IN Brief:
- Pre-standard 6G work is moving from concept trials into multi-vendor interoperability validation.
- Keysight’s WaveJudge is being used to decode and compare gNB and UE behaviour across protocol and RF layers.
- The setup targets early 6G concepts, including cm-wave spectrum and wider channel bandwidths.
Keysight Technologies and Ericsson have collaborated to troubleshoot and validate interoperability between an Ericsson pre-6G base station (gNB) and prototype pre-6G devices, using Keysight’s WaveJudge Wireless Analyzer Solutions. The companies describe the work as full-stack testing on real network infrastructure and devices, with a live demonstration scheduled for Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2026.
Interoperability is an unglamorous gate in any new radio generation, and it gets harder in the pre-standard phase, where “correct” can mean “consistent with a draft” rather than “consistent with a ratified profile.” In this setup, the gNB and user equipment (UE) prototypes are brought together with an independent analyser watching both sides, looking for where signalling, scheduling, and RF behaviour diverge from expectations, or from one another.
Keysight positions WaveJudge as that neutral reference point. In the collaboration, the tool is used to decode and analyse signalling from both the gNB and UE, then flag discrepancies between expected and observed behaviour. That matters in the practical sense that early prototypes often embed design assumptions that are not yet harmonised across vendors, making root-cause analysis messy when symptoms appear as performance loss, intermittent attach issues, or unexpected protocol interactions.
The companies frame the test work against emerging pre-6G concepts now appearing in research and early implementation efforts, including centimetre-wave spectrum, channel bandwidths up to 400 MHz, and performance pushes around massive MIMO and protocol efficiency. Those are all areas where the boundary between PHY decisions and upper-layer behaviour becomes increasingly tight, and where a decode-and-compare workflow can shorten debug loops.
WaveJudge itself is pitched as an over-the-air protocol-decoding and RF analysis platform that gives real-time visibility into interactions between protocol and physical layers, with visual diagnostics intended to speed fault isolation. Keysight also highlights support for analysing complex wireless behaviours such as MIMO, beamforming, and scheduling, along with the ability to capture real-world conditions for deeper post-analysis and lab reproduction.
David Bjore, Vice President and Head of RAN Software & Compute Platforms, Business Area Networks, Ericsson, said: “Achieving interoperability is a key milestone for our 6G program. Our collaboration with Keysight has helped us resolve issues more efficiently and gain deeper insight into the performance of emerging 6G concepts.”
Lucas Hansen, Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Devices, and Operators at Keysight, said: “Early validation is critical to advancing next-generation wireless. By working closely with Ericsson, we are enabling early exploration of new ideas alongside the standards development process. Keysight’s WaveJudge solutions help identify issues quickly and accelerate our customers’ path from research to real-world deployment.”
MWC Barcelona 2026 runs from March 2 to March 5, and the demo is being presented as a reference point for how pre-6G programmes are starting to treat interoperability: less as a late-stage conformance hurdle, and more as an early engineering workflow that has to keep pace with evolving specifications.
