- With expected deployments in the mobile telecommunications field of the 5G NR standard, RF 5G components and devices below 6 GHz must be developed and tested.
- National Instruments (NI) has developed a 5G test solution below 6 GHz that meets the 3GPP Release 15 specification for 5G New Radio (NR).
The 5G NR reference solution below 6 GHz from NI is designed to characterize designs and facilitate the transition from R&D validation phases to production testing.
This solution is suitable for testing new broadband RF circuits, particularly those operating in the 3.3-4.2 GHz and 4.4-5.0 GHz bands.
Devices operating with 400 MHz of continuous signal bandwidth can be tested with the PXIe-5840 (VST) Vector Signal Transmitter-Receiver, which features 1 GHz of instantaneous signal generation and analysis bandwidth up to 6 GHz.
The solution integrating the VST has, according to NI, an EVM (Error vector magnitude) better than 0.32% (-50 dB) for 100 MHz NR signals.
The NI-RFmx NR measurement software, which is the essential component of this solution, has evolved in conjunction with the 3GPP specification. The latest version of NI-RFmx NR measurement software offers 5G NR waveforms and measurement capability compliant with the first official specification of 3GPP Release 15 for non-standalone NR, which allow to test both OFDMA and DFT-s-OFDM carrier aggregated waveforms with flexible subcarrier spacing from 15 kHz to 120 kHz.
