Hi In this era of rapid technological advancement, technology leaders (innovators) are facing the dilemma of technological innovation. On the one hand, technological innovations give companies a chance to gain a foothold in the market and expand their market share. On the other hand, as the market matures, this competitive advantage of accelerating the growth of the company is difficult to maintain for a long time, because the competition will gradually commodify and popularize the product. The original place on the product will gradually become ordinary and need New technological innovations bring new product highlights. As a result, innovation has become a responsibility, forcing companies to continue to carry out technological innovations in order to maintain their existing leadership in the market, and to bring innovations to market in the shortest possible time.
One of the most powerful proofs of the dilemma of technological innovators is in the wireless communications industry. Taking the telecom market as an example, the mobile phone product has become more and more complicated as more and more functions are integrated into smaller and cheaper devices. In the past, only a few phones had multi-band capabilities, but now consumers generally demand that their phones also have Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM radio. With the emergence of various wireless communication standards, many mobile phone manufacturers hope to take the lead in bringing new products to the market and ensure their market share. In this case, the design and testing process will become more difficult and the engineers will be under tremendous pressure.
In keeping with the technology-driven market pace, more and more companies are adopting a software-centric platform that works with modular hardware to connect the entire process from production to production – this is based on The solution to virtual instrument technology. With an open software platform, engineers can simplify and connect design toolchains to integrate more technology into basic schematic modeling and simulation tools. A modular test architecture under the same software platform verifies the functionality of the product. By leveraging the openness of both the software platform and the modular architecture, vendors can use the same platform to connect design and testing, reducing time-to-market and addressing the growing complexity of product features. The advantages of the product.
In this article, we'll take a general look at the evolution of wireless technology and introduce a software-based test framework designed for emerging wireless technologies, as well as some successful user solutions.
Wireless technologyWireless technology has traditionally been considered (even classified as) a very deep part of the telecommunications industry, and now we can see that this technology is expanding horizontally to many non-traditional markets. Wireless technology has become a default device feature, for example, the chip integrates multiple wireless technologies onto the board; the car uses Bluetooth technology for band-free communication; consumer products provide a variety of imaginary wireless technologies on a single device; industrial dependence Wireless sensors provide real-time data to monitor and control various operations.
Looking back at wireless networks, we can see that these technologies can be broadly classified into some major categories: Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN), local areas, urban areas, and the latest regional regional networks. We can also classify wireless wide area networks into cellular technology.
Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) is very active and contains many different technologies. WPAN is the core of wireless homes, because such technologies, such as Ultra-Wideband (UMB), are being widely used to solve the problem of too many cables in the home. UWB allows you to place a flat-screen TV anywhere in your home without cables.
ZigBee is targeted at the industrial sector, and wireless allows HVAC, lighting and sensor control to be placed anywhere without cables.
Extending from the personal area network is the Local Area Networks (LAN). The main technology here is 802.11. 802.11a/b/g is a familiar name.
Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks) include the upcoming WiMAX. 802.16-2004 includes two fixed-point standards, one below 11 GHz and the other line-of-sight standard extending to 66 GHz. Since 802.16e adds roaming capabilities to WiMAX, it now appears to be a very promising technology.
802.22 is a new standard being developed. This Wireless Regional Area Network (WRAN) functions within the frequency range of the 54 to 862 MHz standard television channel. This cognitive technology uses a television frequency band that has never been used before. Since WRAN can exceed 40km, 802.22 will most likely support WiMAX.
If we draw a variety of different standards along the timeline, the development of many technologies will become very clear at once, and the development of these new standards is proceeding at an unprecedented rate. Many technologies (such as AMPS, 802.11, GSM, and RFID) have been around for years, but in recent years more and more standards are being developed to address the growing need for data and demand.
Before 2000, it would suffice for each device to have only one or two wireless technologies. But now, because multiple standards exist at the same time, it is necessary for the device to implement multiple standards at the same time to be introduced to the market, providing users with seamless operation. This places stringent demands on designers, test engineers and manufacturers.
The innovation of wireless technology will bring more standards and make these trends more complicated. Listed below are some of the emerging wireless standards under development:
* OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) - This technology is gaining popularity and is being implemented in many new standards.
* 4G cellular technology
* Cognitive Radio - As part of the 802.22 standard, this technique searches for empty spectrum for use in the event of a collision or communication flow. The communication stream is then transferred to other unused spectrum.
* Ad Hoc and sensor networks
* Software Defined Radio (SDR) - SDR uses reconfigurable hardware, such as an FPGA, to make the hardware suitable for ever-changing network requirements.
* Multiple Antenna System (MIMO) - Multiple Inputs, Multiple Outputs - In these systems, multiple antennas are used to increase system capacity.
* Ultra-Wideband (UWB) - On first-generation devices (3.1 to 4.8 GHz), each channel uses a full 528 MHz and transmits data at 480 Mbit/s.
* Multiple wireless standards coexist – standards organizations are working to address these challenges.
