Performance testing for high volume Wi-Fi/WLAN products

One of the key challenges for 802.11ac device manufacturers is to implement high performance widebａnd MIMO radios in commercial volume products. IEEE 802.11ac is a high throughput extension of 802.11n WLAN standard with a theoretical throughput as great as 500Mbps per spatial stream and 1Gbps overall throughput.

The Propsim® channel emulator enables the user to design and verify the IEEE 802.11n and 802.11ac product spatial multiplexing, beam-forming and MU-MIMO algorithms as well as the critical Channel State Information (CSI) functionality in a shorter timescale and with enhanced testing coverage, leading to reduced overall product development costs. By maintaining full control of the radio channel characteristics and access to an undistorted 80 MHz bandwidth with excellent EVM performance, it is possible to optimise the air interface performance and maximise the achievable system throughput before new products are launched.

The Propsim® channel emulator can be configured with two optional software applications for WLAN testing: the 802.11 Channel Model Tool and Geometric channel modelling (GCM) application. The 802.11 application includes standard models as defined by IEEE High Throughput Task Group (IEEE 802.11-03/940 & IEEE 802.11-09/0308). In addition, the user can easily configure basic antenna parameters such as number of antennas per device and element spacing. The GCM application enables the testing of base station and network algorithms, link adaptivity and smart antenna solutions in a non-stationary radio channel environment.