Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Boonton Electronics for Its Global Product Leadership in Radio Frequency Power Meters

November 02, 2017

Boonton’s RF USB power meters offer customers cost-effective, compact, and easy-to-use solutions for capturing and analyzing RF signals

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — November 2, 2017 — Based on its recent analysis of the radio frequency (RF) test and measurement (T&M) market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Boonton Electronics with the 2017 Global Product Leadership Award for its high-performance RF power meters and USB power sensors. Part of the US publicly traded company Wireless Telecom Group (NYSE:WTT), Boonton Electronics (Boonton) offers RF power meters and sensors, modulation analyzers, and audio analyzers, and serves primarily the military-aerospace (mil-aero) and medical imaging industries.

RF power meters are general-purpose instruments that find use in aerospace and defense (A&D), communications, industrial, automotive, consumer electronics, and other industries. During its recent analysis of this industry, Frost & Sullivan found that a key trend in the RF power meter market is the move from average to peak power meters, which now generate the majority of the market revenue. As a result, customers are looking for instruments with a wider dynamic range to address new Wi-Fi and long-term evolution (LTE) signals, higher power range and frequencies, and faster rise time.

“Customers face challenges with space, time, and costs, particularly in manufacturing and other automated applications, where speed is paramount to increase productivity and throughput,” said Jessy Cavazos, Industry Director. “This means end users on those types of industry verticals are seeking smaller, easy-to-use, more affordable test instruments. This accounts for the market demand shift from traditional form factor power meters to the more compact USB sensors.”

Boonton provides RF power meters and sensors in both bench-top and USB form factors. Its bench instruments are mainly used in research and development and field applications, primarily by major mil-aero customers, such as the US Navy, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Boonton’s 4500B RF peak power meter is an excellent example of how the company’s bench products are meeting customer needs with 65 MHz of video bandwidth, rise time under 7 ns and a wide variety of interchangeable peak power sensors. The RTP5000 Real-Time Peak Power Sensor, a USB form factor instrument, provides industry leading capabilities which include the following:

• Up to 195 MHz of video bandwidth
• Rise time under 3 ns
• Wide dynamic range of over 80 dB

In addition to the 4500B, Boonton’s bench power meters include the 4540 series, the 4530 series; and the 4240 series, which offers high measurement speed for manufacturing applications. All of these products excel at capturing and measuring fast-pulsed RF signals.

Boonton’s USB power sensors include the RTP5000, previously known as the 55 series, and RTP4000. These USB power sensors feature the company’s patent pending Real-Time Power ProcessingTM technology, which eliminates acquisition gaps and provides zero measurement latency. These sensors provide 100,000 measurements per second. Its USB sensors find extensive use in manufacturing and automatic test equipment (ATE) applications. The company’s software can support 8 simultaneous USB power sensors, which is quite attractive for ATE applications. 

“USB sensors are increasing in popularity due to the small size, ease of use, and lower cost. However, for these products to succeed in the market place, these sensors have to offer high performance. Boonton’s USB sensors offer performance beyond what industry wide flagship bench-top power meters provide today, which accounts for its success,” said Cavazos.

It is the high performance of its products that keeps Boonton ahead of its competition in the RF power meters market. Boonton has succeeded in communications applications by targeting niche areas where the company can differentiate itself through its products’ superior measurement speed and throughput. For example, Boonton’s RTP4000 power sensor, introduced in September 2016, is a true average power meter that provides 100,000 measurements per second with no acquisition gaps and measurement latency. The RTP4000 also has a frequency range of 4 kHz to 6 GHz.  Frost & Sullivan analysis confirms that such low frequencies are not available from other competitors’ products.

Overall, Boonton focuses on bringing to the market capabilities that are not available from its competitors’ RF power meters, offering a range of bench and USB power meters and sensors that enable customers to capture and analyze fast-pulsed RF signals. With its strong overall performance in the RF power meters market, Boonton Electronics has earned the 2017 Frost & Sullivan Product Leadership Award.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality that is gaining rapid market acceptance. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Boonton Electronics

Boonton Electronics (a Wireless Telecom Group company, also comprised of CommAgility, Microlab and Noisecom) is a leader in high performance RF and microwave test equipment for radar, avionics, electronic warfare, satellite and wireless communications, and EMI/EMC applications.  Used across the semiconductor, military, aerospace, medical and communications industries, Boonton products enable a wide range of RF power measurements and signal analysis for RF product design, production, maintenance and system integration.  The Boonton product portfolio includes peak and average RF power meters, Real-Time USB Power sensors, RF voltmeters, modulation analyzers, and audio analyzers.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community.