Over-the-air test system for 5G
The Bluetest RTS85HP was developed to meet the increasing demands for 5G base station testing and a dramatically increased need for OTA systems, and this next generation 5G OTA test and measurement chamber is a benchmark system for rapid wireless measurement.
The RTS85HP’s technology and specifications target base station manufacturer R&D and production, as well as additional segments such as mobile operators. The new benchmark chamber has already been installed at a base station manufacturer production site, as well as a leading Asia Pacific mobile operator, for testing 5G base station equipment before roll-out in the field.
Bluetest has addressed measurement challenges introduced by 5G, such as measuring output power, adjacent channel leakage (ACLR) or spurious emission on massive MIMO/beamforming base stations with as much as 64 or more individual antenna ports. The company asserts that using traditional conducted measurements is not a sustainable practice and may in many cases not even be technically possible, due to the close integration between the radios and antennas. With the elimination of the traditional antenna cable, measurements need to be adapted to Over-the-Air testing.
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Bluetest CTO, Robert Rehammar comments, “Whether in base station R&D, production or at a cellular operator, the innovative RTS85HP reverberation chamber technology provides an easy-to-use 5G test environment to smoothly transfer RF power measurements from the conducted domain to the OTA domain, while still retaining competitive measurement times.
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Rehammar continues,” Compared with other testing methods, Bluetest’s solution saves considerable time and cost as operators and manufacturers can test the properties of their 5G equipment in their own lab and check the performance against their specification, quickly and efficiently.
With a frequency range of 500 MHz to 43 GHz, the RTS85HP converses all currently discussed 5G bands on sub-6-GHz as well as mmWave bands, and a roadmap including a frequency extension to 60 GHz – to align with 3GPP spurious emission measurement requirements. The unique chamber is designed to handle RRU output power levels up to 200 W, with communication interfaces as well as power supply interfaces in place to meet the requirements of base station testing.
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Usability and installation aspects are incorporated by providing customers with a smart, user-friendly GUI including Flow Manager and Flow Analyser. The GUI delivers the possibility to interface with external software, supporting all the testing scenarios quickly, in real-time, and the ability to easily request and add customised features. The Bluetest RTS85HP employs a comparably compact size and a practical chamber height – making it viable in most, normal-sized indoor conditions.
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