Amazon successfully validated all of the systems on two recently launched prototype satellites for its Project Kuiper Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband service, the company said in an update this week.
“Every major system and subsystem on board our two prototypes demonstrated nominal or better performance following launch,” Amazon said in a blog post. “The tests we ran allowed the team to fully validate the architecture and design of our satellite constellation and to conduct demonstrations of 4K video streaming and two-way video calls over the network.”
Eventually, Amazon expects to have a constellation of more than 3,200 LEO satellites that will enable it to serve customers globally. Amazon said that it will now focus on “mass satellite production ahead of a full-scale deployment starting in the first half of 2024,” and that it plans to hold beta testing with select customers in late 2024.
In other test news:
–Rohde & Schwarz said that it has closed out a “challenging fiscal year” that included geopolitical unrest and a slow-down in the cellular testing market, and nonetheless seen success. The privately held company, which provides limited details on its financial operations, said this week that it had “well over” 3 billion euros in orders during its fiscal year, for the first time in company history. Company revenues for the fiscal year were 2.78 billion euros, which the test company said was “in line with expectations.”
R&S said that despite a decline on the T&M market, it saw continued investment from aerospace and defense customers, exploration of future 6G research and development, and automotive testing being driven by the shift to electrification and autonomous vehicle development, as well as increased demand for network and security technology.
–TÜV Rheinland said this week that it is close to finalizing two new labs in the U.S. and expects to have them operational by the end of the year. This includes its new flagship facility in the Boston, Massachusetts area, the 65,000-square-foot Technology and Innovation Center (TIC), which will be the company’s largest product testing and certification center in the Americas and will support a range of testing including electrical product safety, EMC testing, and testing related to semiconductor manufacturing.
–Viavi Solutions had added XhaulAdvisor to its Nitro Wireless portfolio, to offer real-time data on fronthaul verification, analysis, emulation and channel utilization, with a focus on enabling Open RAN. Viavi says this is the first solution on the market to have real-time analytics, as well as the ability to “rapidly and accurately correlate test anomalies to network events and troubleshoot fronthaul and transport timing, packet flows and channel utilization”. Viavi added that the new solution will speed up Open RAN interoperability testing, end-to-end testing and troubleshooting.
“The complex Open RAN supplier ecosystem demands reliable testing of different network components early in the development cycle. The XhaulAdvisor significantly reduces test time by delivering the industry’s first real-time fronthaul analysis,” said Ian Langley, SVP of Viavi’s Wireless Businss Unit. “This solution is part of the Viavi commitment to increasing confidence in deployment of Open RAN.”
-Meanwhile, Keysight Technologies released what it calls a “first in its class advancement” in network testing designed for continuous integration (CI), in the form of its Keysight Elastic Network Generator (KENG) software. The KENG software supports the Keysight-founded Open Traffic Generator (OTG) API project that aims to help make testing more “automation-friendly, open and intent-based” as well as more holistic and vendor-neutral.
“While traditional networking environments often rely on proprietary testing solutions, these closed test systems create challenges for engineers and network architects since they operate in isolation, lack interoperability, and flexibility. This lack of compatibility makes it difficult for devices and technologies from different companies to communicate seamlessly, which slows innovation and limits adaptability to the growing demands of highly distributed modern applications,” Keysight noted.
-As interest in artificial intelligence in general, and generative AI in particular, expands, Teledyne LeCroy announced its new OakGate CD240-G5 CXL validation solution for performance and functionality testing of PCI Express 5.0-based Compute Express Link (CXL) memory expansion devices.
CXL, the company explained, is an open standard, industry-supported, cache-coherent interconnect for processors, which is supported on PCIe 5.0. and expands memory capacity and bandwidth by enabling “high-speed, low latency communication between the host processor and devices such as accelerators, memory buffers and smart I/O devices.”
