Companies advance mmWave measurement technology for 5G

JS Pan, General Manager of Wireless System Design and Partnership at MediaTek, said: “We’ve worked closely with Rohde & Schwarz over the past few years to accelerate the development of mmWave technologies and optimize our solutions for 5G networks. Our tests on the Rohde & Schwarz OTA test system will ensure that our customers can confidently bring to market devices that meet the rigorous requirements of 5G.”

The Rohde & Schwarz solution meets some of the major challenges of real-world 5G deployments. For example, millimetre waves experience high path loss, and shadowing effects further decrease signal strength. The solution – a beamforming antenna array design – demands a test environment capable of measuring multiple beam streams to ensure the required quality and characteristics of each beam.

Rohde & Schwarz is providing a complete 5G mmWave OTA turnkey solution using the R&S ATS1800C CATR chamber that ensures repeatable, accurate and robust characterization of 5G transmitters and receivers.

Alexander Pabst, Vice President Systems and Projects at Rohde & Schwarz, said: “To deliver on the promise of high speed and reliable 5G connectivity, it’s essential to accurately measure and test antenna performance in an OTA environment. Our high performance turnkey OTA system is ideally suited to help companies like MediaTek more quickly and reliably bring their solutions to market.”

The R&S TS8980R&D-M1 test system consists of the R&S ATS1800C CATR (compact antenna test range) chamber – along with the R&S SMW200A vector signal generator, R&S FSW50 signal and spectrum analyser and R&S ZVA40 vector network analyser.

The R&S ATS1800C CATR is a movable shielded chamber solution that allows engineers to fully characterize and test their components in a non-conducted OTA environment.

At 5G mmWave frequencies, the R&S ATS1800C can perform black box 3D far field measurements of 30cm devices (Smartphones, tablets, notebooks…) while occupying an unrivalled footprint of only 1.4m2 (15sqft).

It includes a highly accurate positioning system that allows for handling transmitter and receiver performance measurements in a 5G environment with beamformed signals, covering a wide frequency range of 20 to 87GHz.

Using the associated test and measurement equipment and the R&S ATS1800C CONTEST measurement software, radiation patterns of 5G antenna arrays can be measured extremely precisely in just a few minutes.

Furthermore, device transmitter tests can be performed using the R&S ATS1800C in combination with the R&S FSW67 signal and spectrum analyser, which provides a direct measurement frequency range up to 67GHz.

For device receiver tests, the R&S ATS1800C is used with the R&S SMW200A vector signal generator. The R&S SMW200A and R&S FSW are the first instruments of their kind to provide mmWave frequencies and 2 GHz modulation/demodulation bandwidth. The R&S ZVA40 vector network analyser supports up to four independent signal sources allowing parallel signal output. The R&S ZVA series is an ideal choice for demanding measurement tasks in the lab and in production.

MediaTek’s Helio M70 5G supports key 5G technologies including standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) network architectures, the sub 6 GHz frequency band and high power user equipment (HPUE). The multimode chipset is designed for compliance with the 3GPP Rel-15 specifications. The Helio M70 is available now, and is expected to ship in the second half of 2019.