5G technology is advancing at a tremendous speed, with new capabilities being added all the time. However, the solution’s efficacy is highly dependent on how effectively it is assessed, graded, and verified.
IoT and Hi-speed Communication Powering the Global Electronic Test and Measurement Market, 2022, According to the study, the growth of 5G and the installation of Internet of Things (IoT) technology would enable the market to reach $18.94 billion by 2025, despite a 0.7 percent drop due to COVID-19. As a result of digital transformation, the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, and other Mega Trends, the usage of linked electronic devices is predicted to increase across all verticals, as is the demand for electronic test and measurement equipment.
Electronic test and measurement (T&M) devices are widely used in research, product development, prototyping, production, and field testing, according to Frost & Sullivan’s Prabhu Karunakaran. Semiconductor automated test equipment (ATE) is projected to be the top revenue source owing to market size, end-user demand, and consumer electronics technology advancement. “Continued R&D expenditures in communications and other verticals—both existing and future initiatives in 5G and 6G—and the commercialization of 5G” are likely to provide the second-largest revenue potential.
The Emergence of 5G Network
The need to meet the demand for internet services across mobile networks, along with the growth of IoT, sparked the creation of 5G networks. These networks allow the transmission of massive volumes of data using previously underused frequency channels, such as the V band. The advent of 5G networks will fuel demand for wireless test equipment.
Multi-point connection through distributed MIMO is a feature of 5G networks. These may offer several MIMO streams simultaneously while connecting a single device to numerous sites, delivering a downlink throughput of up to 100%. Network operators are partnering with testing businesses to do research and development on 5G technologies.
Interoperability Era for T&M Equipment
Due to the wide variety of electronic and electrical goods in use today, there is a growing demand for increased interoperability of T&M equipment across end-users, which will reduce the requirement for a specific manufacturer’s products throughout the product’s life.
“Interoperability is required for heterogeneous groups of devices such as smoke alarms, video monitors, home gateways, and home networking or automation systems, as well as homogenous groups of products such as routers and switches, Manufacturers of electronic T&M should investigate the following growth areas for additional income prospects:
- 5G: Work with different value chain partners to leverage the growth of mm-Wave technology and the expansion of 5G use cases.
Autonomous driving: To create solutions that satisfy the natural testing requirements of electric vehicles (EV) and other innovative mobility technologies. - Power applications: Develop systems that help designers capture rapid, tiny, and unexpected signals.
- Edge IoT: Evaluate screening needs and build equipment that is cost-effective and customizable.
- Next-gen data centers: Collaborate with end customers to ascertain pertinent needs and design products to assist such research and development operations.
5G is progressing at such a rapid pace on so many fronts that it might be difficult to evaluate how far we have gone and how far we still must go.
5G Test & Measurement
Although 5G networks and services are almost complete, several years of product and service development, network expansion, and service creation and delivery remain. Test and measurement (T&M) have played a critical role in the development of 5G networks, devices, services, and business models during the last several years and will continue to do so in the future.
Long-term T&M trends – virtualization and automation – are stressed in 5G, as they will be critical for cost-effectively testing networks and services that support many new use cases offered through network slices. Indeed, one may see a “testing slice” as a technique to streamline some of the network testing required in live networks. This would need the use of virtualized test resources that could be installed as needed and spun up or down as appropriate.
The T&M industry is seeing a rise in 5G-related activity, even though 4G network testing has not yet ceased, since 4G networks are continuously developing; in fact, new 4G networks are currently being pushed out in several countries. Due to the close relationship between 4G and 5G, specifically the use of the 4G core in a 5G radio network, and the new technical challenges associated with testing chipsets, devices, base stations, and RAN designed for mmWave spectrum, T&M vendors have had to collaborate with their NEP and operator partners to develop practical, cost-effective testing methods.
In the medium future, there is still a great deal of 5G research and development to be done in the lab, on the manufacturing line, and in the field. It’s an excellent moment to be a seller of T&M services.
5G Test & Measurement discusses how T&M activity will change over the next several years as networks are put out and services are activated in the coming years. In this section, you’ll learn about the special issues for testing that arise from 5G, such as the utilization of higher frequency bands, dense networks, and network virtualization.
It is difficult to ignore the buzz around 5G networks’ potential uses and services: Tactile Internet, self-driving automobiles, and augmented/virtual reality are just a few examples. 5G’s promise of rapid speeds, massive coverage density, and potentially limitless traffic capacity elevates it beyond earlier cellular technology iterations.
