Feature

An engineer’s guide to testing mmWave equipment

The race to win our hearts and minds is already underway by the marketing departments of the 5G cellular operators. Customer retention is a key metric for operators, and the opportunity to migrate existing customers and upsell them significantly enhanced network speeds is key to starting to recoup the infrastructure investments already made.

01/08/2019 14:47:51

Customer adoption requires on-time deployments across the whole ecosystem, from handset to base station. Making 5G a practical reality, however, is down to the hard work of the global engineering teams, standards committees and infrastructure manufacturers who have been working towards this for many years.

RF engineering has always been considered a specialist skill, attempting to tame a technology that doesn’t always do as expected; a task that has become even more involved with the advent of 5G and the new architectural approach to communications that it relies on. Achieving the data rates mandated by the 3GPP standards committees has required an evolutionary approach rather than iterative enhancements to the existing infrastructure.

Read the full article in the August issue of DPA

Written By Sophia Bell

Sophia Bell is the Group Editor of DPA, Connectivity, and PBSI. She joined the team in 2020 as Assistant Editor after achieving a First-Class Honours BA in English Literature and Film Studies from the University of East Anglia. In her current role, she leads the editorial strategy, driving digital growth and ensuring each title continues to deliver trusted, relevant insight for engineering and manufacturing professionals.