At the end of 2017, 3GPP officially released the first draft of the 5GNR standard. Although there is still an R16 to be defined in the SA part in the later period, the early freeze of the 5GNSA new air interface standard is still given the significance of the 5G historical milestone. Recently, during the communication with mainstream media during EDICON2018, Luke Schreier, vice president of the NI automated test market, pointed out: “The industry has reached a consensus on the commercialization of 5G in 2020. The introduction of the first draft of the NR standard also marks the progress of the 3GPP 5G standard. The substantive step will be conducive to carrying out the 5GNR verification and construction work as soon as possible and help us to clarify the specific steps in the process.â€
In response to how NI views the release of the 5G new air interface NSA standard, Luke pointed out: "For NIs focused on testing and measurement, after the R15 standard is finalized, we will be clear about which IPs the next step should help customers and how to upgrade the software. They carry out the development and testing of 5G equipment. If we say that in the era of 3G and 4G, China is following more international standards, we can clearly see that China in the 5G era is not only actively participating but sometimes even leading.â€
Figure 1. Global 5G process table with NI's help
Luke admitted that China has become an important part of the 5G global "battlefield". On the one hand, it actively assists China's R&D forces to seize 5G commercial opportunities based on NI platform solutions from 5G prototype deployment to testing; on the other hand, it integrates global experience. To help accelerate the commercialization of China's 5G, Luke believes that NI's China 5G strategy has been very clear.
Figure 2. Luke Schreier, vice president of NI's automated test market, talks about NI5G strategy at EDICON 2018
As the key to IoT's interconnectedness, 5G is forming a huge communication demand network and integrating it into all walks of life. This has also led many companies to actively invest in standards development and later commercial application testing before the establishment of the 5G standard. "As early as 2010, NI had actively participated in the development of the 5G standard," Luke emphasized. "At that time, everyone may still use 3G and 4G. However, for NI, we have not only actively committed to the development of the 5G standard. It has also invested in 5G prototype verification and hopes to completely cover 5G design, prototype verification, and later testing through a unified platform-based solution."
Sub-6GHz Test Emphasizes Software Upgrades, Qorvo Continues to Test First 5G Commercial Chips with NI's Cost-Effective Solution
In early 2018, at the same time as the MWC show, NI announced a joint demonstration with Qorvo to test the industry's first commercially available 5GRF front-end module QM19000. The RFFEM integrates a power amplifier and a low-noise amplifier and is a mobile device designed to operate in the 3.4GHz spectrum. The Qorvo5GFEM test is based on the flexibility of the NIPXI system. Not only can a variety of waveforms be used to rapidly test Qorvo's 5GFEM designs, but the same hardware, the NI Vector Signal Transceiver (VST), can be reused. "One of the key reasons why Qorvo chose us is that NI's solutions are forward compatible," Luke added. It is reported that as early as the LTE test process, Qorvo has selected the VST with a 1GHz bandwidth. Since the QM19000 still belongs to the Sub-6GHz, at the same time, the NIPXI test system is based on the NIVST technology. Therefore, the VST with sufficient bandwidth is able to fully meet the test requirements, and the only requirement is the upgrade of the software.
Figure 3. This unveiled EDICON, NI brings together the latest 5G solutions: 5GRFIC test program, 5G new air millimeter wave transmission system and the latest SDR new USRP-N310, etc.
As we all know, the highlight of the NI solution is “software-centricâ€. In the same period of MWC, NI also announced a Sub-6GHz 5G test reference solution. The key part of the solution is the NI-RFmxNR measurement software. Not only does it comply with the 3GPP R15 specification of the 5G New Air Terminal (NR), but it will evolve following the pace of the 3GPP specifications. Qorvo upgraded the new Sub-6GHz 5G test reference solution in the industry's first 5GFEM test, with the hardware unchanged.
By combining high-performance RF measurement equipment with extremely fast and flexible measurement software, NI can reuse the same instruments and measurement equipment at multiple stages of product development, helping engineers reduce time to market and measure data correlation times. This time debuting EDICON, NI also demonstrated the Sub-6GHz 5G test reference solution in the Demo area, as well as the joint test case of the first 5G commercial chip with Qorvo. In addition, SDR's latest USRP-N310, 5G new airborne millimeter wave transmission systems, and NI's customer case shows in various fields of aerospace and autopilot have been introduced, demonstrating NI's strength in the 5G-based RF field. .
