octoScope’s New Turntable for the octoBox Wireless Personal testbed Improves Accuracy and Repeatability of MIMO-OTA Measurements
LITTLETON, Mass. (PRWEB) April 04, 2018 -- octoScope®, the leader in accurate, repeatable and automated wireless personal testbeds, today announced the new octoBox® turntable with novel cable management for easy connection of the DUT (device under test). The innovative design of the turntable hides the DUT’s power and data cables in a submerged tunnel, thus clearing the space in the chamber, creating clean semi-anechoic environment and ensuring optimum OTA (over the air) propagation inside the octoBox personal testbed.
The turntable is built into a new model of the octoBox semi-anechoic chamber: BOX-TT. BOX-TT replaces octoScope’s BOX-38-TT and is the same size.
The careful construction of the turntable and the method of its integration into the octoBox chamber ensure semi-anechoic conditions needed for controlled MIMO (multiple input multiple output) propagation. The turntable’s low-profile design maximizes space in the octoBox chamber for a variety of DUTs. And the removable top plate can be easily customized to clamp DUTs of different form factors in a fixed position.
The cables used to power and control the DUT are in motion while the turntable rotates. If not properly secured, these cables can get entangled by the rotation.
“In the past, the DUT cables were secured by a ceiling bracket, making it challenging to optimize the DUT’s position,” says Fanny Mlinarsky, President of octoScope. “With the submerged cabling in our new BOX-TT chamber, the space between the octoBox test antennas and the DUT antennas is empty, resulting in optimum MIMO OTA coupling.”
DUT rotation is important because the DUT antenna field has nulls and peaks, varying the signal power coupled via the test antennas as the DUT orientation changes. For repeatable throughput measurements, engineers rotate the DUT to average MIMO OTA throughput vs. time and vs. orientation, akin to the way food is rotated in a microwave oven. Another way engineers use the turntable is to generate polar plots showing throughput performance at a range of orientation steps.
Stackable and configurable octoBox personal testbeds are completely isolated from external interference and can be used at an engineer’s office or lab bench. The octoBox software lets engineers easily control the built-in instruments, wireless traffic and the DUT. All test results and plots are saved in the database and can be exported to common formats, including CSV and PDF.
Each octoBox personal testbed includes a dedicated web server accessible via a browser UI for manual control or via REST API for test automation. The server controls the built-in instruments, traffic, test flow and DUT configuration. Test results are saved in a database that can be in the cloud, enabling multiple teams to easily collaborate by sharing test results and test automation scripts.
The octoBox turntable can also be mounted onto an equipment cart for performing measurements in open air, for example in a typical house. Some engineers like to correlate test results obtained in the octoBox with the results obtained in a house and octoScope’s test automation can operate in both environments.
About octoScope
octoScope is the market leader in isolated, repeatable and automated wireless personal testbeds. Our patented technology redefines the accuracy, stability, economics and value of over-the-air wireless testing. The octoBox testbed is configurable for automated regression test sequences with a range of airlink conditions and interference scenarios. The octoBox testbeds are scalable to support a single DUT or multi-node mesh systems under test. The testbeds feature powerful technologies, such as test traffic generation, motion emulation, interference generation and client emulation, and essentially all the elements required to evaluate the behavior and performance of a broad range of wireless devices and systems. octoScope is headquartered is in Littleton, Massachusetts.
Watch this video for a review of the octoBox personal testbed by a major test lab.
Kimberly Boschi, octoScope.com, http://octoscope.com, +1 (978) 302-7777, [email protected]
Share this article