The hottest Ni interprets 5g industrial testing tr

Ni interprets the 5g industry testing trend, and the platformization scheme effectively meets the R & D challenges

all say that 2020 is the first year of 5g business. In the past 2016, Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, at t, Optus, CMCC and other equipment manufacturers have actively cooperated with operators to test 5g, and are ready to move; ITU also announced the 5g schedule and other important news in a timely manner. The industry looking forward to the huge market of Internet of things applications is looking forward to 5g

it is recognized in the industry that 5g will establish a unified standard in 2018, which will be a big struggle before. At this stage, prototyping is a very important step in the 5g standard promotion process, which can promote 5g from concept to implementation! Mr. YaoYuan, market development manager of Ni China, said at the 6th eevia annual ICT Media Forum in China and 2017 industry and Technology Outlook Seminar held recently. Starting with the SDR prototype challenge, he elaborated on the 5g test trend and the most advanced platform scheme in combination with the 5g high bandwidth, the explosive 10000 CFRP accounting for more than 80% of the physical interconnection measurement requirements and the extremely low delay timing requirements of mission critical application scenarios

Figure 1: Yao yuan, market development manager of Ni China, delivered a speech at eevia annual forum

how to overcome the obstacles in the prototype stage of developing language diversification

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is an important means for prototyping at present. IEEE's definition of SDR technology is that some or all physical layer functions are completed through software definition. The simple block diagram is shown in the following figure. The rf hardware on the right was a bottleneck in the past due to the limitations of integration, frequency range, adjustable bandwidth and power consumption. However, in recent years, some top manufacturers have introduced standards with high integration, high frequency range and high channel bandwidth. 1. Product equipped programmable RF transceiver products have largely solved this problem. Therefore, the software on the left side of the figure to be developed in CPU, GPP, DSP and FPGA is becoming more and more important

Figure 2: software defined radio architecture

but for many developers, using software code to define the hardware front end in SDR system is a primary challenge. Because there are many kinds of development languages and different standards to choose from. Matlab, C, c++, assembly, VHDL, Verilog and other development languages can be applied to 5g, SDR and other development scenarios and technical ideas. Finally, the process of implementing 5g system is not limited to the development of a certain language. Developers and researchers waste a lot of valuable time learning different development languages and tools, which is obviously not an efficient approach. At present, Ni can provide a complete set of tools to realize SDR prototyping, including development tools such as LabVIEW, and provide some open source source code of LTE, WiFi and physical layer, which can be used by developers on this basis. This advantage is beyond doubt

figure 3:ni can provide a complete revolutionary platform tool for wireless rapid prototyping

build a high-precision super instrument for 5g high frequency and high bandwidth

as mentioned above, many equipment manufacturers are testing 5g. For example, Nokia used NI LabVIEW and PXI baseband modules to develop 5g proof of concept system for experiment in 2014. Subsequently, the first generation 10Gbps millimeter wave communication link capable of processing streaming data was developed by using Ni's millimeter wave signal transceiver system. In his speech, Yao yuan introduced the 5g peak rate and other tests based on the Ni platform scheme presented by Nokia on several important occasions

figure 4:5g peak rate and other tests conducted by Nokia in cooperation with Ni

also use signals in the 73ghz band. In the 2014 test demonstration, Nokia achieved a peak rate of 2.3gbps in the 1GHz bandwidth through the one by one single input single output architecture and the 16QAM modulation mode. In the experiments in 2015 and 2016, the peak rate of 10Gbps and 14.5gbps were achieved respectively through the two times two architecture of MIMO or the more complex 64QAM modulation mode. Note that this is the rate at which symbols are transmitted. The peak rate has reached the 5g standard

the rate breakthrough is 5g's powerful sword, and the efficient and accurate test and measurement scheme is 5g's shield! For researchers, how to test these communication signals with high frequency range and high channel bandwidth? The vector signal transceiver (VST) introduced by Ni company is a pioneer product in this field. As early as five years ago, Ni released the first version of vector signal transceiver in China for the first time. As one of the most successful hardware products in Ni history, it combines RF generator, RF analyzer, digital i/o and Xilinx FPGA that can be programmed using LabVIEW

Figure 5: the second generation VST (vector signal transceiver) of Ni

vst 2.0 upgrades Xilinx FPGA to virtex-7 with 1GHz timely bandwidth, which can be used for advanced digital predistortion (DPD) testing and high bandwidth signals such as radar, LTE advanced Pro and 5g; With its high measurement accuracy, the EVM of the instrument can reach -50db. The user can customize the software is its important core. Because NI LabVIEW FPGA module extends LabVIEW system design software to apply FPGA on reconfigurable i/o hardware, Ni VST is one of them

we know that LabVIEW can clearly show the advantages of parallel architecture and data flow, making it very suitable for FPGA programming. Even if your brain is wide open and you try to put the four VSTS together, you will see a super instrument with a bandwidth of more than 3.5GHz! Yao Yuan pointed out

