Keysight Spectrum Management Software

Executive Summary

Keysight Spectrum Management Software (KSMS) is a comprehensive software tool kit to modernize how frequency regulators, public and private network operators manage its frequency resource, detect, locate and mitigate interference issues, provide full stack spectrum optimization from RF to over the air analog and digital demodulation.

KSMS works with Keysight FieldFox RF and MW analyzers with an operating frequency from DC to 54GHz. FieldFox can be networked and mobile in a vehicle. Users can quickly setup ad hoc or mobile signal monitoring network to monitor RF spectrum activities, report frequency allocation and usage, detect any interference and locate its whereabouts using Time of Difference of Arrival (TDoA) and Received Signal Strength (RSS) techniques. FieldFox RTSA with a handheld directional antenna can find source of interference at last mile

Signal Management and its Challenges

Signal monitoring

Telecommunications industry has been cutting wires for the past decades, 5G and broadband communication catapults spectrum usage in a whole new level. The biggest challenges are higher frequency usage, base station density, and heterogeneous network deployment (5G, 4G, Wi-Fi, IoT and Satellite communication).

Higher frequency like mid-band and mmWave (FR2) deployment makes rendered existing signal monitoring infrastructure hard to provide any useful information, because current signal monitoring sites are fixed and built for

Multi-layer dense base stations sharing same or adjacent spectrum, exacerbates interference issues, coordination between Macro, Micro, Pico, repeater and indoor DAS proves to be difficult, some operators don’t even know what kind of assets are available in the given area, it complicates spectrum planning, clearing, and control.

Heterogenous network deployment makes 5G, 4G, WiFi, IoT, Satellite communication and public safety all intrinsically dependent on each other, and they can also interfere with each other to impact coverage and network quality, testing and verifying radio coverage becomes interesting. More radio in any given area, more RF exposure generated, EMF becomes imminent tasks instead of nice to know.

In the meantime, broadcasting and critical communication LMR/Air traffic ground communication still needs to work perfectly and reliably.

Spectrum management including spectrum monitoring is facing a tremendous challenge to keep the wireless world in order, it requires fast and easy to use tools to increase spectrum management efficiency.

Keysight Spectrum Management Software with FieldFox provides a forward looking platform to the industry to address these challenges.

Signal Analysis

One of the key trends in signal management is to have a better understanding of the signal formats and their impact on spectrum usage and noise generated due to channel allocation and guard bands. 5G like signals tend to have wideband and high peak to average ratio, these types of signals can easily over drive amplifiers and create spectrum regrowth impacting adjacent channels.

Massive MIMO and beamforming technologies make wireless networks more efficient at providing coverage, but it also proves to be challenging to verify transmitter’s total transmit power, makes the spectrum control challenging. This is particularly problematic with spectrum sharing networks like CBRS.

All the trends point to a need to understand signals deeper under management, in addition to conventional regulation on frequency and power, frequency regulators and operators also need to proactively understand signal formats and their impact on network performance and spillover effects.

KSMS provides both standard power spectrum management measurements and signal demodulation / decode capability to provide full stack insight of signals under management.