Keysight Technologies Inc. announced that the company signed an agreement, along with 17 other industry partners, that aims to strengthen industrial ecological cooperation and drive world economic growth by accelerating 5G research and commercialization.

The signing of the agreement, initiated by UNISOC (a leading fabless semiconductor company), took place at the China IC Summit in Nanjing, China on September 19, 2018. According to the proposal, 5G offers an essential key to help unlock future opportunities across a wide range of industries, address poverty alleviation through reducing blind areas in mobile networks and encourage businesses to participate in open 5G technology innovation projects.

Keysight and UNISOC demonstrated a 5G call using Keysight's 5G network emulation solution and UNISOC's 5G Pilot V2 mobile device prototype at the event. The demonstration showed a 5G New Radio (NR) call in band n78 (frequency band ranging from 3.3 to 3.8 GHz) in compliance with the 3GPP 5G NR Non-Standalone (NSA) specifications.

"We're excited to continue our close collaboration with Keysight," said Nan Mingkai, VP of marketing at UNISOC. "Keysight's leading 5G solutions and deep technical expertise is helping us accelerate the pace of 5G commercialization."

"Keysight's unique expertise in 5G and industry-first 5G end-to-end test and measurement solutions are enabling global mobile ecosystems accelerate 5G product design development and validation from Layer 1 to 7 and across the entire workflow," said Cao Peng, senior director of Keysight's Commercial Communications group. "By using the same test capabilities and test cases specified by leading chipset manufacturers, device manufacturers can easily validate device performance, speed development and achieve consistent results."

Earlier this year, Keysight and UNISOC signed a Memorandum of Understanding to accelerate the development of 5G technology by coordinating 5G chipset and device related design, verification, test & measurement. Keysight is further supporting 5G development and commercialization in China through its participation in the IMT-2020 Promotion Group-led Phase I Step 3 trials.

Steve Yan, VP of global technology and general manager of Greater China at Keysight Technologies, who represented the company at the event, commented, "The signing of this agreement highlights Keysight's close collaborations with leading organizations in the mobile industry. We have continuously helped the connected ecosystem accelerate 5G development and commercialization, making the promise of 5G real."