802.11-WV-GENER Datasheet, PDF (2/17 Pages) Keysight Technologies – 802.11ad Waveform Generation & Analysis Testbed, Reference Solution

02 | Keysight | 802.11ad Waveform Generation & Analysis Testbed, Reference Solution - Solution Brochure
Flexible and Comprehensive Solution for Generation
and Analysis of 802.11ad Signals
Introduction
Early standards for wireless LAN - IEEE 802.11a and b - were designed to link a
wired broadband connection to PC for web browsing and email in the home or office.
802.11b supported up to 11 Mb/s at 2.4 GHz while 802.11a supported up to 54 Mb/s
at 5 GHz, both in unlicensed spectrum. A later revision, 802.11g, consolidated the two
standards in the 2.4 GHz band but maintained the maximum data rate at 54 Mb/s. It
was soon recognized that new usage models with data sharing amongst connected
devices required more bandwidth than the original standards could support. 802.11n
was introduced to provide up to 600 Mb/s and utilized new techniques like MIMO. IEEE
project groups researched ways to provide very high throughput (VHT) to meet ever
increasing bandwidth requirements for applications such as wireless display, distribution
of HDTV and rapid upload/download of files. The 802.11ac specification added support
for up to a theoretical 6.93 Gb/s using 160 MHz of bandwidth, 8 spatial streams, and
256QAM, although the practical data rate for consumer devices was typically 1.56 Gb/s
using 80 MHz of bandwidth and 4 spatial streams.
The 802.11ad offers up to 6.75 Gb/s of throughput using approximately 2 GHz of spec-
trum in the unlicensed 60 GHz band and maintains backward compatibility with legacy
802.11 devices. The 802.11ad standard adds significant capability, but also presents new
test challenges for engineers developing and designing to this standard.
802.11ad Generation and Analysis Test Challenges
Component and system design and test at 60 GHz is an established, well understood
science. Tools for mmWave circuit design and simulation, network analysis, signal
analysis and power measurement have been used for a number of years in applications
such as short-range radar and military communications. However, the new commercial
60 GHz applications require much wider modulation bandwidth, and hence different test
solutions are needed.
Creating and analyzing signals with 2 GHz of bandwidth at mmWave frequencies, which
is many times greater than other wireless communication systems, is one of the biggest
challenges. There is often a need for testing the IF and baseband sections of a device
or system, so a flexible test system architecture is desired. Additionally, capturing IQ
samples for demodulation is needed to compute metrics like EVM to assess in-channel
performance, and traditional swept-tuned analysis is needed to measure out of channel
and out of band harmonic and spurious performance.