Thailand, which has a long-standing relationship with Rohde & Schwarz to equip vehicles for mobile interference hunting, is expanding its use of the test company’s spectrum monitoring system.
Since 2014, Thailand’s Office of National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has operated a fleet of seven vehicles equipped with the R&S Argus monitoring system, which NBTC uses to verify that RF operations in the country are compliant with license terms and system guidelines, as well as to identify and track down sources of interference.
The NBTC is now expanding that fleet to include 26 more vehicles, in order to keep up with changes in technology and an ever-increasing number of mobile devices.
“These mobile systems provide more benefits to NBTC through by expanding remote RF interference detection, localization and identification capabilities for all kinds of modern communications signals. A database and a geographic information system (GIS) provides additional support,” explained Anne Stephan, VP of critical infrastructure at Rohde & Schwarz. “The new 26 mobile stations can be combined to form a single sensor network or operated individually.”
In other test news:
–Keysight Technologies said this week that, working with Qualcomm, it successfully demonstrated 5G New Radio Dual Connectivity (NR-DC) in the uplink, achieving speeds of 3.5 Gbps with millimeter wave carrier aggregation.
The demonstration used Keysight’s 5G Protocol R&D Toolset and a 2D, multi-probe anechoic over-the-air test chamber, plus a Snapdragon X65 modem-RF system from Qualcomm.
In other company news, Keysight touted the debut of an integrated test package for Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), which has been added to its IxNetwork Ethernet test solution. According to Keysight, the offering enables chipset and device manufacturers to ensure that their products are in compliance with the Avnu Alliance’s base TSN test plan for IEEE 802.1AS-2020, which is the standard for the transport of timing over local area networks.
Keysight also announced this week that Korean mobile network operator KT is using its 5G device testing and R&D solutions to verify advanced 5G NR device features. KT launched the first 5G Standalone network in South Korea in mid-2021.
–Ookla’s most recent mobile network assessments are out, and T-Mobile US came out on top. According to Ookla’s findings, T-Mobile US was the fastest mobile operator in the United States during Q4 2021. The carrier achieved a median download speed of 90.65 Mbps, compared to AT&T’s 49.25 Mbps and Verizon’s 44.67 Mbps. Not only is T-Mobile besting its competition, but the latest results represent an impressive increase for the operator from its Q3 2021 medium download speed of 62.35 Mbps. Read that full story here.
–PCTel said that its Japanese master distributor partner Marubun has added the test company’s Gflex scanning receiver to its available product portfolio. Marubun is the first of PCTel’s global distributors to offer that scanning receiver.
-Taiwanese test and instrumentation company Chroma has acquired 100% of the shares of Environmental Stress Systems, which provides thermal forcing systems used in testing semiconductor wafers at very low and very high temperatures. ESS has developed a cooling technology that can meet temperature control requirements for advanced high-performance computing and AI chips (such as those used by LEO satellites, which must perform well in the extreme cold of space).
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Chroma says that adding ESS’ semiconductor test capabilities will allow the company to expand into semiconductor test for vehicles, 5G, and “AIoT” applications, among others.