However, although operators trumpet their future potential to deliver such services, the fact is that 5G networks impose additional criteria for throughput, dependability, latency, and network resiliency. For many of the applications and services promised by 5G networks, the technical requirements greatly surpass those of present mobile networks, including data throughput, latency, dependability, device and network energy efficiency, traffic volume density, mobility, and connection density. Numerous considerations underscore the critical need for 5G network testing, monitoring, and service assurance:
- 5G timeframes have advanced without extending or increasing testing periods for such networks. This issue is visible in 3GPP specifications. 3GPP issued 5G New Radio (NR) standards for non-standalone (5G) and LTE (NSA) operation in December 2017 and SA (5G) operation in June 2018. Nonetheless, test standards are lacking. For RAN4 and RAN5, finalizing core specifications to establish performance criteria and test processes might take up to nine months. While the industry pushes for faster timetables, it takes longer to finish requirements and test the network.
- Numerous variables influence revenue challenges. 4G networks are continually developing and operators are still spending on 4G. Several nations are still building 4G networks. 5G relies on 4G, particularly when using the 4G core with 5G NR. Furthermore, 5G poses technological issues for testing devices, base stations, and radio access networks (RAN), which operators must solve in collaboration with test and measurement suppliers.
- 5G is marketed as a technology that can always serve all users. De facto, the network must meet the demands of many different industrial verticals and use cases. This necessitates very different service assurance criteria.
As 5G networks are being constructed and the sorts of applications and services that will operate on them become more diverse, operators will need to include T&M and assurance into their networks both now and in subsequent phases of 5G deployment, as detailed in this white paper. Beyond the RF spectrum difficulties, there are numerous other components of 5G networks that need to be monitored, evaluated, and managed.
As the infrastructures and equipment needed to support the 5G application space are being built and deployed, everyone’s attention is focused on this critical wireless sector. More and more capabilities are being included in the 5G network at a rapid pace. However, the solution’s efficacy is heavily reliant on the solution’s evaluation, calibration, and validation. A look at some of the latest advancements in the 5G testing and evaluation sector is provided here.
The Unique T&M and Assurance Challenges Facing 5G Mobile operators are gearing up for the introduction of 5G with three goals in mind: to achieve the maximum possible capacity, to build a varied range of new services and apps for new and current consumers, and to guarantee the network’s quality is unimpeachable for the long future. We want to replace revenue that is declining and provide long-term stability in our capital spending and operating expenditures, as well as end our dependence on outmoded business models that have devalued our shareholders’ and our customers’ interests for years.
Assurance and T&M play a crucial role in helping operators to meet those objectives. The 5G ecosystem will undergo testing in several places during the next year, as shown in Figure 1.
5G networks will first operate in NSA mode on a host LTE network with an improved 4G core, before migrating to a 5G core running in SA mode. Figure 2 shows potential test approaches for a variety of 5G test scenarios.
These first 5G networks are currently being developed by prominent operators and were expected to be live in late 2018 or early 2019. These networks will use 4G evolved packet core (EPC) technology for session management, mobility, authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA), as well as LTE radio for over-the-air (OTA) signaling. Local-area mobility will be managed by 5G RAN inside a contiguous 5G coverage zone; in subsequent stages, the 5G core network will govern both 4G and 5G radio access, as well as fixed access.
5G NR
To increase data bandwidth, 5G NR reaches the 15 GHz frequency range, which is both higher and shorter than existing 3G and 4G cellular frequencies, which peak at roughly 2.6 GHz. Furthermore, 5G necessitates accompanying adaptive antenna system (AAS) technologies that improve overall spectrum efficiency via beamforming and massive multiple-input/ multiple-output (MIMO), which influences testing. Previously, most radio functionality could be assessed independently of antenna systems; however, AAS makes separating radio performance from antenna performance difficult. Furthermore, the usage of antenna arrays with the radios makes testing of each antenna port difficult, therefore radio performance must now be conducted in an OTA testing environment.
Massive MIMO
More than 256 array elements are possible with Massive MIMO in 5G, requiring a huge number of radio channels. The array components serving the device may now alter dynamically thanks to the integration of beamforming. Conventional cable testing is not always feasible or cost-effective, as a result. To test 5G NR in a lab setting, there is a need to reduce hardware resources and use a combined approach for cable and OTA testing that tackles the issues brought about by massive MIMO and beamforming.
Beamforming
For engineers who need to perform static testing on devices and antennas, beamforming presents a catch-22 situation. They must determine the minimum number of points required to produce an accurate measurement, but not so many that the test becomes inefficient or cost prohibitive. 30 beams per base station is a basic guideline to follow if an operator wants to conduct cost-effective beamforming testing. If the huge MIMO array generates just two beams, the business case fails. Operators are discovering that perfecting 3D beamforming is one of the most challenging aspects of 5G, which has significant consequences for how testing is conducted.
mmWave
Tests for the frequency range 2 (FR2), which covers millimeter-wave bands (mmWave) of the 3GPP are more difficult to conduct since they must be proved using both OTA testing and specialized chambers. Antenna arrays are more tightly integrated with the radio frequency (RF) components in these systems, making it hard to test the antennas and the RF independently via a cable connection. Another limitation is that the beamforming of identification and tracking can only be evaluated by using airwaves. The fact that mmWave is more vulnerable to propagation and interference from inside and outside the network must be taken into consideration by operators.
