Evaluation Engineering - 25

SIMULATION/WIRELESS TEST

Q&A: SIMULATION'S VITAL ROLE
IN WIRELESS TESTING
by Mike Hockett
As electronic testing technologies
become more and more complex,
achieving goals requires continuous redesign within solutions-incorporating
better microchips, OEM equipment, individual devices, and other internal improvements. This is prompting vendors
to rethink or re-evaluate their testing.
With 5G infrastructure now being laid,
the need for efficient redesign for wireless
test will only escalate over the next handful of years. With this, the role of simulation software has taken on a crucial role
over the past decade, saving test instrumentation vendors invaluable trial-anderror costs and helping speed up
time-to-market.
I recently interviewed Ken Karnofsky,
senior strategist for signal processing
applications at MathWorks, and got his
thoughts on the evolution of wireless testing in recent years and the increasing part
simulation has played along the way. See
our discussion below, edited for brevity
and clarity.
Mike Hockett: To start off, can you give
me a little background on the relationship between wireless testing and
simulation?
Ken Karnofsky: In 5G,
we've been told the number
of waveform combinations
to test a 5G chip is something greater than a magnitude of 4G, since there's so
many parameters you must account for.
It's very ambitious, and unfortunately for
the engineers, also very complex. It's not
just 5G, as this applies to other markets
as well. Like in Military/Aerospace and
doing custom designs, the goal there may
be to produce some kind of custom radio
design within budget to get prototypes

MathWorks

deployed and tested. Over the last several years, we've introduced products that
conform to many different standards for
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 5G, etc. It lets customers build simulations, and then use our
tools to make sure their simulations are
meeting requirements.
With simulation of various components, one of the ways that higher speeds
will be achieved is by higher frequencies
in the spectrum. In order to do that
(more bandwidth), not only is the digital processing for that different, but the
RF/antenna is different. There are lots of
architectural considerations there. Some
of us MathWorks guys recently got back
from a trip to the (U.S.) West Coast, and
customers were saying they're having to
deal with nonlinear behavior and having
to use nondigital tools for that.
Today, different design engineering
teams are working together, as opposed to
the older method of each group working
within their own specialty. And testing
means slightly different things to different people. Sometimes it's a custom test
environment; sometimes it's COTS. At
MathWorks, we want to unify that approach by enabling reuse of test.

MH: Why have today's wireless communication standards grown so complex?
KK: The standards themselves-a lot driven by greater capacity and lower latency
requirements that have become more difficult. There's an increased forced integration the RF and digital world. You have to
understand how one area of your design
will affect another. We also now have
the coexistence of multiple standards,
and some of these standards will occupy
the same frequency ranges. If you've got
a Bluetooth signals, there may be Wi-Fi
signals all around at the same time that
may interfere.
MH: As wireless communication standards continue to evolve, what are the
specific challenges you're seeing companies face in terms of designing nextgeneration communication systems?
KK: Different effects have happened in
different levels of companies. At Tier 1
companies on the leading edge, researchers are leading the standards. They have
pretty comprehensive standards they've
built. The problem is those people are
JULY 2019 EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

25


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Evaluation Engineering

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Evaluation Engineering

Editorial: Following up on "brain drain" in test engineering
By the Numbers
Industry Report
Special Report: EMI/EMC Recievers and Amplifiers
Special Report: Semiconductor Test
Compliance: Recent developments in EMC legislation
Components: MEMS technology is transforming high-density switch matrices
Design for Test: DFT that gets AI chips to market faster
Wireless Test: Q&A: simulation's vital role in wireless testing
Tech Focus
Featured Tech
Industry Events Preview
Wearable Electronics: Putting on the future
Evaluation Engineering - Cover1
Evaluation Engineering - Cover2
Evaluation Engineering - 1
Evaluation Engineering - 2
Evaluation Engineering - 3
Evaluation Engineering - By the Numbers
Evaluation Engineering - 5
Evaluation Engineering - Industry Report
Evaluation Engineering - 7
Evaluation Engineering - Special Report: EMI/EMC Recievers and Amplifiers
Evaluation Engineering - 9
Evaluation Engineering - 10
Evaluation Engineering - Special Report: Semiconductor Test
Evaluation Engineering - 12
Evaluation Engineering - 13
Evaluation Engineering - 14
Evaluation Engineering - 15
Evaluation Engineering - Compliance: Recent developments in EMC legislation
Evaluation Engineering - 17
Evaluation Engineering - 18
Evaluation Engineering - Components: MEMS technology is transforming high-density switch matrices
Evaluation Engineering - 20
Evaluation Engineering - 21
Evaluation Engineering - Design for Test: DFT that gets AI chips to market faster
Evaluation Engineering - 23
Evaluation Engineering - 24
Evaluation Engineering - Wireless Test: Q&A: simulation's vital role in wireless testing
Evaluation Engineering - 26
Evaluation Engineering - Tech Focus
Evaluation Engineering - Featured Tech
Evaluation Engineering - 29
Evaluation Engineering - Industry Events Preview
Evaluation Engineering - 31
Evaluation Engineering - Wearable Electronics: Putting on the future
Evaluation Engineering - Cover3
Evaluation Engineering - Cover4
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