Developing User-Centric Test And Measurement Solutions For The Rapidly Evolving Wireless Market

The wireless market is evolving at a rapidly accelerating rate. OEMs, application developers, and network operators are working closely together to provide an environment characterized by ubiquitous and unlimited connectivity, where the user can experience increasing levels of variety-rich, quality content in addition to traditional voice and basic data services.

In this environment, the delivery systems must be extremely cost competitive and totally transparent to the user. This is especially true for infrastructure and mobile elements, which have become basic commodities.

In order to be attractive and add real value – ultimately to the user – test and measurement (T&M) solutions must be an integral and active part of the development, integration, verification and validation, production, and maintenance of the principal components of these systems.

Wireless landscape – diversity and convergence
The wireless landscape is basically taking shape with two main features and a common aggregating factor. The two main features are characterized by licensed and unlicensed delivery systems, while the aggregating factor is shaping up to be the applications available through these systems.

The licensed systems include W-CDMA and HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), CDMA2000 and 1xEV-DO/EV-DV, and GSM/EDGE/GPRS. In this field, WCDMA is being augmented with HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) and HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) in order to make available a higher-rate, more-economical data system, with CDMA2000 providing an analogous service with its 1xEV-DO/EV-DV variants. These two RATs (radio access technologies) are rapidly expanding their footprint in markets characterized by strong economic growth. For developing markets, GSM/EDGE/GPRS provide a more affordable (and well-proven) technology.

The main unlicensed systems include Wi-Fi and WiMAX, with Wi-Fi being fairly established and WiMAX in a very aggressive definition state. In places like Korea, WiBRO provides a system somewhat bridging Wi-Fi and WiMAX in terms of range and connectivity.

For very close-range communication, Bluetooth and UWB (ultra wideband) seem to be likely contenders (with Bluetooth fairly well established). For close-to-medium range, low-data-rate communication ZigBee is becoming the standard of choice.

From the application point of view, SMS (Short Message Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), pictures, video streaming, browsing, TV programs reception, etc. all need to be considered. Clearly, from a user-satisfaction point of view, most of these applications require 3 to 3.5G systems, at a minimum. Since even features such as HSPA probably cannot be realized up to their theoretical data rate limit due to less-than-optimal transmission channel conditions, 3.75 to 4G features such as OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing), MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output), and smart antennas will have to be implemented in order to remove the main obstacles to the full realization and reliable use of some of the more demanding applications.