It can be seen that the wireless field is developing rapidly, and engineers still have a lot of work to continue. Equipment manufacturers, test engineers, and designers face many challenges in the presence and coexistence of all these new standards. Usually, the purchase cycle of RF equipment is usually 5 to 7 years, but the launch cycle of new standards and new technologies. It is a round every two years. It is therefore clear that due to the rapid update of market demand, the purchased RF equipment will soon become obsolete.
How to solve these problems? What kind of platform can be extended to address rapid technological advances in the wireless market? Let's take a look at a complete, integrated test and design verification system described in the illustration.
Just as software radio distinguishes between hardware and software, let's focus on these two aspects—hardware and software—as much as the virtual instrumentation we've discussed provides solutions to these challenges. Usually, the device under test contains a variety of different functions that need to be verified by peripheral test hardware. These features may include DC, AC, audio, video, IR, and RF, to name a few. As more features are concentrated on this device under test, the test hardware platform needs to be more open and modular, enabling upgrades and meeting the latest needs.
The software part, shown in dark blue in the figure, requires three key tasks—system control for issuing commands to the test hardware, signal analysis processing to convert raw data into meaningful results, and an effective The way to display the visualization of the measurement results. In addition, the software platform needs to be open, allowing users to interact with Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software, integrating more technology into basic schematic modeling and simulation tools, and finally leveraging embedded development. The tool automatically converts these electronic designs into physical chips or boards.
NI anticipates this industry's growth and expands its modular instrumentation line to meet user needs with a variety of advanced commercial technologies at an amazing release rate (one product every two business days).
These modular hardware capabilities range from temperature and pressure to RF vector signal generation and acquisition, all seamlessly integrated into an open PXI platform. In addition, with the built-in high-bandwidth backplane and timing and trigger bus, the PXI platform ensures synchronization. It is worth mentioning that this platform is upgradeable. When a new processor is introduced, the processor can be upgraded without abandoning the entire platform, and an engineer can select one of the existing thousands of modules. Test new features. This provides a huge advantage over traditional instruments. Because once you purchase a traditional instrument, until the next time you update the device (usually 5 to 7 years), you are tied to the processor or test features in that instrument.
From a software perspective, the modem package for LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI (an ANSI C development environment) provides a foundation for developing specific communication standards within the industry, such as CDMA2000, GPS, UWB, GSM, Bluetooth, ZigBee. ,and many more. With this flexible and adaptable foundation, engineers can develop standards-compliant software on the same platform as new standards emerge and are approved.
Let us prove how the hardware and software integrated RF platform meets the user's needs through the following two examples:
User Solution 1: Prototyping MIMO-OFDM 4G System
This is a very representative example of how to quickly prototype and develop a system using this platform.
This is a MIMO-OFDM 4G system developed at the University of Texas in AusTIn. Under the guidance of Professor Robert Heath of the UT Wireless Network and Communications Laboratory, three students designed the prototype of the 4G system in six weeks.
In the front panel at the top right of the image below, you can see two pictures of the UT campus - one above is the original photo and the bottom one is the image restored after transmission via the 4G system. You can also see the constellation map and some of the measurements taken.
Tools they use include NI RF vector signal generators, RF vector signal analyzers, modem kits, and LabVIEW software. In addition, relevant personnel at the University of California at Berkeley are using the same equipment for similar research.
Using the same system, our customers have developed applications for the growing market of RFID, such as tire pressure monitoring and keyless entry. The response returned from the RFID tag or reader needs to be generated and triggered quickly. The triggering performance of the NI PXI platform with tens of picosecond resolution is sufficient for all mission requirements.
User Solution 2: Software Radio Platform for Spectrum Monitoring
Looking at an example of a local Chinese market, Chengdu Huari Communications (Hua Ri Telecom) is a large-scale developer and manufacturer of radio-oriented systems that need a solution for spectrum monitoring, orientation and signal identification. This system needs to provide users with better performance to monitor signals inside and outside the government-regulated band, while also using signal recognition and directional functions to identify sources of illegal transmission or interference.
Using the NI PXI-5660 PXI vector signal analyzer and software developed in the LabVIEW environment, Huari developed the HR-100, a patent-pending broadband radio receiver and monitoring system. This system can be used both as a radio receiver and as an RF vector signal analyzer to detect modern wideband digital communication signals as well as traditional narrowband analog broadcast signals. In addition, the system can be configured as a single channel receiver or as a multi-channel orientation system. Because this new system uses an open software radio platform, the HR-100 can perform both standard and custom measurements, which previously required multiple dedicated, stand-alone instruments. And, companies can upgrade this open system to meet the needs of future wireless standards, which is critical to the rapid changes in wireless standards.
Recently, this system has passed the rigorous verification test of relevant departments, demonstrating its outstanding performance.
Technical Documentation: Software Radio Architecture and Applications
Chinese webpage: Learn more about NI RF technology and applications
Chinese webpage: wireless remote monitoring
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