Samsung announced it is stepping up 5G development through a new partnership with National Instruments (NI) which will allow it to test the mobility performance of its 5G base station using simulated end user equipment.

NI will provide LabView software-based user equipment which Samsung’s 5G NR base station can connect to in real time to evaluate performance at 28GHz. James Kimery, NI’s director of product marketing for RF communications and software-defined radio, told Mobile World Live the system will help Samsung test core 5G functionalities including 256QAM, carrier aggregation and MIMO, but also quality of service indicators such as dropped calls and data throughput under fading conditions even before the release of 5G devices.

Kimery explained the partnership will also help Samsung demonstrate the interoperability of its equipment to operators.

“If Samsung developed their own test UE [user equipment], then that doesn’t show a lot of interoperability,” he said: “It was important for Samsung to work with an independent third party and also to be able to demonstrate their solution sooner [than other ecosystem players].”

“As handsets become available, service operators will continue to test that base station equipment with a variety of devices from different manufacturers. So this is really the first step.”