Aeroflex 802.11ac measurement suite

Aeroflex is adding 802.11ac support to its PXI 3000 series test system to facilitate the worldwide growth of 802.11ac wireless local area network (WLAN) mobile devices.

Devices using the standard are believed to have a six times increase in network speed over 802.11n, as they use a less congested portion of the spectrum, have a wider bandwidth and use different digital modulation techniques.

The series supports transmitter and receiver testing within one compact PXI modular RF test system, and is designed for use by silicon vendors, WLAN board integrators, consumer electronics device manufacturers and contract manufacturers who need to perform RF parametric tests on devices during manufacturing.

The modules support wideband signal analysis and generation for frequencies up to 6 GHz, covering the bandwidth and frequency requirements of 802.11ac. Modulation schemes are supported, from BPSK to 256QAM. Testing 256QAM demands lower error vector magnitude within the test equipment.

The PXI Studio application software provides a graphical user interface to generate and analyse 802.11a,b,g,n and AC signals. IQCreator application software provides a graphical user interface to create WLAN 802.11a,b,g,n,ac arbitrary waveforms for use in PXI 3000 modular instruments.

The same analysis and waveform generation application software can be expanded to support a range of other communication standards on the same system hardware including WiMAX, Bluetooth BR/EDR/LE, ZigBee, FM and all 2G, 3G and 4G cellular standards. Remote programming user interfaces are available to support integration into automated test systems.