National Instruments Introduces Industry's Fastest Wireless LAN Test Suite

New WLAN Measurement Software for NI LabVIEW and Software-Defined PXI RF
Instrumentation Deliver Fast, Flexible Measurements

AUSTIN, Texas, March 24, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- National Instruments
(Nasdaq: NATI) today announced a new wireless local area network (WLAN) test
solution that can generate and analyze RF signal measurements four times
faster than other modular instrumentation solutions and up to 10 times faster
than traditional box instruments. The test solution combines new NI WLAN
Measurement Suite software for the National Instruments LabVIEW and
LabWindows(TM)/CVI development environments with NI 6.6 GHz PXI Express RF
hardware to deliver increased speed and flexibility for testing IEEE 802.11
a/b/g standards. Because the solution is software-defined, engineers easily
can configure their same measurement hardware to test more than six other RF
communications standards including GPS, WiMAX, Bluetooth and RFID.

The WLAN Measurement Suite offers the industry's best measurement throughput
and flexibility through a software-defined architecture. With software-defined
instrumentation, which consists of modular hardware and user-defined software,
engineers can take advantage of the latest CPU technological advances such as
multicore processing and parallel programming techniques to achieve the
fastest measurement times in the industry with software-defined PXI
instrumentation such as the PXI Express RF 6.6 GHz instruments. Also, with the
parallel programming capabilities of LabVIEW, the PXI-based RF measurement
times will continue to decrease with each evolution of multicore CPUs, thus
maximizing measurement performance, increasing system longevity and decreasing
capital investment. Because the instrumentation is defined in software,
engineers can easily customize RF measurements for multi-standard devices such
as systems on a chip (SOC), mobile phones and radios using the same
instrumentation.

The new WLAN test solution consists of the NI PXIe-5663 6.6 GHz RF vector
signal analyzer, NI PXIe-5673 6.6 GHz vector signal generator, NI PXIe-1075
18-slot high-bandwidth chassis and NI PXIe-8106 dual-core controller. The NI
PXIe-5663 can perform signal analysis from 10MHz to 6.6 GHz with up to 50 MHz
of instantaneous bandwidth while the NI PXIe-5673 delivers signal generation
from 85 MHz to 6.6 GHz with up to 100 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. The NI
PXIe-1075 chassis provides up to 1 GB/s per-slot bandwidth and up to 4 GB/s
total system bandwidth. This world-class measurement system produces residual
error vector magnitude (EVM) measurements as low as -44 dB. As a result,
engineers can use the same measurement system from research and design, where
measurement accuracy is critical, to production test, where measurement speed
is critical.

WLAN Measurement Suite software consists of the NI WLAN Generation Toolkit and
the NI WLAN Analysis Toolkit for LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI. Both toolkits
come with several example programs, helping engineers quickly get started with
automated test applications. Engineers can generate 802.11 a/b/g signals with
data rates ranging from 1 Mb/s to 54 Mb/s with the WLAN Generation Toolkit.
Using the WLAN Analysis Toolkit, engineers can perform physical (PHY) layer
measurements such as power, error vector magnitude (EVM) and spectrum mask
margin. In addition to these benefits, PXI RF test systems perform each of
these measurements up to 10 times faster than alternative RF measurement
platforms. Using the NI PXIe-8106 controller, EVM measurements are performed
as fast as 8ms and 66MHz spectrum mask measurements as fast as 18ms.

To learn more about the new WLAN Measurement Suite, visit
www.ni.com/automatedtest/wlan.htm.

About National Instruments
National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and
scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation
and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software
such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad
base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer
representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing
more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more
than 5,000 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the
past 10 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to
work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the
company's investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, e-mailing
nati@ni.com or visiting www.ni.com/nati.

Pricing and Contact Information
NI WLAN Measurement Suite 11500 N Mopac Expwy,
Priced* from $5,999; Austin, Texas 78759-3504
euro 5,499; Tel: (800) 258-7022,
882,000 yen Fax: (512) 683-9300
E-mail: info@ni.com
NI WLAN Generation Toolkit
Priced* from $3,999;
euro 3,699;
588,000 yen

NI WLAN Analysis Toolkit
Priced* from $3,999;
euro 3,699;
588,000 yen

Web:
http://www.ni.com/automatedtest/wlan.htm

* All prices are subject to change without notice.

CVI, LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI and ni.com are trademarks of National
Instruments. The mark LabWindows is used under a license from Microsoft
Corporation. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States and other countries. Other product and company names listed are
trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.
Editor Contact: Hilary Marchbanks, (512) 683-5937
Reader Contact: Ernest Martinez, (800) 258-7022

SOURCE National Instruments

Editors, Hilary Marchbanks, +1-512-683-5937, or Readers, Ernest Martinez,
1-800-258-7022, both of National Instruments