Rohde & Schwarz helps define, standardize 5G
Columbia, MD. Rohde & Schwarz announced it will showcase 5G test solutions at this year’s CTIA Super Mobility show September 7-9 in Las Vegas. The company said its test and measurement solutions are helping researchers around the world define and characterize 5G years before commercialization. Rohde & Schwarz products can help with investigations of massive MIMO, millimeter-wave communications, and complex channel models.
“The standards that will define 5G have yet to be outlined. However, it is clear that new technologies and new frequency bands will be required to meet the needs of enhanced mobile broadband. Currently, many researchers are focused on developing new antenna technologies for massive MIMO systems, studying channel characteristics, and characterizing components up to millimeter wave, all of which will require high performance and flexible test and measurement solutions to advance 5G technologies,” said Lifang Kirchgessner, vice president, Wireless Communications Market Segment. “Rohde & Schwarz is pleased to offer industry-leading 5G test solutions that are helping to shape and standardize the next generation of wireless communications.”
To meet the 1,000x improvements in capacity and to achieve ever higher data rates, massive MIMO antenna systems that use hundreds of antenna elements are being planned for 5G. In these systems, the radio is combined with the antenna, resulting in few or no RF test ports, thus requiring over-the-air (OTA) measurements to characterize the systems. To expedite these tests, R&S has developed a flexible near-field measurement technique that allows continuous sampling on arbitrary grids, thus decreasing the measurement time in the near field by a factor of 40 compared to stepped measurements. In addition, R&S offers benchtop and production far-field measurement systems for devices being investigated between 28 GHz and 90 GHz.
The R&S ZNBT 24-port vector network analyzer is being used to measure the mutual coupling between antenna elements, which reduces overall system capacity, so that 5G antenna engineers can determine the optimal distance between antenna elements in massive MIMO systems. This solution can be extended up to 288 ports using the 2×24 R&S ZN-Z84 switch matrix.
Fundamental to 5G research today, frequencies from RF through millimeter wave are required. For RF through millimeter wave signal analysis and generation, the R&S FSW signal and spectrum analyzer and R&S SMW200A vector signal generator can deliver the performance and flexibility required in an R&D environment. The R&S SMW200A combines a baseband generator and RF generator with fading, AWGN, massive MIMO, and mmWave MIMO capabilities in a single box. A new option for the R&S FSW, the R&S FSW-B2000, extends the analysis bandwidth to 2 GHz. The combination of having a high-end frequency range up to 85 GHz with a 2 GHz analysis bandwidth is unique to the market.
With many new frequency bands under consideration (for example, 28 GHz and 39 GHz), researchers need to know exactly how their systems will behave in these new channels, looking at effects such as path loss, atmospheric absorption, diffraction and penetration through various objects, etc. To help 5G researchers answer these questions, Rohde & Schwarz has developed a commercial test solution for 5G channel sounding. The R&S TS-5GCS test setup combines the new R&S TS-5GCS channel sounding software with the R&S FSW signal and spectrum analyzer and R&S SMW200A vector signal generator. This setup supports development of applications requiring complex multichannel scenarios up to 40 GHz, allowing users to conveniently measure channels in the new 5G frequency bands in the centimeter and millimeter ranges.