Evaluation Engineering - 29

RF/MICROWAVE TEST

Q&A: 5G ANTENNA MINIATURIZATION,
COMPONENT VALIDATION ARE LATEST
WRINKLES IN RF/MICROWAVE TEST
By Mike Hockett, Editor-in-Chief
The field of RF/Microwave testing has
been in a constant state of flux as new
technologies have required increasingly
advanced testing methodologies over the
years. That fact has been put in overdrive
with the onset of 5G.
I recently interviewed National Instruments' Senior Solutions Marketing Manager Sarah Yost, and NI Semiconductor
Offering Manager Chen Chang, about
what they're seeing in RF/Microwave test,
how 5G has impacted it, and the outlook
for 5G technology as a whole.
Mike Hockett, EE: What trends are you
seeing in the broader RF/Microwave test
field, or specifically in 5G test?
Yost and Chang, NI: With
5G upon us, the excitement
is tangible as the entire
wireless industry moves
toward a 5G-connected
world. Over the next few
Yost
years, 5G will start deploying in volume, and we'll all
get to experience the benefits of this technology
firsthand.
As we move to widescale deployment, we're
Chang
bringing 5G technologies
off the engineers' benches, through automated verification and into full production. For the sub 6 GHz bands, the test
techniques are well understood and ready
today. For 5G in the mmWave
bands, the challenges and
business opportunity are
much greater.
The move toward mmWave
bands is one such area
where 5G is affecting test
and measurement. Most 5G

components today operate between 24
and 55 GHz, which requires the presence of a greater number of antennae
to ensure efficient transmission and
performance. Other issues that must
be contended with in the case of these
frequencies include path loss and lineof-sight blockage. Manufacturers today
are looking to address this through the
creation of antenna arrays that help fit
multiple antennae in small spaces for a
range of devices, mostly mobile devices.
The miniaturization of these arrays to the
chip level in 5G mobile devices, however,
makes it much more difficult for test engineers to obtain accurate performance
measurement. Ensuring that the required
5G infrastructure is in place, hence, is an
important issue to be addressed for these
components to be tested effectively.
And at NI, we're very excited to be taking these challenges head-on.
MH: RF/Microwave and 5G testing covers a lot of ground-everything from
algorithm development to channel
sounding. What specific areas are today's testing vendors focusing on?
Yost and Chang: Advanced wireless research is continuing in a number of different areas. 3GPP Release 16 and Release 17
has been driving some of the research, for
example, like making improvements and

modifications to enable V2X communications, power optimization for IIoT applications, and even as drastic as researching
new physical layer waveforms for communications above 52.6 GHz. How unlicensed spectrum will be shared between
cellular communications and everything
else (like Wi-Fi) is another hot topic in the
standards community. Of course, 3GPP
and standards bodies aren't the only ones
defining wireless innovation. Topics like
terahertz frequencies for communications
and sensing are gaining traction as well.
MH: 5G rollout has already begun, but
primarily at the mobile wireless service
provider level. Large-scale 5G deployment appears to still be at least a year
away. When do you foresee widespread
rollout of true 5G services?
Yost and Chang: This all depends on how
"true 5G service" is defined. The majority of the world will not get 5G services
in the next year. It is expensive and
time-consuming to roll out new equipment, but sub 6 GHz technology is being deployed today. It will likely take 3-5
years for these technologies to be widely
available, if not longer. But 5G, as it's defined, is a lot more than just sub 6 GHz
technology and it's much more than just
enhancements to the mobile broadband.
Applications that will be built on top of

National Instruments' PXI-5831 vector signal transceiver.
OCTOBER 2019 EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

http://www.EVALUATIONENGINEERING.COM

Evaluation Engineering

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Evaluation Engineering