Keysight 5G New Radio (NR) software solutions

1. Introduction
2. Customer problem
3. How does Keysight solution solve this problem
4. Key Features and Business Benefits
5. Additional Information
6. Related Information

Keysight 5G NR software solutions — SystemVue, Signal Studio Pro, 89600 VSA software and X-Series signal analyzer measurement application — enable development and evaluation of 5G compliant designs that can be validated across the ecosystem, bringing confidence in designs and accelerating time to market.

The industry’s first commercially available 5G New Radio (NR) software solutions are covering the full product design cycle with simulation, signal creation and analysis, uniquely supporting both uplink and downlink directions, and enabling both transmitter and receiver simulation and test.

These software solutions are compliant with the 3GPP Release 15 TS 38 5G specifications for engineers to use to simulate designs in early R&D as well as in design verification, conformance and manufacturing, speeding up testing through the lifecycle.

5G NR introduces new design and test challenges in waveform structure and access up to millimeter wave frequencies. Engineers need to understand how their designs will perform when integrated into their products and the final wireless network.

Additionally, engineers are faced with the time-consuming challenge of keeping track of the latest 3GPP standard documents to ensure the full compliance with the specifications across their development lifecycle when simulating new 5G NR-ready devices, chipsets, transmitter and receiver antennas to develop a complete system with eNB/gNB and mobile devices.

5G NR trials will start with the Non-Standalone (NSA) mode where early services will be delivered through co-existence between LTE eNB (master) and NR gNB (slave). New system requirements will emerge with 3GPP Release 15 Standalone (SA) mode in 2018 (phase 1) and 3GPP release 16 in 2019 (phase 2). To cover these migrations towards full 5G NR commercial deployment in 2020, engineers will require a flexible and forward compatible platform in terms of frequency bands (sub-6GHz, 28 GHz, 39 GHz plus other mmWave bands) and signal bandwidth (up to 1 GHz in mmWave). Flexibility will play a key part in achieving successful 5G development, from baseband algorithm simulations, modeling, design verification, conformance test to manufacturing

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Keysight offers multiple 5G NR solutions covering the entire lifecycle from simulation, research, development, design verification, conformance tests and manufacturing with trusted algorithm and measurement IP based on the latest 3GPP standards.

By supporting 3GPP Release 15 specifications in the Keysight software tools, chipset, device and NEM engineers can fully characterize and verify their 5G NR design performance in different use cases and get to market faster. These software platforms accelerate PHY (physical) layer 1 development, specifically integrating waveform generation and analysis with simulation or with a broad range of Keysight signal generators and signal analyzers. They also support variable numerology, uplink/downlink measurements, carrier aggregation, channel coding, and multi-antenna transmission, to make all designs fully characterized.

The waveform generation and analysis software are used across all frequency bands, both sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequency bands including 28 GHz and 39 GHz using hardware with up to 5 GHz bandwidth, and can be used to validate designs in different use scenarios ensuring confidence in performance through the ecosystem. Building on a flexible platform, future 5G NR enhancements are easily added as the specification rolls to release 16 and beyond.

Advanced system level modeling software enables embedding RF channel models and antenna models with 5G compliant waveforms to speed chipset, device and antenna analysis in multiple domains.

Keysight offers validated and aligned software algorithms across the 5G NR software solutions: SystemVue, Signal Studio Pro, 89600 VSA software and X-Series signal analyzer measurement application.

• SystemVue with 5G baseband verification library provides trusted reference algorithm with 5G NR including all numerology and signal configuration to model all RF impairment to minimize the design errors later in the development cycle. For 5G NR, it also means simulating end-to-end system with built-in channel model and different phased array structure on both the transmitter and receiver side.
• Signal Studio Pro for 5G NR is a flexible signal creation tool that will reduce the time you spend on 5G NR signal creation. With its uplink and downlink configurations, one can quickly and easily be generating and validating 5G NR signals for component, transmitter, and receiver test. It supports two types of licenses as PC-based license or instrument embedded license across early research, design verification test and manufacturing.
• 89600 VSA software with 5G NR option has the modulation analysis with essential downlink and uplink signal configurations for EVM and other signal characteristics to help R&D engineers with various troubleshooting tools to get the signal design far better. The VSA is a gold standard in the industry for vector signal analysis of complex signals like 5G NR.
• 5G NR X-Series measurement application simplifies complex measurements for EVM and power spectrum measurements. It delivers repeatable results with standard-based settings for downlink and uplink which can help you gain more insights into the device performance and speed time-to-market with the same measurements leveraged across different hardware platforms such as X-Series signal analyzers or PXIe modular products.

Depicts Keysight’s VSA software - 5G NR demodulation at 39 GHz with 400 MHz bandwidth

www.keysight.com/find/5gnr_sw

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS) is a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers, and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world.  Keysight's solutions optimize networks and bring electronic products to market faster and at a lower cost with offerings from design simulation, to prototype validation, to manufacturing test, to optimization in networks and cloud environments. Customers span the worldwide communications ecosystem, aerospace and defense, automotive, energy, semiconductor and general electronics end markets. Keysight generated revenues of $3.2B in fiscal year 2017. In April 2017, Keysight acquired Ixia, a leader in network test, visibility, and security. More information is available at www.keysight.com.