To guarantee that electromagnetic (EM) radiation from smartphones and other wireless devices meets safety guidelines, making sure human exposure to EM fields is in line with international standards and government regulations is mandatory in most countries. The specific absorption rate (SAR) and power density (PD) are the main compliance parameters. The SAR measures the RF power absorbed by the human body. It is evaluated in the frequency range from 100 kHz to 10 GHz, while the PD or power incident in the human body, is evaluated above 10 GHz.

The Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. also requires hearing aid compatibility (HAC) testing for mobile phones. The IEEE/ANSI-C63.19-2019 standard requires testing procedures that use diverse voice calls from traditional circuit switched voice calls with 2G/3G to current IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) based voice calls and over-the-top voice services.

To perform mandatory SAR and HAC tests on 5G new radio (NR) terminal devices, the China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL) Terminal labs at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) selected the Rohde & Schwarz R&S CMX500 OBT wireless communication tester to complement their DASY8 dosimetric and near-field evaluation system from SPEAG. For SAR tests, the R&S CMX500 establishes a signaling connection with the mobile device and emulates 5G NR audio and data connections for relevant test scenarios in line with various international standards. In HAC testing, the integrated IMS server in the R&S CMX500 and R&S CMX-ZG180A audio accessories for analog audio input/output allow for very intuitive voice quality testing of 4G voice over long-term evolution (VoLTE) and 5G voice over new radio (VoNR) calls.

CTTL Terminal labs is the most comprehensive communications testing and certification agency in China. The main activities at the CTTL Terminal labs include research into technical standards, policy and evaluation methods for terminal devices used in telecommunications, internet, informatization and industrialization. The organization also covers relevant testing, certification, evaluation, quality issues, appraisals, supervision and inspections, consultation, R&D and much more.

Xin Ma, director of CTTL at CAICT, said, “In the age of 4G, Rohde & Schwarz has provided our test lab with many excellent test solutions. We are happy to see the addition of the R&S CMX500 one-box tester to our lab to support 5G SAR and HAC testing. We hope to continue this close collaboration in the future so that we can work together to solve industry pain points, serve customers better and promote the healthy development of the communications industry.”

Prof. Niels Kuster, president of SPEAG, said, “Both SPEAG and Rohde & Schwarz are deeply committed to meeting the growing testing demands of the wireless industry. We are delighted to extend our partnership and intensify our collaboration with CAICT to master 5G testing challenges. Seeing our DASY8, DASY8-3D and cSAR3D customers conduct FR1 and FR2 measurements using the R&S CMX500 one-box tester is very exciting. This instrument offers the reliability and flexibility required for SAR and PD testing.”

Alexander Pabst, senior vice president of the wireless communications market segment at Rohde & Schwarz, said, “In the LTE era, we integrated our R&S CMW500 with SPEAG systems to provide complete SAR testing systems to the industry. Now, we are excited to continue our cooperation with SPEAG and help our long-term partner, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology upgrade their SAR compliance testing facility with our R&S CMX500 for the new 5G era.”

DASY8: Dosimetric Assessment System for EM Near-Field Scanning

DASY8 is the latest generation in the gold standard for dosimetric and near-field evaluation systems. It fully complies with all national (FCC, ISED, CENELEC) and international (IEC, IEEE, ICNIRP) guidelines, standards and regulations. It is also the most versatile system for a wide range of R&D tasks for measuring electromagnetic exposure from 3 kHz to 110 GHz.

cSAR3D is the most advanced vector array system for fast and accurate SAR measurements of wireless devices. To increase measurement speed, cSAR3D uses state-of-the-art fast data acquisition as well as advanced and highly accelerated 3D field reconstruction algorithms. cSAR3D complies with the latest draft of IEC 62209-3 and the fast SAR protocols defined in IEC 62209-2 and IEEE 62209-1528.

DASY8-3D combines the best of both worlds by fully integrating the cSAR3D system with the available DASY8 modules for a combined system that seamlessly transitions from automated SAR pre-screening with cSAR3D to full evaluations with the gold standard DASY8. This modular and versatile testing system is ideal for R&D, market surveillance and high-throughput testing.

Future-Proof One-Box Solution for 5G NR Testing

The R&S CMX500 radio communication tester from Rohde & Schwarz has a simple and flexible test concept. The one-box tester supports 5G NR in frequency ranges FR1 and FR2 along with the LTE range and includes a wide range of frequency band combinations. The R&S CMX500 offers different test functions, from basic radio frequency tests and end-to-end application tests (e.g. VoNR, maximum throughput) to protocol conformance testing and more. The flexible R&S CMX500 hardware and software configurations allow different test requirements to be combined in a single customized testing platform.