President and CEO
Rohde & Schwarz USA
Rohde & Schwarz, founded in 1933, is 82 years old, and it operates in North America just as any other multinational technology company would, according to Scott Bausback, president and CEO, Rohde & Schwarz USA. Rohde & Schwarz originally entered the North American market in 1993 through a partnership with Tektronix, but ended that joint venture in 2004 to establish its own operation in the United States. Since the recession in 2008, he said, Rohde & Schwarz has invested heavily in North America and achieved 20% market share among the product lines in which it competes.
“In North America, we bring strong technical support and a very long-term view,” Bausback said. “The company is privately held by members of the families of the founders, providing trans-generational stability. We spend a high level on R&D, and we’ve got plenty of time to get it right—the measurement science, product excellence, and service and support—uninterrupted by quarterly conference calls. We try to be the industry’s professor—we are very generous with training and information.”
The company also offers long-term support. “We service everything we sell in the United States in Columbia, MD”—including 1993-vintage spectrum analyzers.
Rohde & Schwarz has been known for its RF/microwave frequency-domain instruments, but in 2010 the company introduced its RTO and RTM oscilloscopes. “The oscilloscopes were a necessary entry to support the applications our customers are bringing to us,” Bausback said. “They are dealing with serial data but also microwave parasitics on boards and impedance mismatches. They need time-domain expertise, which goes hand in hand with the other necessary part of the equation—the signal generators and analyzers.”
One area the company has not embraced is open-architecture instrumentation. “We look at everything from a pure measurement-sciences perspective,” Bausback said, “and many applications we are dealing with are not conducive to PXI.” He added that Rohde & Schwarz does offer small-form-factor signal generators and analyzers.
When asked about the differences in requirements among North American, European, Asian, and the rest-of-the-world markets for test equipment, he said he sees fewer and fewer differences over time. “Whereas the United States had been high-speed design-oriented and Europe had been an outstanding market for embedded design, now the world has become homogenous, with everyone trying to pass ridiculously high speeds through FR4,” he said.
Multinational companies need to contend with foreign currency exchange rates, and the euro and U.S. dollar in particular have been fluctuating recently. However, Bausback said, the exchange rate is not a driver, adding, “Our products are competitively priced, and you won’t see a difference on the surface at all.”
The company’s products are mainly designed and manufactured in Germany. “Rohde & Schwarz is one of few players co-locating R&D and manufacturing,” Bausback said. “Our products are designed and built within an hour and a half of each other.” The company avoids outsourcing. It has no semiconductor fab, but it does make its own bare boards, builds its own circuit assemblies, and machines its own connectors—assuring quality at all stages, he added.
Despite being headquartered in Munich, the company ensures that North American customers have input. “We have an engineering design center in Beaverton,” he said, “and we also have a large project-management team in North America to bridge design centers and customers so we offer a seamless link between our customers and the parent company.”
When asked about significant new products and product enhancements, he cited the R&S FSW high-end signal and spectrum analyzer, which operates at 67 GHz with an analysis bandwidth expanded to 500 MHz. He also cited the R&S SMW200A high-end vector signal generator, which now offers an expanded frequency range to 20 GHz. It combines a baseband generator, RF generator, and fading simulator in a single box. Bausback described it as a versatile building block with lots of applications. He also mentioned the R&S ZNBT vector network analyzer, which offers 24 test ports.
Looking to the future, 5G is on everyone’s radar. “Rohde & Schwarz has been a leading player in every digital mobile radio standard since GSM, and 5G is no exception,” he said. “We are front and center on it.” When asked about other key trends, he said, “The Internet of Things is driving a lot of people into uncomfortable measurement spaces”—with what previously might have been a simple microcontroller-based device suddenly requiring wireless connectivity. “That’s where we come into play,” he concluded. “We can be the industry consultant or professor to help customers get their designs out the door. Our applications engineers are an important commodity.”