Welcome to this week’s look at news in network test & measurement.
Ixia was named among the fastest-growing U.S tech companies by Forbes Magazine. The company came in at #14 on Forbes’ list.
National Instruments announced that it is working with Anteverta Microwave, Focus Microwaves, Maury Microwave and Mesuro for joint development of load pull solutions for microwave power amplifiers for aerospace, defense and wireless infrastructure applications. The load pull vendors are integrating NI’s PXI hardware and LabVIEW software architecture. Load pull is a measurement used as the basis for increasing the efficiency of power amplifiers, and NI said that vendors have traditionally performed the characterization during design due to time and cost. However, the company said that a PXI-based system allows load pull performance to be done during production testing.
“Modular PXI products such as the NI vector network analyzer simplify the load pull setup by merging all instruments into a convenient low-cost chassis, which improves overall measurement speed and usability,” Steve Dudkiewicz, director of marketing and business development at Maury Microwave said. “The system guarantees adaptability as new technologies and modulation schemes emerge because we can add PXI modules ad hoc, and users can modify and script custom load pull sequences using an NI open-source load pull toolkit in LabVIEW.”
Ruckus Wireless and Globalstar announced the results of joint testing of potential new Wi-Fi spectrum. The companies said that the successful test involved unlicensed ISM band spectrum (where most public Wi-Fi traffic already operates) and Globalstar’s licensed mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum.
The tests were performed in the 2.4 GHz band using Ruckus’ carrier-grade Wi-Fi equipment and existing smartphones that were given a remote firmware upgrade in order to operate over the new channel.
Ruckus said the testing showed that the use of Terrestrial Low Power Service (TLPS) can expand wireless capacity for Wi-Fi quickly and easily. Globalstar’s TLPS has been pitched to the FCC as a way to privately expand 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi bands, and the FCC granted experimental licenses so the testing could be done. The FCC is seeking ways to open up more spectrum for commercial use, and the TLPS spectrum would provide a slice that is compatible with current 802.11-type Wi-Fi devices.
According to Ruckus, the testing was conducted by Jarvinian and “showed that combining Globalstar’s unlicensed ISM bands with 802.11-compliant, adaptive antenna array technology from Ruckus results in a carrier-grade service that vastly exceeds the performance of conventional public Wi-Fi. According to Jarvinian, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology helped to significantly increase Wi-Fi performance and signal range within the managed channel (14) while providing a better method of managing co-channel interference between access points.”
