Test and measurement vendors stand ready to help with the development and deployment of 5G wireless communications, as the technology is fine-tuned and tested in trials around the world.
Juniper Research forecasts 5G operator-billed service revenues will rise to $269 billion by 2025, compared with $851 million in 2019, for a compound annual growth rate of 161% during the first seven years of 5G service. The market research firm ranks the "most promising" 5G network operators as SK Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, KT Corp., China Mobile, and AT&T Mobility, in that order. North America, China and Eastern Asia, and Western Europe will dominate the 5G market, according to Juniper.
The key verticals in 5G will be augmented reality and virtual reality, automotive, digital health wearables, mobile broadband, smart cities, and smart homes, Juniper predicts.
The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, and the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, will see some of the first extensive use of 5G in covering the quadrennial games.
Anritsu, Keysight Technologies, National Instruments, Rohde & Schwarz, Astronics, Spirent, and Tektronix are among the leading vendors offering instruments, software, and services for testing 5G or 5G-related components.
Frost & Sullivan forecasts the market for PXI-based instruments for electronic test applications will grow to nearly $1.8 billion a year by 2020, up from around $1 billion this year, for a CAGR of 17.6% from 2013 to 2020. Part of that growth will be driven by 5G testing, the market research firm says.
Rohde & Schwarz has introduced more than a half-dozen products in the past year addressing the 5G testing market – network analyzers, oscilloscopes, signal analyzers, and other instruments. The portfolio includes products for over-the-air testing, such as antenna positioners, measurement antennas, radio-frequency chambers of different sizes, and vector network analyzers.
Not everything is expected to go so smoothly, however.
Dorine Gurney, a product planner for Tektronix, is ready for another technology transition in wireless communications. While the market for 5G test equipment is "not huge" at the moment, she noted that Tek is working with industry partners to anticipate their needs as the 5G standard is crafted and realized.
Tek is developing instrumentation to test backhaul applications at 60 gigahertz, according to Gurney. She added that the question Tek has for customers is, "What kind of measurements are you trying to do?" The company aims to "help spectrum managers to figure out what's going on," she said.
National Instruments is all over 5G testing, as well.
At last month's International Microwave Symposium in Honolulu, Hawaii, NI demonstrated pre-5G waveform generation and measurement technology, providing signal generation and analysis of waveforms associated with the Verizon 5G Technical Forum and 3GPP's proposed New Radio physical layers.
The race to provide 5G test equipment is on. Test equipment companies, start your engines.