Keysight Technologies Inc. has extended the company's collaboration with Bluetest to integrate Keysight's first-to-market 5G new radio (NR) network emulation solutions with Bluetest's reverberation chamber for over-the-air (OTA) testing of 5G NR devices in sub-6 GHz (FR1) frequency bands.

Leading mobile operators in China, Japan, Korea and Europe are pursuing ambitious plans to deploy 5G networks in FR1 by the year 2020. As a result, they need test solutions that can accelerate development and validation of new 5G NR devices operating in FR1 frequency bands that deliver favorable radio propagation characteristics, such as in-building penetration and reach.

The integration of Keysight's 5G-based network emulation solutions with Bluetest's reverberation chambers (including Flow software support), enables mobile operators, and their respective mobile device ecosystems, to quickly, easily and repeatably verify the data throughput performance of 5G NR devices operating in FR1. This leads to fast and cost-effective validation of 5G mobile devices.

"Extending our close collaboration with Keysight enables Bluetest to provide customers the ability to upgrade existing Bluetest chambers to support 5G NR on sub-6 GHz frequencies," said Kjell Olovsson, CEO at Bluetest. "By integrating Keysight's leading 5G network emulator with Bluetest's reverberation chamber, we can test devices under multipath conditions using MIMO technology, helping mobile operators accelerate 5G deployment in FR1."

"We're excited to collaborate with leading OTA system suppliers such as Bluetest to extend our 5G NR OTA test capability into the widely adopted FR1 bands," said Kailash Narayanan, vice president and general manager of the Wireless Test business at Keysight Technologies. "Leading chipset and device manufacturers around the world use Keysight's network emulation solutions to verify that their designs comply to the latest 3GPP Release 15 5G NR standard."