Digital Wireless (Dig RF) Brochure: Gain greater confidence in your DigRF desig

The explosion of functionality being packed into mobile devices puts numerous technologies inside each unit: cellular, GPS, WLAN, Bluetooth, camera, FM, stereo audio and more. As these designs become increasingly complex, the challenges of validation and testing become more difficult. To further complicate the situation, advantages such as lower costs, wider bandwidth and extended battery life are pushing digital technologies deeper into the radio frequency (RF) portion of every handset. The multi-gigabit DigRF V4 standard is rapidly emerging as the next-generation serial interface between mobile baseband (BB) and RF ICs because it removes the inter-chip communication bottleneck. However, the ongoing evolution of the DigRF standard introduces multiple levels of complexity due to changes such as a new protocol and a high-speed serial link. Couple that with the introduction of MIMO techniques and new RF modulation formats into handset design and the problems become even tougher. From turn-on through integration, the ability to gain greater confidence in these new designs depends on deeper insights that span the digital and RF domains. Within each wireless device, new insight begins in the digital domain at the physical and protocol layers. Next, ensuring proper operation over the air requires insight into the RF domain and the physical and protocol layers. With new handset designs, it becomes crucial to have tools that work across the digital and RF domains.  

Achieve deeper insights— with Keysight Technologies

From gigabits to gigahertz Keysight Technologies, Inc. offers an end-toend solution that enables you to work across both domains—digital or RF— and gain new insights. You’re probably familiar with the unmatched breadth of our instrumentation offering. You may also know Keysight software solutions such as Advanced Design System, Signal Studio and 89600A vector signal analysis (VSA). We’ve united those tools in an integrated platform for cross-domain digital/ RF testing. Our starting point is the industry’s first DigRF V4 test solution. This new test platform enables DigRF protocol debugging as well as comprehensive stimulus and analysis across the digital and RF domains for IC developers—RF and BB—and handset integrators. We offer the only solution that enables and accelerates the turn-on, validation and integration of DigRF V4-based devices. With this solution, we can help you gain greater confidence in your increasingly complex designs—from turn-on through integration, from gigabits to gigahertz.  During device development, challenges abound in the embedded technologies and the required measurements. These challenges exist in the physical and protocol layers of the digital and RF domains—and they span the domains. Every step of the way, Keysight offers solutions that can help you quickly characterize and integrate your devices and get them to market faster.  

Digital domain: Physical layer

 Early in handset development, it’s essential to debug and validate digital designs at the physical layer. One key step is verifying the occurrence of reliable physical communication: Are the right signals present? Can the BB-ICs and RF-ICs exchange bits? Is the clock being properly recovered? Will the timing work across long packets? DigRF presents new challenges for wireless designers. The presence of gigabit serial interfaces and embedded clocks turns issues such as signal integrity and jitter into major considerations. Fortunately, we’ve been working with high-speed serial interfaces since their inception—and offer secondgeneration instruments that can connect to your interface with minimal interference and quickly identify problems. Instruments such as the Keysight 90000A Series Infiniium oscilloscopes and 81250A parallel bit error ratio tester (ParBERT) make this possible.  

Digital domain: Protocol layer

The next step is to debug and validate digital circuitry at the protocol level. Important tests answer a variety of questions: Are the right DigRF packets present? Are control and data packets being reliably transferred? Can data be looped back successfully? Performing such measurements on both BB-ICs and RF-ICs requires tools such as the Keysight RDX platform connected with our line of low-capacitance probes.  

RF domain: PHYSICAL layer

 Once the digital side is working, it’s time to ensure that the device can connect and communicate—and the next step is to validate the physical layer in the RF domain. Essential test capabilities extend from fundamental RF characterization to advanced measurements such as error vector magnitude (EVM), spectrum emission mask (SEM), and more. These are enabled by Keysight’s industry-leading signal analyzers, 89600 Series VSA software, signal generators, and Signal Studio signal-generation software. You can configure Keysight’s signal analyzers and sources to support all modern, popular cellular and emerging-communications modulation formats.  Familiar tools for RF engineers Even though there’s now a digital interface between the BB-IC and RF-IC, Keysight provides familiar tools on the RDX platform to support RF and cross-domain testing. You can test transmitters using Signal Studio or EEsof EDA software to inject waveforms just as if you could connect a vector signal generator. For receiver testing, the 89600 VSA software runs on the RDX platform, providing a virtual access point for RF analysis. Best of all, these tools work along with RDX digital tools for troubleshooting of problems that can’t be otherwise isolated to the digital or RF subsystems. The result is a level of insight unequaled by alternative approaches.