Test and measurement (T&M) company Keysight Technologies has tied up with Ball Aerospace and Anokiwave to validate the first commercial 5G NR active array antenna product designs in the 26 GHz band.
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Keysight Technologies will be providing 5G NR-ready measurement testbed to ensure the best quality testing of the performance edges of active antenna systems to base station and component designers in the 26 GHz band.
Engineers will gain from over-the-air (OTA) testing as well as spatial beam measurements which are important for phased arrays at mmWave frequencies.
Designers at base station and component companies will use Keysight metrology-grade test equipment that offers enough sensitivity to overcome challenges in order to achieve beyond simple RF parametric performance.
Keysight said new spatial measurement requirements include sidelobe levels, dynamic beam characteristics, and spatial variations of EVM and ACPR.
The Keysight testing solution, as the first mmWave testbed with 5G-ready source and analyzer inside a PXI chassis, is scalable across the product lifecycle, from research and development through manufacturing, using modular hardware and software.
The company claims that the 5G NR-ready testbed enables multi-format testing in a single chassis for space-efficient and flexible design validation, even at mmWave.
“Network equipment manufacturing customers expect to acquire velocity through their development cycle by leveraging their test solutions at each stage, from R&D to design verification to manufacturing,” said Giampaolo Tardioli, vice president of the Network Infrastructure Unit, Keysight Technologies.
These customers can now scale from today’s 4G evolved designs (under 6 GHz) into the new mmWave bands, and accelerate a faster transition into production, with minimum cost.
The Ball Aerospace-built 256-element array uses Anokiwave integrated circuits, and will deliver 5G modulation in GHz-wide bandwidths in either a single-beam mode or in MIMO applications for up to 4 concurrent beams with up to +60 dBm EIRP.
“Keysight has enabled us to validate the breakthrough data throughput performance of our Ball-built arrays at 26 GHz and gain visibility into our performance edges, using standard-compliant 5G NR waveforms and processing,” stated Bob Donahue, chief executive officer, Anokiwave.