- Rohde & Schwarz presented an evolution of its R&S CMX500 5G radio communication tester at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 in Barcelona.
- This one-box tester can support all 5G NR communication technologies: LTE, 5G NR FR1 and FR2 in standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) TDD and FDD modes.
This R&S CMX500 tester is aimed at manufacturers of 5G NR communication chipsets and devices as well as certification service providers, who can thus cover the entire product life cycle, from the early design phases in R&D through the equipment certification phase to application testing.
To realize the one-box tester approach, Rohde & Schwarz has integrated new sub 8 GHz RF units for FR1 into the R&S CMX500. The CMX500 one-box tester can be used in combination with the new remote radio heads (RRH), which now cover mmWave frequencies up to 50 GHz in FR2. Consequently, even challenging 5G NR band combinations can now be simulated with a single R&S CMX500. For example, higher order carrier aggregation with up to 8CC combinations of FR1 and FR2 in downlink is possible, which can achieve data rates of 10 Gbps and beyond on the IP layer.
Data-hungry enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) applications like 8K video streaming or augmented and virtual reality will call for data rates as high as 10 Gbps in uplink and 20 Gbps in the downlink. The R&S CMX500 one-box tester is ready today to validate such high data throughput tomorrow, all in a single box, making it, according to Rohde & Schwarz, ten times more powerful than the R&S CMW500 wideband radio communication tester.
The R&S CMX500 complements its modular hardware design with R&S CMsquares. This web based graphical user interface lets users quickly manage their 5G testing tasks with the help of intuitive measurement squares, from RF callbox measurements to protocol verification to higher layer application tests. The test portfolio from Rohde & Schwarz includes related peripheral solutions like shielded chambers for over-the-air (OTA) measurements in FR2, all from a single source, which users can seamlessly integrate into their test setups.