MEC
The ability to supply processing-intensive services across 5G networks’ low latency is a big selling point for operators and theoretically is attainable through multi-access edge computing (MEC). By deploying assets at the edge, operators may supply ultra-low latency (ULL), high bandwidth, distributed, dynamic control, and user plane, as well as host third-party apps closer to the end-user. However, MEC has additional timing requirements, which include new hardware for the core radio access network (C-RAN) domain and new synchronization methods and standards.
As India has a diverse geography and will have a mix of telecom networks (coexistence of 5G with 4G and 3G networks), telecom service providers will need a test instrument that supports both today’s and tomorrow’s technologies. Simultaneously, the test equipment must be simple to use and automated. Test instrument automation or software-controlled test instruments will minimize the testing time in the manufacturing, regulatory compliance, and validation stages. This guarantees market leadership and improves market share by introducing goods on schedule.
Customer experience, network quality, and other factors are evaluated by different testing methods, allowing service providers to receive a higher return on investment (ROI). At the present, Indian operators are testing the 5G network and its use cases. This is an excellent chance for them to learn about network challenges and how to deal with them in the event of a large-scale deployment. As a result, the test equipment will be crucial throughout the trial.
Because of the large number of connected devices, there are a lot of interferences in 5G. The major difficulty in the 5G network is to reduce network interference to improve throughput and communication. The test device can identify interference sources in less time. It will assist service providers in keeping consumers satisfied since there would be no phone drops or internet outages.
VIRTUALIZATION’S IMPACT Operators will depend greatly on virtualized operations as they develop 5G networks (VNFs). Meanwhile, they will need to incorporate technologies that enable the validation of virtual, hybrid, and physical resource interoperability. As 5G networks develop, it’s critical to keep in mind that the new 5G core networks use service-based architecture (SBA), which is not supported in 4G. SBA provides network slicing and MEC services, and its primary features are formal control and user plane separation (CUPS).
Virtualization of Radio
An effective 5G cloud RAN will bend and adapt in response to use and coverage to enable network locations for baseband processing that are not constrained by the network. The optimal business case for 5G requires many urban small cell sites out of which baseband is spread through lower tiers housed on physical radio tower heads and edge cloud data centers. Overall, the goal is to cut costs by offloading as much expensive and complex work as possible to a shared, centralized, and cloud-hosted environment. The issue is that cloud-based radio (baseband) processing requires special capabilities in terms of time-sensitive networking, acceleration, and availability that existing public cloud architectures cannot provide.
Virtualization of Core
It is not just the radio network testing that is difficult. Backhaul and core network testing, as well as testing of the transport network and fiber-to-the-base station sites, are also essential, and this will lead to an evolution in core network testing over the next several years. Once 5G NR and EPC interoperability are established, NSA network products and production testing of key 5G RAN systems will follow.
Control & User Plane Separation (CUPS)
CUPS allows the transfer of user plane functions to edge data centers while maintaining centralized control plane operations, enabling GTP traffic from the RAN to be terminated at the edge and subsequently redirected according to service type. In other circumstances, the application will be hosted at the same edge cloud location as the backhaul to the central data center, therefore providing low-latency services. There is a need for exploratory testing of CUPS to establish its appropriateness for various installations, as well as to determine if it will provide the topologies necessary to fulfill the requirements of certain industrial network slices.
Network Slicing
5G core will be required for emerging technologies such as network slicing. While network slicing is not exclusively a 5G feature, it will become increasingly significant as operators develop their 5G networks. End-to-end testing of slices is difficult since each slice has its unique performance needs. Service-level agreements (SLAs) for services based on one network slice will vary from those for services based on another. Indeed, as seen in Figure 3, network slicing confronts a lot of barriers.
Setting the stage for Automation
Automation will play a significant role in properly testing and guaranteeing all 5G network parts in the long term. The motivation to automate should gain traction as operators see the advantages of their early network virtualization initiatives. Nonetheless, without automated methods, testing 5G networks that enable new service types made of many network slices would become more complicated.
Service Agility
The methods for deploying new 5G services must advance at the same rate as web-scale service providers like Amazon and Facebook. Today, it is not uncommon for communications service providers to take months to launch a new service, while web-scale providers use cloud-native architectures and agile development cultures to rapidly deploy new services and service improvements within hours. As 5G is based on virtualization, it enables communications service providers to incorporate agility into their development and operating models and to embrace web-scale concepts to become digital service providers. This demands the development of a DevOps culture in which automation is used throughout the lifecycle, as well as the acceptance of cloud-native architectural concepts by all suppliers.
