NI, the provider of platform-based systems that enable engineers and scientists to address engineering challenges, announced multiple antenna User Equipment (UE) support for its LabVIEW Communications MIMO Application Framework.
NI's enhanced MIMO Application Framework is claimed to be the only commercially available physical layer reference design to enable massive MIMO prototyping for both desktop simulations and functional 5G deployments.
Using the new solution, wireless researchers can pair the MIMO Application Framework with NI software defined radio hardware to conduct real-time, over-the-air experiments for a range of MIMO research areas including multi-user MIMO, single-user MIMO and massive MIMO. The multi-FPGA physical layer reference design is supplied with LabVIEW Communications source code that can be reconfigured and modified to allow the creation of a network of multiple antenna devices.The NI solution equips researchers to explore beamforming techniques not only at the base station, but also at the UE to help improve overall network throughput, extend cell coverage and reduce interference. The MIMO Application Framework supports network throughput of more than 1.5 Gbit/s, a flexible, reconfigurable TDM-based frame structure and a bidirectional communications link that can be used to quickly conduct massive MIMO experiments and integrate custom signal processing algorithms.
NI noted that as participants in its RF/Communications Lead User program, wireless researchers at Sweden's Lund University have used the NI prototyping platform for 5G research and recently demonstrated the feasibility of massive MIMO under mobile conditions for users moving at both pedestrian and vehicular speeds.
