At this week's IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium in Atlanta, test and measurement equipment supplier Keithley Instruments, Inc. released version 2.0 of its PC-based waveform creation software with expanded signal library for both SISO and MIMO wireless standards. SignalMeister 2.0 features a new object-oriented graphical user interface (GUI) that allows RF engineers to intuitively create basic and complex waveforms using graphical objects. According to Keithley, this object-orientated GUI is optimized for MIMO signals and allows users to visually create a dramatically expanded range of test waveforms. Consequently, it enables the creation of the entire range of signals in accordance with WiMAX and WLAN wireless connectivity standards and 3GPP and 3GPP2 cellular standards.

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The first version was introduced in mid-2007 for the testing needs of manufacturers supplying mobile phones, wireless connectivity devices, RF chip sets, and components in both production and R&D environments. This integrated software package enables users to create signals easily across a wide variety of signal types and use common features such as signal impairments and channel models to modify reference signals for extensive product testing. To generate the created signal, the waveforms are simply download to series 2900 RF vector signal generator.

The software includes built-in libraries for many different signal types. These include mobile communications standards like WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, cdmaOne, cdma2000, and 1xEV-DV, as well as wireless connectivity standards such as 802.11a-b-g-j-n WLAN(supports MIMO) and 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX (supports WiBro).

Testing WiMAX signals, which is a complex modulation scheme, is a challenge for manufacturers. WiMAX, particularly its mobile version 802.16e, uses both frequency- and time-domain multiplexing with constantly changing allocations of sub-carriers. WiMAX Wave 2 also uses multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) methods, including antenna beamforming. According to Keithley, SignalMeister simplifies the task of testing a WiMAX signal.

Furthermore, the SignalMeister software allows the user to change the composition of uplink and downlink signals, i.e., to modify the parameters of standard signals, including the symbol rate, the bandwidth, the number of carriers, and more. It offers a choice of FFT sizes between 128 and 2048 and allows creation of WiMAX signals up to a bandwidth of 28 MHz. The resulting signal can then be analyzed with Keithley's series 2800 vector signal analyzer family with WiMAX enhancements in both time and frequency domains, either demodulating the signal or measuring its spectral performance using the series 2800's built-in spectrum analyzer or its spectral emissions mask measurement.

SignalMeister waveform creation software is available at no charge and can be downloaded from the supplier’s web site at http://www.keithley.com/signal. It is part of the solution being offered with all series 2900 RF vector signal generators. Keithley said that software licenses start at $2,500.