Test Equipment Makers Sometimes Do Bet

( 1 Jul 2008 )

By Stephen Las Marias, Editor


Wireless Design and Development Asia recently spoke with C.J. Meurell, European Operations General Manager for the Wireless Business Unit of Agilent Technologies, regarding the opportunities and challenges for test equipment manufacturers in this rapidly developing wireless industry. Excerpts:

What trends do Agilent foresee in the wireless test industry, and what technology areas hold future growth for Agilent in this segment?
One of the very significant trends is that multiple wireless technologies are all starting to converge or merge onto a single chip; and that drives two major challenges. First, wireless technologies by themselves are complicated, so having the right test equipment to have the engineers understand that technology is very important. But now when those wireless technologies are integrated on the same chip, the engineers don't have the time or the budget to afford a different equipment for every wireless technology on that chip. It really has to be one box, one test tool, to help that engineer, regardless of the wireless technology in that chipset. So the challenge for the test equipment manufacturer is to provide a test tool that can cover all the major wireless technologies that are on that chip.

It has to be one very flexible piece of test gear. The hardware will be common, but the software or the firmware should be able to self-configure itself to support the type of wireless technology it is testing. And that's on the R&D side.

On the manufacturing side, the contract manufacturers can afford to take the device and send it down the manufacturing line and test it for cellular, and then send it down to the second line for WLAN, and then the third line for Bluetooth, etc. But, it doesn't make economic sense. What they want to do is send this device down the manufacturing line one time, and the test equipment in that line should be able to test all the wireless technologies that are on that device but at a much lower cost than what the engineers use in R&D, and very quickly self-configure itself to test the cellular, the WLAN, the WiMAX standard, whatever it happens to be.

Those are the two trends that are being driven from the test equipment side because the technology is all merging onto single chipsets. That in itself is driving what test equipment companies have to do to stay competitive.

What are the challenges that test equipment makers face in this fast-paced wireless technology development?
From a wireless technology perspective, one of the challenges is that the technology is moving so fast that we've all just starting to get our arms around Wi-Fi and then it's WiMAX; and before WiMAX even gets rolled out, there's already a lot of discussion about LTE.

The biggest challenge I see, amid the fast-moving technology, is that test equipment manufacturers are forced at some point to have to make a bet on which technology is going to win: is it TD-SCDMA, CDMA 2000, WiMAX, or is it LTE?

Because there aren't unlimited resources for every company to be able to cover anything, you have to make a bet on certain technologies. And test equipment companies don't want to bet on one particular technology—they have to be technology agnostic. That's a very big challenge for us internally: limited resources, you have a lot of wireless technologies, all the standards change on a regular basis, the envelope is pushing, everything is going faster, further, double the speed, half the cost—now you have to make a bet which technology is going to win because you have to start designing today the test equipment you want to test for a technology that will be out four years from now. You have to make that decision today.

For Agilent, WiMAX and LTE will move forward. We have invested heavily in those technologies, we think they are going to win, and we'll be there. But in the end, we're designing all of our next generation equipment with an eye toward software configurability so that regardless of what wireless technology it is, it will be able to test all the technologies that are going to be there.

How far can software-defined radio meet the most important technical and economic requirements in wireless-related test instruments?
It's all about the software. SDR is where the future is going on mobile devices. Your mobile device will be smart enough such that wherever it is physically, if in a network or multiple networks, it will software-configure itself to attach to the technology that provides the best performance at that given time.

The test equipment has to be the same. You have to have an agnostic hardware test platform that, from a wireless perspective, has to have a software-configurable radio inside. That's a competitive advantage for the test equipment company, and that's where test equipment manufacturers need to go to make test engineers' life a lot easier and not worry about having different test equipments for different standards.

Speaking of WiMAX, what do you think will drive the demand and deployment of the technology in Asia?
The mass adoption will happen in Asia. Quite frankly, it is the Asian markets that are more leading-edge technology users. I have noticed that in the 15 years that I have traveled in Asia, there are more people walking around with mobile phones and devices—playing games, sending text messages and still pictures back and forth.

You bring a high-speed, broadband wireless network to a mass market, and market drive will happen on its own. This will feed upon itself as soon as it gets rolled out. But, you got to get it rolled out, and you got to have mobile devices that are capable of taking advantage of that.

How important is Asia in Agilent's business plans?
The Asian market is significant for Agilent. From a manufacturing perspective, half of my business is directly related to the adoption rate of my manufacturing test equipment throughout Asia, wherein about 90 percent of the manufacturing lines for WLAN and WiMAX are located. For the R&D side, it is the other half of my business.

Looking back, the roll-outs of these wireless technologies are all adopted first in Asia. They are not as conservative when it comes to technology compared to the rest of the world, so you also have to stay closer to what is happening in the Asian market from an R&D perspective.

In the past, everybody considers Asia for manufacturing, the United States and Europe for R&D. Asia is not just manufacturing only anymore; it is growing very strong in R&D—Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and China. If you are not successful in the R&D side in these countries, you will not be in the test business in 10 years.

Agilent Technologies