Aeroflex Ltd. has announced the introduction of a base station (BS) RF tester for all popular cellular and non-cellular wireless standards, including LTE/LTE-A and Wi-Fi. Designed for production test of BS and associated RF components, the tester can be used for both RF design verification and production test on small cells, as well as replacing conventional rack-and-stack instruments for macro BS RF test.
“The tester is based on the Aeroflex PXI 3000 Series, which is established as a fast and flexible platform for testing mobile and connectivity devices. The platform has well proven accuracy and repeatability, with more than two billion UEs tested,” Ran An, product manager for Aeroflex, said. “The evolution in base station RF technology and the growth in small cell deployment are driving the need for faster and more economical base station test. Technology trends will be towards wider RF bandwidth, software-defined radio, high-order MIMO, along with the integration of dual-mode cellular and WiFi functionality.”
The Aeroflex BS RF Tester measures the BS transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) characteristics of LTE/LTE-A, UMTS/HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, GPS, and Bluetooth. A Vector Signal Analyzer (VSA), Vector Signal Generator (VSG), and optional multiple channel RF conditioning modules are integrated into a 4U PXI set. Measurement and analysis component libraries that provide low-level remote programming minimize the effort involved for the manufacturer to develop and integrate a customized ATE system, and to maximize production throughput.
An easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) also enables bench-top manual operation, making it ideal for the R&D-stage regression test and design verification or troubleshooting.
“Our latest PXI-based testers offer faster speed, 2 – 3 times higher throughput and comparable measurement accuracy to traditional rack-and-stack solutions for base station production test. These benefits combine with the well-known advantages of the PXI modular format, which allows the flexibility to configure complex, multi-port instruments in a very small footprint and at a much lower cost,” An said. “This new tester allows base station manufacturers to move away from their legacy production test methodology and RF equipment manufacturers to deploy a single test platform for the converged cellular, connectivity, and infrastructure test markets.”
