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Many of you likely remember receiving
your first text message or downloading
your first web page on a mobile phone.
Today, a mobile phone can download
high-resolution video in seconds and
provide higher data throughput than
your first laptop. However, the goal
of tomorrow’s wireless is much bigger
than giving you faster download
speeds.
Within a decade, the number of
connected devices will outnumber
connected people 10 to 1. As a
result, future wireless standards are
evolving to address new use cases
for connecting things instead of
merely people. These things will not
only use new wireless technologies
but also require new instrumentation
and carry a lower price tag. Because
future devices demand a different
approach to wireless test, we at NI are
continuing to evolve our PXI platform
to address tomorrow’s wireless test
challenges.
Future of Wireless
The International Telecommunication
Union’s (ITU’s) vision for International
Mobile Telecommunications in 2020
(IMT-2020) outlines one of the clearest
requirements for the range of use
cases in future wireless standards. This
vision, designed as a framework to
communicate the technical requirements
of 5G, outlines three distinct use cases.
Although these use cases specifically
define the requirements of future
mobile communication standards, they
reflect the changing requirements for
technologies like 802.11ad, 802.11ax,
Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and more.
The first wireless use case, Enhanced
Mobile Broadband (eMBB), defines
the evolution in network capacity
and peak data rates expected from
a future wireless technology – and is
designed to deliver up to 10 Gbps of
downlink throughput, which is 100X
that of single-carrier LTE. The second
use case, Massive Machine-Type
Communication (mMTC), is designed to
deliver wireless access to more devices
in more locations at a lower cost. The
third and final use case is Ultra-reliable
Machine-Type Communication (uMTC) –
and established new requirements for
improved are latency and packet error
rates.
The requirements of tomorrow’s
wireless technology are not only driving
new wireless standards like NB-IoT, 5G,
and 802.11ax but also changing the
way engineers design and test mobile
devices. For example, wider bandwidths
in future standards like 5G require wider
bandwidth RF instruments. In addition,
multi-antenna technologies like MIMO
and beamforming produce a need for
modular and flexible instrumentation
that can scale from testing single-
antenna devices to 8x8 MIMO devices
and beyond. Finally, lower cost radios
also require lower cost approaches
to wireless test. In a scenario where
Changes in Wireless Demand a New Test Approach
David Hall, National Instruments
30 l New-Tech Magazine Europe