octoScope® completed 2019 with an impressive year-over-year (YoY) company growth of 70 percent. Supporting this evolution, the company released a number of new products, expanded its office and production space, added several strategic new hires, continued to increase its IP portfolio with new patent filings and registered trademarks and participated in events across the globe.

The company grew its overall team in 2019 by nearly 40 percent. Notably, Steve Shearer joined octoScope as chief scientist. Prior to octoScope, he most recently was a distinguished engineer at the Wi-Fi Alliance, and previous positions were held at Silver Spring Networks, ST-NXP, etc. Mikayla Cohen was hired as director of software engineering where she leads the software architecture and software R&D efforts for wireless test equipment. Previously, she held roles at Charter Communications, Viavi Solutions, Siemens PLM Software and Colorado Technical University. octoScope also welcomed Bob Burk who is responsible for final system test and automation, new product introduction, manufacturing engineering, cost reductions, production workflow, test procedures and data tracking. His earlier experience includes CommScope, Thomson Grass Valley, Teradyne and more. In addition, octoScope hired several key software developers and systems engineers.

This growth also contributed to the expansion of company headquarters in Littleton, Mass., increasing its office and production space by 60 percent. To support the continued growth, the company will look to fulfill several additional positions in 2020.

2019 was also a year of exciting new technology achievements and product announcements for octoScope. New product releases included:

  • Wi-Fi 6 Capable smartBox™ Chamber with Built-in Test Instrumentation for Testing Wireless Devices and Systems: With the built-in Pal-6 instrument and 8x8 MIMO-OTA support, the smartBox enables an integrated dual-band sniffer or traffic generator local to each device in the testbed. The smartBox architecture greatly simplifies complex testbeds configured for testing Wi-Fi 6, OFDMA, mesh, roaming, Wi-Fi/BT coexistence, DFS (dynamic frequency selection) and other system level tests.
  • Triathlon™ for RF Analysis: Triathlon is a critically important tool for the development of the new Wi-Fi 6 (11ax) equipment enabling engineers to observe hard-to-capture issues on the RF layer.
  • octoBox® STACK-WFA Personal Testbed for Wi-Fi 6: The STACK-WFA testbed is a turnkey automated testbed that supports all Wi-Fi 6 test cases (about 200) created by the Wi-Fi Alliance for Wi-Fi 6 certification of access point (AP) and station (STA) devices.

octoScope presented seminars across the globe in 2019. Events were held in the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Israel, Korea, China, Taiwan and the U.S. octoScope also had the privilege of exhibiting at CES 2019 alongside Intel and Comcast, showcasing its octoBox personal testbed.

“octoScope’s growth has been propelled by the new generation of wireless technologies: Wi-Fi 6, IoT and 5G. Using our octoBox wireless personal testbeds, operators, device manufacturers and chipset vendors can ensure that the billions of new devices they deploy will function in the field as expected,” said Fanny Mlinarsky, president of octoScope. “In 2020 we will continue advancing the octoBox testbed to support new wireless technologies and new frequency bands. We will focus on Wi-Fi 6, OFDMA test and performance visualization techniques, roaming and band steering in a mesh environment. At the same time, we will continue on the path of higher testbed integration with more powerful test instruments, making the octoBox more functional and more affordable so that every wireless engineer has access to a sophisticated personal wireless testbed to improve their productivity.”