Leading provider of accurate, repeatable and automated wireless personal testbeds, octoScope, has recorded 20% year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth and a 20% increase in the number of key customers, in 2020. To support this ongoing growth, the company doubled the size of its facilities in Massachusetts and California, and grew its overall team by 30 percent, primarily within its R&D operations, adding a few strategic hires and reinforcing its middle management. Strategic new hires include the addition of Janne Linkola as Senior Director of Marketing, and a key software developer formerly responsible for the Wi-Fi Alliance automation framework.
The new Wi-Fi 6 technology introduced in 2020 with new requirements for sophisticated test scenarios has propelled octoScope’s growth. This growth will continue as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened new 6 GHz spectrum in April 2020 for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed uses. The new 6 GHz band increases the number of channels available to Wi-Fi by 233%. Known in the industry as Wi-Fi 6E, the 6 GHz capable Wi-Fi requires a new generation of Wi-Fi 6E test equipment.
To align with this technology evolution, over the course of 2020, octoScope introduced several new offerings and made significant updates to its existing testbeds:
- octoBox® testbed support for operation in the 6 GHz band. The octoBox wireless personal testbed has been verified to support the entire Wi-Fi 6E band up to 7.5 GHz.
- Tracker™, a Wi-Fi test solution that enables recording of an environment such as a house for playback in the octoBox personal testbed.
- fieldPal™, a Wi-Fi test instrument that enables Wi-Fi testing and OFDMA wireless packet capture in the field.
- Expanded virtual station testing capacity in all of its testbeds. octoScope now supports 64 virtual stations, vSTAs, per radio in its Wi-Fi instrument, Pal-6. The total number of vSTAs per Pal-6 has doubled from 96 to 192 and later increased to 256 in thePal-6E. octoScope’s STACK-MAX testbed with four built-in Pal-6E instruments now supports 1024 virtual stations needed for testing enterprise APs, mesh systems and IoT scenarios.
- Support for Wi-Fi 6E in its Pal-6E™ instrument. To create Pal-6E, octoScope added a 6 GHz capable radio to its existing Pal-6 instrument. With the addition of this radio, the Pal-6E now supports all Wi-Fi standards, 802.11b/g/a/n/ac/ax.
While the COVID-19 pandemic upended in-person seminars, octoScope initiated its Wi-Fi 6 Test Tutorial series in 2020. Topics included:
Due to the interest in and success of this new series, the company will continue these tutorials in 2021, beginning with its 12th segment, Target Wake Time (TWT), on Wednesday, February 10th. This tutorial will discuss TWT and how it enables devices to determine when and how frequently they wake up to send or receive data. Participants can register to attend a live event at 7:30 am or 4:30 pm Eastern.
“2020 saw strong growth in Wi-Fi and other advanced wireless technologies,” said Fanny Mlinarsky, President of octoScope. “This growth will continue into 2021 and beyond. Wi-Fi mesh is being deployed into a rapidly growing number of home and enterprise networks, which will drive new testing requirements that will be significant for octoScope.”
About octoBox Personal Wireless Testbed
Stackable and configurable octoBox® personal testbeds are completely isolated from external interference and can be used at an engineer’s office or lab bench. Each octoBox testbed is controlled by a dedicated Node.js web server accessible via a browser UI for manual control, or via REST API for test automation. The server provides the time base for the testbed and controls the built-in instruments, DUT configuration, traffic, and test flow. Test results are saved in a MongoDB database, enabling multiple teams to easily collaborate by sharing the test automation scripts and test results.
