VIAVI Solutions, a renowned player in the field of network test, monitoring, and assurance, has come up with a new augmented reality solution, named RF Viewer, for visualizing and displaying real-time radio frequency signals using augmented reality technology. Integrated into the company’s flagship OneAdvisor 800 Wireless test platform, this innovation promises to transform how RF engineers and telecommunications technicians perceive, analyze and interact with otherwise invisible signal environments.
Developed in collaboration with Verizon Wireless, RF Viewer overlays live RF data including signal strength, distribution and intensity directly onto a device’s camera feed. Through this intuitive AR experience, complex RF analytics are translated into visually accessible insights, enabling users to quickly detect signal anomalies, locate interference sources, and optimize network configurations.
“This solution bridges the gap between invisible RF data and human perception, empowering technicians, engineers and researchers to make faster, smarter decisions in the field,” said Ian Langley, Senior Vice President of VIAVI’s Wireless Business Unit. Verizon’s Vikramjeet Singh emphasized the safety and operational benefits of the technology, noting its role in efficiently locating passive intermodulation (PIM) sources while ensuring technician safety.
How RF Viewer Works: AR Meets Wireless Diagnostics
At its core, RF Viewer brings together AR visualization and advanced RF analytics to provide:
- Live overlays of RF signal metrics on camera video
- Real-time diagnostic feedback for troubleshooting and optimization
- User-friendly interfaces accessible to both expert engineers and non-technical operators
This combination helps professionals in telecommunications, smart building design and RF safety assessments to immediately contextualize signal environments. With RF emissions often difficult to interpret through traditional instruments alone, the AR visualization layer significantly reduces cognitive load and accelerates decision-making in the field.
RF Viewer augments the existing capabilities of OneAdvisor 800 Wireless, which already includes spectrum analysis, interference detection and transport network validation features critical for supporting evolving standards such as 5G Advanced and the future progression toward 6G technologies.
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Implications for the Augmented Reality Industry
While augmented reality has primarily been associated with consumer applications such as gaming, retail overlays and navigation RF Viewer highlights AR’s expanding role as a specialized industrial tool. By enabling visualization of invisible electromagnetic fields, VIAVI’s solution opens new AR use cases in technical diagnostics and complex data interpretation areas previously dominated by conventional interfaces like charts and meters.
This trend fits well within the broader trends within the AR industry itself to focus on more productivity tools over entertainment-oriented apps. As enterprise organizations look to leverage AR to support decision-making tools for things like telepresence assistance to drive field service automation initiatives, products such as RF Viewer show the viability of AR to drive real-world solutions within highly technical scenarios itself.
In the telecommunications sector where RF planning, network optimization and interference mitigation remain paramount the integration of AR directly into diagnostic workflows could significantly shorten troubleshooting cycles and improve workforce efficiency. By presenting data visually in context, AR bridges the gap between abstract readings and actionable insights, lowering barriers for less experienced technicians and enabling faster learning curves.
Furthermore, VIAVI’s partnership with Verizon underscores how AR solutions can be co-developed with industry leaders to address specific operational challenges, thereby creating tailored AR capabilities that directly align with business needs. This collaborative model may become more common as enterprises recognize the value of context-aware, data-rich AR tools.
Business and Competitive Impacts
For companies operating in the AR space, VIAVI’s launch signals both opportunity and competition:
- Opportunity: The expansion of AR into industrial diagnostics may accelerate investment in AR software platforms, sensor integration and visualization frameworks tailored to niche markets such as network testing, manufacturing, healthcare, and industrial IoT.
- Competition: Providers focusing solely on consumer AR experiences may find pressure to pivot toward enterprise offerings that deliver measurable ROI and productivity gains.
As AR technologies mature, companies that can combine immersive visualization with domain-specific analytics are likely to gain an edge. For example, integrating AR with AI-driven analytics, predictive maintenance systems or remote collaboration tools could further expand the value proposition for enterprise clients.
From a market perspective, this development may influence strategic decisions around hiring AR specialists, adopting mixed-reality hardware, and investing in training programs that leverage immersive tools for operational efficiency.
Looking Ahead
VIAVI RF Viewer is one such application which clearly demonstrates how augmented reality is progressing from being a gimmick to a crucial industry-grade application. With the future of the telecommunications industry emerging into 5G Advanced and preparing the path for 6G, augmented reality is expected to find more uses in visualizing information and improving work efficiency.
Regarding the AR market as a whole, the future seems to be moving towards the enterprise with solutions that can be easily integrated with technical systems to offer various business advantages, ranging from cost reduction to accelerated problem-solving as well as enhanced safety.