Evaluation Engineering - 21

COMPLIANCE

CONFORMANCE AND COOPERATION
MOVE 5G FORWARD
By Rick Nelson, Interim Chief Editor
Conformance and regulatory issues
must be addressed in the rollout of
any technology such as 5G. And effective
development and deployment strategies
require cooperative efforts among component manufacturers, test providers,
industry organizations, standards and
certification bodies, and universities and
research institutions.
Several industry experts who provided
input for our recent report on 5G technology1 commented on efforts in conjunction
with other companies, universities, government agencies, and standards bodies.
"Our first priority when we started
our 5G program over five years ago was
to build collaborations with the market
leaders from commercial, government,
and academic institutions," said Roger
Nichols, 5G program manager, Keysight
Technologies Inc. "As of today, we have
over 35 of these collaborations around the
globe, across different technologies, and
across the ecosystem." That ecosystem,
he said, includes operators like Docomo,
modem companies like Qualcomm and
base-station companies like Nokia;
universities including the University
of California at both Berkeley and San
Diego, the University of Bristol, Southeast
University in Nanjing, and NYU Wireless;
and standards bodies like 3GPP, CTIA,
and GCF. "These have been rich engagements with mutual benefit plus helping
drive the overall 5G commercialization
across the ecosystem" he said.
Rohde & Schwarz has partnered with
several 5G development groups, including the 5G Lab Germany, hosted and
managed by the Technical University
of Dresden, according to Andreas
Roessler, technology manager, Rohde
& Schwarz USA. In addition, "Since the
early days of 5G, Rohde & Schwarz has
been partnering with the Fraunhofer
Heinrich-Hertz Institute (HHI) of Berlin

on channel-sounding measurement campaigns for frequencies up to 300 GHz, including the measurements of the angleof-arrival (AoA)."
Roessler also said Rohde & Schwarz
recognizes the importance of industry
cooperation in meeting the demand for
end-to-end system optimization in new
and emerging vertical markets, noting
that the company was early to join the
5G Alliance for Connected Industries
and Automation (5G ACIA) and the 5G
Automotive Association (5GAA). "In both
organizations, Rohde & Schwarz provides
its expertise from a test and measurement
perspective and actively contributes to
the related working groups," he said.
According to Alejandro Buritica, senior marketing manager, Semiconductor
Solutions, Nationa l Instr uments,
"Collaboration with industry, standards
bodies, and research institutions is key to
realizing successful 5G deployment and
adoption. We continue to invest and work
together with top researchers on core
measurement challenges."
Added Buritica, "With regards to standards bodies, we actively participate in
key RAN 1 and RAN 4 3GPP meetings to
make sure we stay abreast of upcoming
test needs. We have a good relationship
with NIST on test and calibration methodologies for new 5G device types."
He continued, "In terms of academic
research, NI is involved with many nonpublic collaborations, but one public example of a 5G collaboration is with the
University of Warwick. They have been
using NI's mmWave Transceiver System
as well as NI's 5G NR test UE to research
various topics related to vehicular communications. Also, the University of
Bristol and Lund University partnered
with NI to demonstrate world records
in 5G wireless spectral efficiency using
massive MIMO."

NI has also collaborated with several
companies. "For example, we have worked
very closely with semiconductor industry leaders Qorvo and Analog Devices
to help them create extensive test solutions for new 5G parts," said Buritica. "We
also cooperated with Tokyo Electron,
FormFactor, and Reid-Ashman to demonstrate a 5G mmWave semiconductor wafer-probe test solution that helps
reduce risk and cost for validation and
production test of 5G mmWave ICs."
In addition, he said, NI introduced its
5G New Radio Test UE earlier this year.
It is a fully Release 15 NSA-compliant
UE that can attach to commercial gNB
hardware. He added that NI has also partnered with Spirent on a 5G NR gNB solution that, combined with other Spirent
products, can create a full end-to-end 5G
network. "Complete with logging capabilities, this end-to-end network offers
valuable validation capabilities for 5G
equipment," he said.
Additional collaborative efforts include
Spirent's work the UK Governmentsponsored 5GIC (5G Innovation Center) at
Surrey University. "This multivendor environment fosters innovation around 5G
industry verticals," said Stephen Douglas,
head of 5G practice, Spirent. "Spirent 5G
traffic emulation is used to make the facility the largest capacity representative
5G test network for research, innovation,
and development in the world."
Spirent is also working with the
Warwick Manufacturing Group, which
Douglas described as an academic department providing research, education,
and knowledge transfer in engineering,
manufacturing, and technology. "WMG
is leading the UK research around 5G for
the future of autonomous vehicles and
Industry 4.0," he said. "Spirent 5G digital-twin emulation solutions are helping
turn the test beds into representative and
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