Keysight Measurement Forum 2018 has slew of new products on show

New network probes from Keysight include the N7024A Power Rail Probe, the N7042A Rogowski Current Probe, and the N7046A Clamp-on Current Probe.

Keysight Technologies, a technology company that helps enterprises, service providers, and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, has showcased solutions that accelerate innovation in 5G New Radio (NR), the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles and connected cars at its largest annual signature event across Southeast Asia – the Keysight Measurement Forum 2018 in Singapore on July 20, 2018.

Keysight has launched the industry’s first 5G NR software solutions that enable the mobile ecosystem to simulate, prototype and validate physical layer implementations with greater insight and confidence. SystemVue, is a new electronic design automation (EDA) tool that enables mobile operators and their ecosystems to perform 5G system simulation and radio frequency modelling.

PathWave analytics in action.

Keysight has also introduced PathWave, the first design and test software platform that integrates design, test, measurement and analysis.John Kong, Manager (South East Asia), Application Engineering Organization, Field Operations, Keysight Technologies, noted that PathWave can predict failure and provide more insights for users.

Keysight further launched the industry’s first 5G core high-scale network test solution earlier this year. The 5G Packet Core Live Testing Solution provides mobile operators with real-time insights into their quality of service for quick benchmarking of scale and performance of the core network. It features REST APIs that easily embed into the preferred automation framework or development tool of choice.

For IoT device manufacturers, ensuring IoT devices are high quality and perform as expected prior to shipment is critical. Any device failure occurring in the field can result in customer dissatisfaction and even a product recall, with potentially devastating consequences to the manufacturer’s brand and reputation.

Keysight’s new IoT Device Functional Test solution, the X8711A, ensures Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.2 and WLAN b/g/n signalling IoT devices are sufficiently tested for manufacturing defects (e.g., missing/wrong components, and solder issues) prior to shipment. Unlike today’s complex and expensive test systems, the X8711A delivers a cost-effective over-the-air (OTA) signalling test, measuring important RF performance indicators of IoT devices while they are operating normally with production-release software.

As Kong pointed out, IoT devices today are very small and typically do not have connectors available for testing. OTA is basically the only way to test them.

The low-cost IoT Functional Tester is the box on the bottom right.

The orange device is an IoT device. It is placed in a shielded box for OTA testing.

Keysight’s Nemo IoT Meter and Nemo Handy IoT are two new handheld solutions specifically designed for making measurements in the field. IoT Meter is used to verify IoT service quality, both network coverage and connection quality, at customer premises. It runs on a regular Android-based smartphone and is connected through a Narrowband -IoT or LTE-M dongle.

The USB Streamline Series of
network analysers is smaller
and USB-based for flexible
factory floor and field testing.

Nemo Handy IoT provides operators with in-depth information on their IoT network's key performance indicators (KPIs), such as coverage, quality, and detailed log files from active field testing. All results can easily be exported for further post-processing with analytics tools like Keysight's Nemo Analyze and Nemo WindCatcher.

In addition to enabling the mobile and IoT ecosystem to accelerate 5G deployments and deliver cost effective signalling of IoT devices, Keysight’s solutions cover autonomous driving and connected car innovations.

Efforts under way to make the car a fully autonomous media centre are putting a great deal of pressure on the internal car network. As a result, automakers are moving to automotive Ethernet to provide a flexible, scalable, cost-effective in-vehicle networking backbone for the connected, autonomous car, and adopting audio-video bridging and time-sensitive network protocols.

All this new functionality must be properly validated and secured. New Keysight automotive Ethernet solutions provide the hardware, software, cables and accessories needed for compliance tests, as well as complete testing of BroadR-Reach, 100Base-T1 and 1000Base-T1 standards.