National Instruments (NI) introduced its solution for IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN (WLAN) testing, the NI WLAN Measurement Suite 2.0, which includes enhanced software toolkits for IEEE 802.11n WLAN signal generation and analysis.
The suite integrates with NI 6.6 GHz PXI express multichannel RF signal generators and analysers to deliver phase-coherent multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) RF measurements required for IEEE 802.11n WLAN testing. The suite also delivers measurement speed for those including error vector magnitude (EVM) and spectrum mask and measurement accuracy for IEEE 802.11n and a/b/g WLAN test.
Using a software-defined architecture based on PXI and NI LabVIEW graphical system development software, according to NI, engineers can significantly lower their cost of test and reduce the size of their test systems by testing multiple wireless standards, such as IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, GPS, Bluetooth, GSM/EDGE, WCDMA, WiMAX and others, using the same PXI test system.
The WLAN Measurement Suite 2.0 adds IEEE 802.11n support to the generation and analysis toolkits to facilitate MIMO testing with true port-to-port phase coherency. For measurements, the toolkit integrates with NI PXIe-5663E 6.6 GHz two-, three- and four-channel vector signal analysers (VSAs) to provide engineers multi-stream MIMO measurements. For signal generation, the toolkit integrates with NI-PXIe-5673E 6.6 GHz two-, three- and four-channel vector signal generators (VSGs) to generate multi-stream RF signals.
The NI WLAN measurement suite also allows engineers to software-enable its resolution bandwidth filter feature to remove broadband noise and increase EVM measurement accuracy. With front-end filtering engaged, engineers can achieve residual EVM accuracy of more than -47 dB when testing WLAN devices.