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I am Mirin Lew, an applications engineer at Agilent Technologies, supporting signal generation
solutions for the wireless connectivity markets. The IEEE is developing a new standard for
wireless LAN called 802.11ac that uses up to 80 or 160 MHz of bandwidth and a higher
order of modulation, up to 256-QAM.
This new standard enables end users to achieve higher data rates to support services like
high-definition video and simultaneous data streaming. Because of the wider bandwidth
and higher order modulation schemes, engineers face new challenges in designing their 802.11ac
components and devices and testing the RF performance.
What you will learn in this video is how Agilent can help meet the challenges of designing
and testing 802.11ac devices and components. Our wider bandwidth, higher performance test
solutions will give you the confidence that your components and devices will meet their
demanding specification.
Our setup today includes our new N5182B MXG X-Series signal generator, the N9030A PXA
signal analyzer. And on our PC, we have the N7617B signal studio for wireless LAN to create
our waveforms, and the 89600 VSA software to analyze the results. The Signal Studio
and VSA software can also be installed inside the signal analyzer, to eliminate the need
for an external PC.
To demonstrate how quickly and easily we can create a 160 MHz signal, we will use Agilent
Signal Studio software, which has been recently updated to include 802.11ac functionality.
We have set the center frequency to 5.57 GHz, which is one of the 160 MHz channels supported
by 802.11ac. I’ve also selected the bandwidth of the signal to be 160 MHz.
Only Agilent supports generation of signals with 160 MHz bandwidth and a fully integrated
source. There are additional settings available for configuring parameters for MIMO, as well
as other customized signal settings. Here is where you can configure your data packets.
We can increase our payload data, so that we can have more signals analyzed. This is
also where we set up our modulation type. You can see here where we have set it to MCS8,
which is 256-QAM. Our signal is now being generated here in the MXG, and we will use
the PXA signal analyzer and our VSA software to analyze the results. Here is a display
of the demodulated 802.11ac measurement.
We can now see the 160 MHz span of our signal and make additional measurements, including
EVM. On our EVM measurement, you can see that the value is -47 dB, which shows the exceptional
EVM performance of the MXG. We can also look at the measured IQ errors of our signal and
see that they are very small, resulting in the excellent EVM result.
As I have just shown, Agilent’s solution will help you test your 802.11ac components
and devices throughout the product life cycle, from design verification to manufacturing.
Agilent is the only test equipment provider with an RF signal generator that supports
flat bandwidth up to 160 MHz, with excellent EVM performance.
For more information on Agilent’s 802.11ac test solutions or our new X-Series signal
generators, please visit our website.