Keysight Technologies held its first-ever Keysight World company event in the U.S. this week, highlighting how new equipment offerings are supporting the latest technology trends as well as how the company has transformed itself in the years since its spin-off from Agilent.
Keysight CEO Ron Nersesian said that when the company realized that it was working too slowly to put together end-to-end solutions for customers across its 16 product organizations, it “turned the organization on its side.” Now, he said, Keysight organizes itself around solution groups in areas such as 5G, in order to rapidly address the specific needs of customers in that area, across product lines.
He also said that Keysight has doubled its research and development spending since the spin-out in late 2014, and filled in gaps in its solutions through acquisitions such as Anite, Ixia and several calibration and repair companies to bolster its services segment as it forges ahead as a pure-play electronic test and measurement company.
Keysight CTO Jay Alexander highlighted the company’s early investments and recent developments in 5G testing, with refinements in products happening based on lessons learned and customers so eager to get test systems that could handle 5G that they “wanted to rip [them] out of our hands.”
“Customers actually don’t care what the actual product category might be” that gets them the test solution that they need, Alexander said. “they care what the solution is doing for them, to address their business problem.”
Also this week, the company unveiled two new products this week: its series of next-generation integrated network analyzers, and an optional application to address modulation distortion that can be introduced in traditional test equipment set-ups.
The new E5080B, P50xxA Series and M980xA series network analyzers take a variety of forms: benchtop, USB and PXI slot. Keysight described them as combining built-in pulse generators and modulators, spectrum analysis, and time domain analysis in a single instrument that can fully characterize modern hardware.
In other test news:
–RootMetrics says that wireless infrastructure improvements put in place for the 2019 Super Bowl LIII are still having a noticeable impact on Atlanta, Georgia’s network quality. All four of the national carriers clocked median download speeds above 30 Mbps — which is a first for the city, RootMetrics reported. Still, Verizon was the undisputed leader and was the only carrier with a median download speed above 40 Mbps: 44.2 Mbps. T-Mobile US had the fastest overall median upload speed, at 19.2 Mbps.
Verizon had even faster median speeds when RootMetrics conducted walk testing in the urban core during high-traffic times, achieving median download and upload speeds of 99.0 Mbps and 52.5 Mbps, respectively. RootMetrics tested Atlanta between March 25 through April 6, using off-the-shelf smartphones from carrier stores and testing at 241 locations and while driving 4,811 miles.
-Engineering analysis software company ANSYS said that antenna company Radio Frequency Systems has standardized on its simulation solutions as it works on 5G antenna designs.
“Evolving antenna design architecture from 4G to 5G is a monumental technological leap and places huge demands on hardware development. Our teams are motivated to conceptualize new designs faster than ever to provide guaranteed quality of service, the most important metric for communication systems,” André Doll, CTO at RFS. He said that the company has standardized on ANSYS’ offerings to speed up development of 5G antennas; ANSYS says that doing so can reduce simulation time from four days to one hour.
-Thailand’s Interlink Telecom has used Viavi Solutions’ T-BERD/MTS-4000 V2 Optical Test Platform to support build-out, certification, troubleshooting and maintaining its fiber optic network, which was launched in 2013. Viavi said Interlink was looking for a comprehensive solution for Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) testing.
“We initially selected Viavi as a second source for our network test and measurement, but we soon opted to use only VIAVI OTDR systems, due to their commitment to service and high quality of professionalism,” said Vinai Paiboonkulwong, deputy director of network operations for Interlink Telecom. “We’ve found the VIAVI OTDR solution to be very accurate, helping our technicians quickly find faults and allowing us to reduce truck rolls, saving time and money while improving our competitive position in regional markets.”
–Rohde & Schwarz subsidiary ipoque, which specializes in network analytics, is establishing a joint research program with Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg’s Computer Science Institute. The four-year project is going to focus on how technologies such as big data analytics, machine learning or artificial intelligence can boost network analytics to deal with the challenges of identifying security threats in a timely manner as networks become more complex and devices continue to proliferate.
–TestEquity, which offers new and refurbished test equipment for sale or rental, launched a redesigned web site. The company is giving away a Rohde & Schwarz FPC1500 spectrum analyzer to celebrate the new site’s launch.