Millimeter wave band into a new window of opportunity for 5G, NI28GHz millimeter wave transceiver system assists Samsung to achieve IODT test
Different from the "familiar sense" in the 5GSub-6GHz test, the new spectrum available for 5G is mainly concentrated in the middle and high frequency bands, ie the millimeter wave band. Luke said bluntly, the difficulty of 5G test is intensified in the millimeter wave band. On the one hand, because in the millimeter wave band, the characteristics of the channel in the industry are still not enough to understand, in particular, the impact of the channel on the transmission of millimeter wave band is not enough; On the one hand, due to the greatly improved integration of the devices under test and the high signal transmission losses at millimeter wave frequencies, all of these make it impossible to use cables to establish physical connections between the device under test and the test device for testing. Make OTA testing inevitable.
With millimeter wave radio heads in different frequency bands, NI's latest millimeter wave (mmWave) transceiver system is the first of its kind in the market to send and receive real-time bandwidth signals of 2 GHz, covering different millimeter wave spectrums. , to achieve 5G system prototype and channel measurement capabilities. Moreover, the baseband software of this mmWave transceiver system uses the source code of the LabVIEW system design software to provide a complete physical layer of communication and is compatible with the 3GPP and Verizon 5G recommended standards.
Figure 4. A milliWave (mmWave) transmission system on the NIEDICON facilitates 5G system prototyping and channel measurement
Based on this mmWave transceiver system, NI communicates with Samsung millimeter-wave base stations to achieve interoperability testing (IODT) on the premise of NR protocol compliance. IODT is used to test whether the base station and equipment can establish and maintain a reliable communication link to achieve 5G performance under the specified test conditions. Among them, Samsung's 5GNR commercial base station can be connected by NI at 28 GHz wirelessly and in real time. The developed user equipment (UE) is tested. At the same time, NI tests the UE and the base station for real-time data exchange to verify 3GPP-specified downlink functionality and performance. The National Instruments test UE uses the NI 28GHz millimeter wave transceiver system and the 5GNRPhase1 protocol stack developed based on NI LabVIEW system design software.
NI Complete Solutions and Global Experience Help China's 5G R&D Forces
"Our cooperation with Samsung's IODT is actually leading the world. NI is also trying to extract the reusable part for the benefit of more Chinese customers," Luke said. Chinese forces are currently in the process of 5G. Play a role that cannot be ignored and plays a decisive role. In fact, in the cooperation in the field of 5G, NI has many successful cases in China.
In the Massive MIMO system, due to the introduction of a large-scale antenna array at the base station side, the hardware complexity and computational complexity of the system increase dramatically with the increase in the number of antennas, which poses a severe challenge for designing and implementing a massive MIMO system. The National Mobile University Laboratory is based on the NIMassive MIMO beam-field communication prototype system, which consists mainly of antenna arrays, software radio nodes (NIUSRPRIO series), clock distribution modules, and high-throughput PXI systems. It is designed for 5G wireless communications. The technology's 128-Antenna Massive MIMO Prototyping System truly solves 1) flexible software radios; 2) precise time and frequency synchronization between RF devices; 3) bus with high data throughput and 4) high-performance processing capabilities, etc. Test challenges, in addition, due to the use of hierarchical design, and the functional modules of various parts of the NI system are relatively independent, the system is highly scalable and can be used to verify and test a variety of key technologies and algorithm performance for large-scale MIMO wireless communication systems. .
In addition to Southeast University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, including some domestic research institutions, such as the Shanghai Wireless Communications Research Center (WiCO), etc., including domestic companies in a number of areas have in fact already formed a strategic cooperation with NI, and NI uses software as The Center's flexible platform solutions will also provide these universities, research institutes and commercial companies with a complete "testing industry chain" from design, pre-research to final testing.
Luke mentioned that "as early as 2010, NI had established a leading user plan for 5G radio frequency communications, collaborated with the world's leading communications research institutes and communication equipment manufacturers, based on NI's platform strategy, positioning key technologies, and designing systems. The reference architecture will jointly promote the 5G technology research and standardization process.†Southeast University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and WiCO are all part of the NI5G Leading User Program for Radio Frequency Communication.
Figure 5. NI identified the leading user program for NI5G RF communications as early as 2010
"The advantage of NI's platformed solution lies in its openness. Not only can we implement 5G prototyping through SDR, but we can also port some of our software to instrument-level test hardware to provide instrument-level testing and measurement," Luke said. Summing up, "In terms of 5G future key real-time tests, NI has also accumulated for many years, such as NI's ECU simulation test in the automotive field, avionics real-time testing in the aerospace field... These experiences and technologies can be Seamlessly integrates into NI solutions for 5G prototyping and testing."
It is reported that in the current direction of artificial AI that is very hot, NI has already cooperated with artificial intelligence vendors and optimized the current testing process through algorithms such as machine learning. By reducing testing time and improving test efficiency, it further helps customers accelerate their timetomarket products. Process, and this is even more insignificant for the 5G business road racing against time.
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