Agilent Technologies Introduces Industry’s First MIPI RFFE Protocol-Decoding Software for Oscilloscopes

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 19, 2013

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced the industry’s first software for decoding MIPI Radio Frequency Front-End (RFFE) protocol packets on oscilloscopes. The new protocol decoder provides design and validation engineers with a fast, easy way to validate and debug their RFFE interfaces.

RFFE is a specification that offers a common method for controlling RF front-end devices, namely power amplifiers, switches, power management modules, antenna tuners and sensors. RFFE provides point-to-multipoint connectivity for control of the RF front-end and is able to scale to dozens of slave devices, which are connected to a single master device.

Many radio applications need accurate timing control. To address this challenge, RFFE uses a relatively high bus-clock frequency of 26 MHz and introduces accurate triggering mechanisms to allow control of timing-critical functions in multiple devices.

Agilent’s N8824A MIPI RFFE protocol decoder is designed to run on Infiniium 9000A and 9000 H-Series oscilloscopes as well as the 90000A, 90000 X- and 90000 Q-Series. It decodes protocol packets for the MIPI RFFE v1.10 specification. R&D design and validation teams can use the software to address their startup debugging and to examine the traffic between RF front-end devices. Using the decoder with an oscilloscope also allows engineers to meet accurate timing requirements associated with the RFFE packets.

“As RFFE technology has been more widely adopted, we have received numerous requests from customers for a tool to decode RFFE packets,” said Jay Alexander, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s Oscilloscope Products Division. “To meet our customers’ needs for leading-edge solutions, we developed the RFFE protocol decoder. Our decoder is extremely helpful to RFFE designers for ensuring their designs work as intended.”

When engineers use the Agilent N8824A MIPI RFFE protocol decoder on the Infiniium 9000 H-Series oscilloscopes (ideal for this kind of work), they get12-bit vertical resolution and up to three times less noise than traditional oscilloscopes produce.