Test company Anritsu said this week that it has verified protocol conformance tests on its 5G NR Mobile Device Test Platform ME7834NR for Dual Connectivity in 5G New Radio Standalone mode, which it says is an industry first. The system uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X65 5G modem-RF system.
NR Dual Connectivity (NR DC) allows a device to connect to two 5G NR nodes at the same time, which Anritsu said provides higher throughput, better coverage, and improved latency and reliability. Specifically, the company said that its test is the first where NR SA operates over both sub-6 GHz frequencies and millimeter-wave spectrum at the same time, enabling devices to leverage both the increased coverage of sub-6 and the high data speeds that are supported by mmWave.
Anritsu said it has submitted the tests to 3GPP’s RAN Working Group 5 and will submit them to the Global Certification Forum and PTCRB at upcoming meetings.
In other test news:
-The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program has officially received the Federal Communications Commission’s designation of two additional “innovation zones” for wireless research testbeds in Boston, Mass. and Raleigh, NC. The Raleigh location, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, has a PAWR testbed under construction that expected to come online later this year. The FCC action designates both that location and the new home of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s Colosseum — the massive software-defined radio testbed that served as the virtual battleground for the three-year DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge, which now resides physically at Northeastern University — as FCC Innovation Zones, with the goal of reducing red tape around the use of experimental FCC licenses in those locations. The innovation zone designations will extend the areas in which entities which already have experimental licenses can conduct tests — so if you have an experimental license with permission to operate elsewhere, you can also use an Innovation Zone, and you can conduct multiple non-related experiments in the zone.
-Mobile device maker Vivo is using Keysight Technologies‘ PropSim 5G channel emulation for advanced MIMO over-the-air testing in the lab under rural, city and indoor real-world mobility scenarios.
Keysight also this week announced a new solution for testing of Salesforce deployments which incorporates artificial intelligence. Its Eggplant Digital Automation Intelligence platform automates over 70% of application testing, according to the company.
“This will accelerate the delivery of high-quality business applications, which is mission-critical in a digital-first world,” said Gareth Smith, Eggplant GM for Keysight. “These enhancements demonstrate our ability to intelligently automate every aspect of the testing lifecycle and deliver high-quality software at speed.”
-Analyst firm Global Industry Analysts (GIA) projects that the global market for general-purpose electronic T&M instruments will reach $9 billion by 2024, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 5.2%. In a recent report, the GIA said that market growth is being driven by the increasing complexity of testing, adoption of modular test equipment and demand from the telecom sector due to more widespread broadband deployment and adoption, the transition to 5G and continued demand for LTE test equipment.
GIA said that the United States is the largest regional market and accounts for nearly 32% of the global total, but China is the fastest-growing region for T&M equipment.
-ICYMI: Starlink’s low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite-based broadband service can provide download speeds faster than average wired broadband in a number of countries, new numbers from Ookla show — although its upload speeds and latency still don’t perform as well as the ones available on wired networks. Full story here.
–Rootmetrics also came out with its latest assessment of carrier 5G networks, from testing conducted in the first half of this year. The first half of 2021 saw a widening swath of Americans with access to 5G mobile networks and better performance on those networks. In terms of specific carriers, honors continue to be split among the three national carriers. AT&T took the top honors in Rootmetrics’ “best Everyday 5G” category, T-Mobile US was rated best in 5G availability and recognized as having “excellent” 5G availability and improving speeds, and Verizon won for reliability and improving speeds and availability. Read more here.
