NI, Spirent Team up on 5G Device Testing

National Instruments (NI) and Spirent Communications sought to speed validation of 5G smartphones and IoT devices through a new collaboration that will enable testing without requiring access to 5G base stations.

The partnership will combine NI’s software-defined radio products and LabVIEW platform with Spirent’s methodology to enable 5G New Radio test scenarios encompassing mobile location, video, data, audio and call performance.

The companies said the validation system will support both sub-6GHz and mmWave radio bands, and feature up to 2GHz of bandwidth.

James Kimery, director of wireless research at NI, said in a statement the collaboration is an exciting step for the industry as it moves toward commercial 5G launches: “Being able to assess the accuracy of cellular location in 5G environments and measuring the performance of video and data delivery are critical needs as 5G devices come online.”

The news follows Qualcomm and Vivo’s announcement in June that they successfully integrated 28GHz and sub-6GHz antenna arrays in a single form factor for the first time.

5G devices launches are expected to begin in 2019. – Mobile World Live