Wireless patent

Key RTLS Patent granted and enables highly accurate position detection over long range.

Though it might be argued that this is not strictly automation we have included this release as there is so much interest in wireless produicts in the industry.

Essensium N.V., has announced that the European Patent Office published a key patent granted to them regarding the ranging method which enables their unique and industry-leading combination of high accuracy and long range in their wireless RTLS (Real Time Location System) products.

Traditional wireless RTLS technologies can be split into two main subgroups, Wideband and Narrowband, depending on the radio frequency bandwidth used. Each approach has its own particular advantages and disadvantages.

Wideband methods, typically known as UWB, tend to yield highly accurate position detection, with a resolution down to 10´s of centimeters, but support only a very limited distance between the tag and the readers. This limits their useful application to situations where items need to be tracked over a relatively small area, since a significant and expensive infrastructure of reader antennae needs to be added in order to cover larger areas.

Narrowband methods, typically known as WiFi or RSSI methods, tend to support much larger distances between the tracked item and the readers. This allows larger areas to be covered compared to UWB, with a more affordable infrastructure cost. These methods suffer from the disadvantage of having significantly lower resolution, allowing only to determine the position of a tag with a resolution of several meters at best, or even simply allowing only to identify the room, or zone, in which a particular tag is located.

Essensium´s patented approach combines the benefits of both Narrowband and Wideband behaviour in a single Wide-over-Narrowband RF implementation. This results in an industry-leading RTLS implementation giving both the accuracy of a very precise UWB system combined together with long range, and thus lower infrastructure costs, better than that of typical Narrowband or WiFi methods for RTLS. This combination of attributes enables exciting opportunities for track and trace applications, both indoors and outdoors.

WiMax

Reducing test time by up to 300 % New suite delivers high-performance tools


National Instruments has introduced the their Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005), a software suite that engineers can use with modular RF instrumentation for automated testing of Mobile WiMAX devices. With this software suite, engineers can perform Mobile WiMAX component and device testing faster than with traditional instruments, and with better accuracy and greater flexibility.

Based on PXI Express instrumentation powered by multicore technology, the suite can perform error vector magnitude (EVM), power and spectral measurements three to five times faster than traditional instruments. PXI WiMAX test systems from National Instruments also provide a low-cost, R&D-grade instrumentation alternative to traditional instruments. With a typical residual EVM accuracy of -46 dB at 3.5 GHz (-10 dBm), this test system can perform significantly more accurate measurements than alternative production test-grade instruments. Additionally, the suite provides engineers enhanced flexibility with the same equipment used for testing Mobile WiMAX devices to test hardware that complies with other standards such as Fixed WiMAX, wireless local area network (WLAN), GPS, and GSM/EDGE/WCDMA cellular standards.
“The NI Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX reflects the continued investment from National Instruments to provide test solutions for engineers developing next-generation wireless technology devices,” said Eric Starkloff, Vice President of Test Marketing at National Instruments. “With this new solution, we now can provide engineers the ability to significantly reduce their test cost by providing R&D-grade instrumentation that performs measurements three to five times faster than traditional solutions.”
The Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX supports channel bandwidths from 1.25 to 28 MHz and fast Fourier transform (FFT) sizes 128, 256, 1024 and 2048, as well as all Mobile WiMAX modulation types with both convolution coding and turbo convolution coding. The Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX can also generate or analyse signals with up to eight zones and 16 bursts. Combined with the NI PXIe-5663E RF vector signal analyser and NI PXIe-5673 RF vector signal generator, the measurement suite also provides continuous frequency coverage from 85 MHz to 6.6 GHz.

By including the NI Signal Analysis Toolkit for Mobile WiMAX and the NI Signal Generation Toolkit for Mobile WiMAX, the suite offers programming APIs and virtual instrument panels for signal generation and analysis in programming environments including the LabVIEW graphical system design platform. In addition to a LabVIEW API, the toolkits install with an equivalent C-style API for engineers using C, C++, .NET, or similar programming language.

The Measurement Suite for Mobile WiMAX supports multiple PXI hardware configurations to meet different application needs. A standard NI test bundle for Mobile WiMAX includes an NI PXIe-5663 6.6 GHz vector signal analyser, NI PXIe-5673 6.6 GHz vector signal generator, NI PXIe-1075 18-slot high-bandwidth chassis and a NI PXIe-8108 dual-core controller to provide high-performance flexibility to a variety of automated test systems.