National Instruments (NI), a TEVET strategic partner, is enabling true massive MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) prototyping shaping 5G technology by adding support for multiple antenna equipment on its LabVIEW platform. Massive MIMO uses large numbers of antennas at a base station to spatially multiplex.
Featuring a multi-FGPA physical layer reference design alongside reconfigurable source code, the NI system is crucial to managing this large network of devices. Massive MIMO promises to reduce costs and improve energy efficiency compared with current LTE (4G) networks, while improving reliability through redundancy from the increased number of antennas. More antennas mean more users can be served in a dense area without consuming more of the radio spectrum or causing interference.
Researchers at the University of Bristol and Lund University have successfully demonstrated greater than 20X increases in bandwidth efficiency compared to current 4G cellular technologies using the NI Prototyping System.
Contact a TEVET expert today to leverage our ability to pair software like NI’s LabVIEW to our partner’s hardware advancing your specific testing and research!