Rohde & Schwarz’s R&S CMX500 One-box Tester for 5G NR Device Testing

Munich, Germany – Rohde & Schwarz is introducing a major upgrade to their well-established R&S CMX500 5G radio communication tester to MWC Barcelona 2022. The new R&S CMX500 one-box tester offers extensive device testing capabilities, including support for all 5G NR deployments, comprising LTE, 5G NR FR1 and FR2 in non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) mode, for both FDD and TDD, with simple setup and exceptional performance. Manufacturers of cutting-edge 5G NR enabled chipsets and devices, as well as certification providers, can use the R&S CMX500 one-box tester to cover the complete product lifecycle, from early R&D design phases to end-to-end application testing, including device certification.

The company has integrated new sub-8 GHz RF units for FR1 into the R&S CMX500 to realize the one-box tester approach. The R&S CMX500 one-box tester achieves market-leading performance when combined with the new remote radio heads (RRH), which now span mmWave frequencies up to 50 GHz in FR2. As a result, even challenging 5G NR band combinations can now be simulated with a single R&S CMX500. Higher order carrier aggregation, for example, with up to 8CC combinations of FR1 and FR2 in the downlink, can achieve data speeds of 10 Gbps and higher on the IP layer.

Data-hungry enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) applications such as 8K video streaming or augmented and virtual reality will necessitate data rates of up to 10 Gbps in the uplink and 20 Gbps in the downlink. The R&S CMX500 one-box tester’s future-proof concept is ready today to validate such high data throughput tomorrow, all in a single box, making it ten times more powerful than the 4G market leader, the R&S CMW500 wideband radio communication tester.

The company continues its one-platform strategy with the new R&S CMX500 one-box tester, which uses the same test concepts and identical measurements to produce reproducible and validated test results from R&D to device certification and mass production. The R&S CMX500’s modular hardware design is supplemented by R&S CMsquares. This one-of-a-kind web-based graphical user interface allows users to efficiently manage their 5G testing jobs, from RF callbox measurements through protocol verification to upper layer application tests, using intuitive measurement squares. The company’s comprehensive test portfolio includes associated peripheral solutions such as shielded chambers for over-the-air (OTA) measurements in FR2, all from a single source that users can seamlessly integrate into their test setups.

Rohde & Schwarz will display a milestone on the way to peak data rates at MWC Barcelona 2022. Visitors to the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona can see a demonstration of high data throughput in downlink via an IP layer of up to 10 Gbps end-to-end IP data performance in hall 5, booth 5A80.

Christoph Pointner, Senior Vice President Mobile Radio Testers at Rohde & Schwarz, stated, “We want our customers and the entire mobile industry to rethink 5G testing. The flexibility of 5G technology means more variants, more options, but also more complexity. But for device manufacturers, this doesn’t have to translate into equally complex test setups and routines any longer. With our new R&S CMX500 one-box tester, we at Rohde & Schwarz are making 5G testing as simple and straightforward as never before. Our state-of-the-art mobile device testing solutions bundle years of experience in mobile radio testing and industry insight, to make our customers ready for current and future test challenges.”

Image Source: Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co KG