Aeroflex boosts PXI 3000 platform's communications

An Aeroflex product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jul 28, 2009

Aeroflex has added new communications standards to its PXI 3000 Series modular test platform.

This addition enables communications test engineers to address a variety of 2G and 3G wireless data standards with a single, flexible, software-defined system.

With the addition of the Bluetooth measurement suite along with the WLAN and CDMA2000/1xEVDO plug-ins for the PXI Studio software application, as well as significant upgrades to the Wimax, UMTS and GSM/Edge measurement suites, the PXI 3000 Series is described as a versatile communications test application.

All measurement suites are supported by Aeroflex's PXI Studio application software for easy manual operation with versatile measurement displays to facilitate test system integration as well as testing and problem solving in production and research and development.

Enabling the characterisation of Bluetooth and Bluetooth enhanced data-rate (EDR) radio signals in accordance with the requirements of 2008 Bluetooth Specifications 1.2/2.0/2.0 + EDR/2.1/2.1 + EDR revision 2.1E1, the new Bluetooth measurement suite enables fast measurement of all signal characteristics including burst power, spectrum and modulation accuracy.

Designed for PXI-based radio-frequency (RF) test systems used in the development and manufacturing of mobile radio transmitters, sub-modules and RF integrated circuits (RFICs), the new CDMA2000 and 1xEVDO reverse link measurement suite from Aeroflex enables the precise characterisation of CDMA2000 rev C and 1xEVDO rev A reverse link transmissions.

The release now features phase and amplitude error measurements accessible from within the PXI Studio plug-in.

The WLAN measurement suite adds support for IEEE 802.11a/b/g with data rates and corresponding modulation and encoding formats up to 54Mb/s.

DSSS-OFDM support is now available, along with new measurements including carrier leak, skew and gain imbalance.

In conjunction with the appropriate hardware configuration, this measurement suite is suitable for testing smart phones, which are now rapidly proliferating with dual cellular and WLAN connectivity.

It tests multiple standards in parallel, which reduces test time.

The GSM/Edge measurement suite simplifies programming and the integration of PXI into automated test applications for GSM handsets/devices.

It has been updated to include an increased frequency lock range to 300kHz, making it possible to test terminal transmissions even while unsynchronised to a downlink (DL) signal.

The UMTS uplink measurement suite is designed to perform high-speed RF measurements on UE radio transceivers, subassemblies and RF components during research and development, design verification, manufacturing test and quality control.

It now supports phase discontinuity, IQ skew, gain imbalance, carrier leak and phase/amplitude error.

When used with PXI 302xC, it supports receiver bit-error-rate (BER) sensitivity testing in loopback and 'drive to level', making it possible to control the device-under-test (DUT) output power from the tester.

The Wimax measurement enables Wimax PHY (physical layer), Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) power and spectrum and modulation measurements in accordance with IEEE 802.16e (2005).

The updates to this suite include user-defined SEM and expanded modulation measurements, including IQ skew, gain imbalance and carrier leak.