DevOps
A DevOps method may be defined as the cooperation of development and operations departments throughout the creation and fulfillment of a network service. The key to DevOps is to maintain dynamic network services that provide a high level of customer satisfaction (QoE). Development and operations teams require a unified and automated set of toolchains, methodologies, and metrics that allow them to adopt streamlined DevOps continuous testing practices to improve efficiency, enable more releases and, thus, faster time to market, as well as the ability to better utilize resources and address quality issues proactively. Continuous DevOps testing should eventually be automated throughout the whole service lifecycle via network validation, service testing, and operational assurance procedures.
Service Assurance
Service assurance must be strongly coupled with services since probes will be deployed as VNFs alongside the service, rather than as stand-alone network activity. Automated root-cause analysis enables the resolution of issues, the assessment of service effect in real-time, and the immediate initiation of remediation to mitigate the impact on consumers. When the underlying reason is equipment failure or inadequate hardware resources, an automated ticket is issued to engage support personnel to replace/repair the damaged component or to seek more hardware resources. Additionally, dynamic service level agreements (SLAs) management is required to monitor SLAs in real-time, even as the service develops and changes.
Service Orchestration
The purpose of service orchestrating is to streamline the process, from the point at which a client requests a new service through a self-service portal to the point at which the service is supplied, utilized, and monitored for quality. Automating the provisioning and testing of on-demand services, as well as communicating with the network infrastructure programmatically without human interaction, is also a feasible aim. In terms of service orchestration, a human element may be required, depending on the complexity of the service requested by the user or the approval of changes; however, this may only be necessary until the system trains and employs cognitive intelligence to determine which appropriate actions were taken and which data needs to be correlated and analyzed to endorse demands.
Analytics
Real-time, sophisticated analytics guarantee that service level agreements are fulfilled and monitor the infrastructure for faults, congestion, irregularities, and service effects, as well as providing a thorough and consistent picture of network activity across services, applications, and devices. It converts network and test data into proactive insights, enabling closed-loop activities such as automated debugging for zero-touch issue resolution, quick fault separation, and decreased mean time to repair (MTTR).
Production of Revenue & Development of Services
Finally, operators should consider T&M and assurance integration into their 5G networks as a method to make income and provide solutions, as shown in Figure 4.
| Opportunity | Benefit |
| T&M and assurance virtualization | Savings and efficiency throughout 5G networks reduce Capital costs and costs. |
| T&M of C-RAN | Reduces communications equipment, reduces maintenance costs, and delivers economies of scale as a distributed system. |
| Service assurance of Ethernet-based fronthaul | Simplifies and accelerates the deployment of additional cell sites by providing necessary high-speed, limited synchronization. |
| Lifecycle service approach to services, from initial design through operations | Improved service flexibility, reduced operating costs, additional income, and solutions. |
| Active testing of network | Ideal for 24/7 continuous monitoring, troubleshooting, service turn-up, and verification; concurrently verifies new services in the lab, at turn-up, and continually checks SLAs in the operational network to discover problems before consumers are affected. |
| E2E analytics | Using network data to identify new income streams and monetize the network. |
| Automation | Automated business processes that use artificial intelligence and machine learning methods and are app-aware to maximize effectiveness and customer responsiveness. |
| Network slice assurance | Validate new slices in the lab and on the actual network to ensure SLAs. |
| Security auditing services | Situation and ensure and analyze 5G corporate infrastructures to discover and prioritize risks. |
| User experience evaluation | Assess the user experience with 5G networks on end-user devices to guarantee competitiveness and a high level of service quality. |
| Lab as a Service (LaaS) | Improve 5G laboratories and simulations with virtualization and test automation to speed up development. |
CONCLUSION
There seems to be no uncertainty that 5G will ultimately result in enormous advantages for network operators, allowing them to supply better services to a broader client base through automated networks.
To ensure that 5G delivers on its promise as soon and smoothly as possible, operators must include test, measurement, and service assurance solutions throughout the transition from 4G to 5G and throughout the entire development and deployment lifespan of 5G.
Additionally, the advancement of test and measurement and assurance procedures is critical for operators on the path to 5G. Operators will automate networks as they implement virtualization, and operators must ensure that their virtualization and automation plans include T&M and assurance technologies.
Due to the complex nature of new network and phone capabilities, capital expenditure in laboratories is growing. Manufacturers, prompted by network operators, demand a plethora of new features, increasing the complexity of testing while allotting less time for testing and certification. Another tendency is that 5G connectivity is attracting attention from more than just phone makers. Many persons who seek radio product testing are not radio specialists; they are experts in their product, which includes a broadcast.