Figure 6: a super instrument with more than 3.5GHz bandwidth assembled by four VSTS

platform based measurement solutions to cope with massive connected devices in the IOT era

at this eevia annual forum, Yao yuan of Ni cited Gartner's earlier report that by 2020, connected devices will be used for high precision; The latter will have more than 500 cheap reserves, and its shareholding in Wharton will increase to 7.961 billion. In the IOT application scenario, 50billion devices need to be connected and measured; It is obvious that one-to-one measurement with low efficiency cannot meet the demand. In the IOT scenario, data collection and analysis are indispensable. How to balance demand and efficiency and achieve large-scale high-precision measurement will be an unavoidable challenge in IOT scenarios

he said: for a simple example, the most well-known product of nest company acquired by Google is the thermostat. In the figure below, we can see the internal structure of nest thermostat. From right to left, there are various sensors, ofn modules, batteries, ZigBee, blue tooth, WiFi modules, etc. It also shoulders some other functions. For example, the smoke detector supports ifttt (function), and sends a distress message to the user's neighbors after detecting harmful smoke. Or connect with the air conditioner and humidifier at home to jointly control the switch of these household equipment. Or connect the lifx smart bulb through the WiFi network, and then the nest device will judge the user's status and adjust the brightness, etc. Its role is more like the brain of smart home, which processes a variety of data, all of which are connected wirelessly. It is not difficult to imagine that we will face such wireless scenarios in the future. So the problem is, how to measure these signals efficiently in the face of such complex multi-channel communication? Ni's Modular Instrument System Based on PXI platform provides an unconventional solution

figure 7:ni provides a standard platform for testing intelligent devices

the vast majority of traditional instruments are single channel vector signal transmission or analysis, and a few instruments can be extended to dual channel vector signal analysis. They are also independent RF channels, which is theoretically the same as using two independent desktop instruments. When using independent traditional instruments for MIMO testing, the biggest difficulty is how to make each RF channel collect synchronously and coherently, and do effective demodulation and analysis for the original signal. Traditional desktop instruments usually rely on sharing the same reference clock for synchronization, and its phase accuracy is difficult to be guaranteed. At this time, the advantages of the modular instrument based on PXI platform appear. Since the local oscillator, up/down converter, digitizer and arbitrary waveform generator of the modular instrument are separated, we can easily share the same local oscillator signal with multiple up/down converters to obtain a more accurate phase coherent multi-channel signal, or analyze the output RF signal of MIMO system. Yao yuan explained

on the one hand, in terms of cost and volume, the PXI platform has obvious advantages in using readily available technologies; On the other hand, this is a software defined modular solution, which has very strong flexibility and scalability, and continuously supports evolving communication standards. As shown in the figure, the Ni standardized test instrument is modularized so that it can realize, for example, VST is used to measure WiFi, ZigBee, Bluetooth and other signals, SMU is used to measure batteries, DAQ is used to measure various sensors, and combined with the advantages of LabVIEW image programming, it is undoubtedly a breakthrough in measurement

simulation of very low delay for mission critical applications such as unmanned driving

besides bandwidth, timing delay is also very important for many future applications. Especially in mission critical applications such as unmanned driving and telemedicine, there are very high requirements for delay and stability. If it is driverless, it is necessary to distinguish between people and trees. In case of an emergency, the car can choose to hit a tree, but never hit a person. So how to simulate the scene and how to quickly simulate the scene in the development process requires systematic solutions, which can be implemented using different technologies

figure 8: technology selection taking into account low delay and flexibility

as shown in Figure 8, the nanosecond backplane synchronization technology at the top is accurate and has low time delay, but is not flexible; Another example is the LabVIEW software used for development. Its internal data structure is characterized by high delay but good flexibility. We need to use different technologies for different timing scenarios. Yao Yuan pointed out

postscript

the modular architecture of test and measurement was first proposed by Ni, which has accumulated in this field for more than 10 years. The richness and diversity of products and the seamless combination with software are its strong advantages. In any case, under the organization of imt-2020 (5g) promotion group, 5g R & D and testing are being carried out according to the planned time cycle. It is believed that 5g will shine brightly at the 2020 Olympic Games