Philadelphia, PA. At this week’s International Microwave Symposium, NI announced a collaboration with NanoSemi on advanced 5G test capability. NI said the imminent deployment of 5G networks combined with challenging technical specifications requires new technologies to validate and optimize RF performance.  Developers of 5G RF power amplifier (PA) and front-end module (FEM) technology often face difficult tradeoffs between device linearity, output power and efficiency. To address the increased bandwidth and efficiency requirements of 5G, engineers require increasingly sophisticated linearization techniques.

NanoSemi has developed linearization software that complements NI’s existing solutions for PA and RF FEM test. Using these solutions, engineers can test PA and FEM designs using a range of DPD techniques in conjunction with 802.11ax, 4G, and 5G waveforms. Typical NI system configurations include the NI PXI platform, PXI Vector Signal Transceiver technology that offers up to 1 GHz of instantaneous signal-generation and measurement bandwidth, and NI-RFmx 5G measurement algorithms. The new NanoSemi Linearizer software adds advanced digital predistortion (DPD) algorithms using machine-learning techniques.

“NI’s software-defined approach to test and measurement makes PXI an ideal platform to integrate the industry’s most advanced linearizer,” said Nicholas Karter, vice president of product management at NanoSemi, in a press release. “Together with NI hardware, we believe this solution will enable engineers to develop deeper insight into the performance of 5G PAs under extreme linearization conditions and ultimately help them improve the time-to-market of 5G New Radio front-end designs.”

The NanoSemi Linearizer software complements existing NI-RFmx DPD algorithms that already include lookup table and memory polynomial approaches and is available through online software download on the LabVIEW Tools Network.

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/216950