Agilent works with chipset firm to speed SDR development

Agilent Technologies has teamed with wireless chipset firm Lime Microsystems to pair test equipment, wireless transceiver technology and control software for testing and evaluating software-defined radio systems.

With Agilent test equipment and the transceiver from Lime, designers can generate digital IQ signals using a pattern generator, convert these signals to RF, and analyse the RF signals.

“Combining the transceiver platform from Lime Microsystems with our suite of test equipment has given designers a comprehensive method for design validation, even for multi-standard radios,” said Robert Drollinger, marketing manager at Agilent.

Target areas for design include cellular small cells, software defined radios, public safety and land mobile radios.

According to Dale Wilson, director of marketing at Lime Microsystems. “Our joint efforts with Agilent have enabled our customers to evaluate our product quickly and efficiently.”

The Lime Microsystems evaluation platform and associated control software allows users to adjust the transceiver’s uplink and downlink frequencies from 300MHz to 3.8GHz, and to set the on-chip channel filters to accommodate all cellular standards.

The setup is supported by Agilent software tools (including Signal Studio), coupled with the Lime user interface, for optimising the RF parameters on a given standard or frequency band.