August 8, 2012. National Instruments at NIWeek introduced what the company calls an RF vector signal transceiver (VST)—the NI PXIe-5644R—and with it, a new class of software-designed instrumentation. This software-centric architecture, the company said, represents a new era in which engineers and scientists can use LabVIEW to tailor open, FPGA-based hardware for their specific needs.
“A quarter-century ago, NI redefined instrumentation with LabVIEW system design software, and now we are doing it again with our vector signal transceiver,” said Dr. James Truchard, president, CEO, and cofounder of National Instruments. “When we first started our company, we envisioned the central role software would play in instrumentation, and now we are truly seeing LabVIEW revolutionize the way engineers approach RF design and test.”
“At Qualcomm Atheros, instrumentation flexibility and to-the-pin control are critical for keeping our RF test process as efficient as possible, and we're pleased with the performance gains we've seen when testing with NI's new vector signal transceiver,” said Doug Johnson, director of engineering at Qualcomm Atheros. “The NI PXIe-5644R provides us freedom and flexibility in the way we develop our 802.11ac solutions for our customers, and has significantly improved our test throughput.”
The new product features up to 6.0-GHz frequency coverage and 80-MHz instantaneous RF bandwidth, offering the performance necessary for testing the latest wireless standards such as 802.11ac and LTE. It easily expands to support multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) configurations or parallel testing in a single PXI chassis.
http://www.ni.com/vst/
