Softbank received permission this week from the Federal Communications Commission for an initial test of a drone using 4G/5G connectivity to provide services as part of emergency disaster response.
“By making use of cutting-edge UAV with its preinstalled high quality camera sensors and additional wireless communication payload, we are aiming to save people in the emergency situation as our ultimate goal of this project,” Softbank said in describing its experiment for the FCC.
Softbank was granted permission from the FCC to use 2.15-2.17 GHz, 2.175-2.195 GHz and 3.305-3.345 GHz spectrum in the area of El Mirage Airfield in Californiaas part of its planned test to ensure that the communications payload could be connected and transmitting to user equipment and ground stations during taxi, flight and landing of the UAS, and that the system would continue to work as expected.
In other test news:
–Keysight Technologies is now a validated test tool provider for the Fine Ranging (FiRa) 2.0 certification release for ultra-wideband (UWB) devices, covering physical layer conformance testing.
–Viavi Solutions has added performance-testing capabilities for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) system deployments to its TeraVM Security Test.
“Quantum computers have the potential to break public-key cryptography once they begin operating at a large scale – an event not anticipated to occur for several more years,” the company noted in a release. “However, governments, military, enterprises and mobile operators are already preparing for a quantum-safe future to protect their vast stores of sensitive data.” Viavi also pointed out that because the U.S. federal government has mandated the migration of all existing public-key cryptographic systems to PQC, including network security devices such as firewalls and VPN gateways, organizations are in a push to upgrade their systems, hardware, software and services.
“Our customers have announced significant initiatives to secure their networks from post-quantum threats without compromising their users’ workday experience,” said Ian Langley, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Business Unit, VIAVI. “TeraVM Security Test will give them confidence in their capabilities through rigorous testing using standardized algorithms, emulated users, real office applications and loaded networks.”
–Trident IoT was certified this week as an official Z-Wave device certification test lab, as the company closed a $10 million funding round. Trident IoT is focused on shortening development cycles for IoT products, aiming to bring timelines from 18-24 months to 4-6 months, according to Trident IoT CEO and co-founder Mike Lamb. “With the resources gained in this funding round, as well as Todd’s unmatched perspective on the needs of both end users and device manufacturers, we will be able to extend design acceleration services to more customers and technologies,” Lamb said. Trident supports a number of connectivity types beyond Z-Wave, Zigbee, Thread, Matter, LoRa and others.
–Teledyne LeCroy has launched a new Frontline X500e wireless protocol analyzer with Wi-Fi 7. The “wireless sniffer” helps to assess the impact of Wi-Fi 7 on overall system performance, latency, and throughput and how implementaions co-exist with other wireless technologies, according to the test company.
–Tektronix this week said that it is now offering an expanded portfolio for testing power dynamics in the semiconductor space as well as in electric engines and high-density batteries, as a result of its acquisition of EA Elektro-Automatik. “Our customers are facing challenges in delivering safe and reliable power electronics designs that incorporate new technologies such as high energy density batteries, efficient electric motors, smart power inverters, and wide-bandgap semiconductors, for high power and performance to electrify industries and meet an ever-increasing energy demand to power our world,” said Markus Schyboll, CEO of EA Elektro-Automatik. Tektronix President Chris Bohn said that Tek now “offers an extensive set of products for industry-wide electrification.”
