsing, music playback and audio and video streaming. Anritsu said it has developed 11 validated test cases by working with CTIA’s new battery life test plan group.
Anritsu also continued the overall industry trend of increased portability for test equipment, a significant factor for indoor testing in particular. It launched its smallest and lightest Site Master model, the S331P, that works with a tablet and is USB-powered, with a “pocket-sized” cable and antenna analyzer that also can measure LTE in unlicensed frequencies at 5 gigahertz, according to Anritsu.
The new Site Master has two models that cover 150 kilohertz to either 4 gigahertz or 6 gigahertz.
– Meanwhile, Wi-Fi Alliance released a statement saying that it is on track to deliver a coexistence test plan for LTE-U on Sept. 21. The group said, in part, that it is still finishing up some open items and “while the process has been challenging, Wi-Fi Alliance has delivered on an aggressive timeline that is nearly twice as fast as one of our own Wi-Fi Certified programs.”
WFA added that “the expectation is for all LTE-U vendors to test their devices using the finalized coexistence test plan, and that continues to be our goal.”
– T-Mobile US plans to test 5G technologies at 28 gigahertz later this year in partnership with Samsung. Read RCR Wireless News’ full story here.
– Accedian Networks has been providing fiber verification and real-time performance data for Brazil’s largest telecom operator during the 2016 Rio Olympics and the ongoing Paralympic Games, using its virtualized solution for assessing both network performance and quality for video services, and all landline and mobile calls that the operator handles.
– Ethernet Alliance said its most recent plugfest to test interoperability among 802.3 power over Ethernet devices showed 100% interoperability in devices from Brocade, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Linear Technology, Microsemi and Texas Instruments. The testing was held in the spring at the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory. Ethernet Alliance reported that “all of the product combinations were shown to interoperate over the worst-case CAT-5e cabling,” as well as all devices passing 99% of standards conformance test cases.
