National Instruments to Add LTE Automated Test Capabilities to PXI RF Test Portfolio

10/19/2010

National Instruments announced that it will be adding Long Term Evolution (LTE) test capabilities to its RF test product portfolio with the forthcoming NI LTE Measurement Suite, which operates with PXI RF signal generators and analyzers. NI engineers will demonstrate the new LTE Measurement Suite at the 4G World conference in Chicago (October 20–21, 2010). Designed for testing 3GPP LTE wireless components, subsystem components and mobile stations, the software-defined test system will provide a fast, flexible and accurate solution for engineers developing automated validation and production test systems for LTE products.

The LTE Measurement Suite is a test system based on NI automated test software and PXI modular instrumentation. The system consists of new NI LTE Measurement Suite software, the NI PXIe-5663E 6.6 GHz vector signal analyzer, the NI PXIe-5673E 6.6 GHz vector signal generator and a PXI chassis and controller. Test engineers can use all of the system’s hardware to test previous RF and wireless standards as well as LTE and other next-generation standards. According to initial performance results, the LTE test system can achieve modulation accuracy measurements (RMS EVM) as low as -48 dB and perform automated measurements up to 3X and 5X faster than traditional instrumentation.

The NI demonstration at 4G World will illustrate the system’s capabilities for both generating and analyzing live LTE signals. Booth visitors also will learn about physical layer measurements including adjacent channel power (ACP), transmit power (TxP), error vector magnitude (EVM) and others in live product demonstrations.

The LTE Measurement Suite will join an extensive portfolio of NI hardware and software solutions for wireless test including test software for cellular standards such as GSM/EDGE and WCDMA/HSPA+ and software for testing fixed/mobile WiMAX, wireless LAN, GPS, AM/FM and Bluetooth products. The LTE test system also complements additional RF measurement tools from National Instruments such as signal generators, signal analyzers, power meters and other DC and baseband instruments. As an added benefit of its software-defined PXI configuration, the system integrates with more than 1,500 PXI instruments from NI and more than 70 other vendors to address the requirements of almost any test application.

4G World attendees can view the LTE Measurement Suite demonstration and speak with National Instruments RF test engineers at booth #322.
Readers can learn more about the full line of NI RF and wireless test solutions at www.ni.com/rf.

National Instruments, www.ni.com