In Brief from the Mobile World Congress

March 2, 2012. Anritsu, Aeroflex, Rohde & Schwarz, Agilent Technologies, LitePoint, Spirent, and others made news in Barcelona this week at the Mobile World Congress.

Anritsu and Signalion GmbH said they have conducted a successful IOT for the 3GPP LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation feature with an IP downlink throughput of 300 Mbps. As a result of this IOT collaboration, the two companies will supply dependable test solutions for 3GPP LTE-Advanced. The IOT was conducted using the MD8430A LTE base station simulator for LTE terminal verification developed by Anritsu Corporation, and the SORBAS LTE terminal simulator for LTE base station verification developed by Signalion. Both solutions have been enhanced with Carrier Aggregation functionality of the LTE-Advanced standard as a trial development by each company. The IOT was performed in December 2011, and an average downlink throughput of 300 Mbps was achieved in an end-to-end connection at the IP layer. In the trial, two band-1 component carriers with 20 MHz bandwidth each were aggregated, resulting in a total bandwidth of 40 MHz. The companies demonstrated their first joint LTE-Advanced test solution at the Mobile World Congress.

Anritsu also said the market leading platform for combined handset testing, COMPRION SIMfony, now supports Anritsu LTE network simulators. It is dedicated to work as a conformance test platform at GCF and PTCRB, and listed as TP 126. In addition, Anritsu A/S, a provider of operations support systems (OSS) for advanced and converged networks, announces that its MasterClaw network monitoring system now supports Release 3.0 of the Global Roaming Quality (GRQ) specification, as specified by the GSM Association. Global Roaming Quality reports enable carriers to compare like-for-like performance indicators for voice, data and SMS services provided to inbound and outbound roamers.

Aeroflex said its TM500 LTE Test Mobile is the first test mobile to emulate LTE Category 5 (Cat5) user equipment (UE), allowing operators to verify the operation of their networks and equipment vendors to prove the performance of eNodeB (LTE base stations) at the higher data rates that are enabled by Cat5 handsets and terminals. Cat5 is a classification for LTE UEs that provides enhanced data rates for both UL and DL. Using a 20-MHz bandwidth and FDD under good channel conditions, a data rate of 300 Mbps is available in the downlink, due to the addition of support for 4×4 MIMO. In the uplink the data rate is boosted to 75 Mbps by taking advantage of 64QAM modulation in addition to the earlier QPSK and 16QAM. Cat5 also introduces limited buffer rate matching in the DL, which confines the memory requirements allowing for cost effective handsets.

Rohde & Schwarz and Cognovo demonstrated a real-time 3GPP Release 10 LTE-Advanced downlink scenario using the R&S SMU200A vector signal generator, the R&S EX-IQ-Box digital signal interface module, the R&S FSW signal and spectrum analyzer, and the Cognovo software-defined baseband chip. The demonstration showed the R&S SMU200A providing a fully 3GPP Release 10-compliant carrier aggregation signal, where two 20-MHz OFDM carriers are decoded by the Cognovo baseband device to deliver data bandwidth equivalent to 40 MHz. The R&S FSW provides the RF characterization of the signal using its up to 160 MHz analysis bandwidth.

Agilent Technologies Inc. said it has enhanced its portfolio of products for testing 2G, 3G, and LTE devices with the introduction of N5972A Interactive Functional Test software. The company also made available new IFT automation scripts based on network operator compliance test plans, including inter-RAT handover, simultaneous voice and data, data throughput and battery drain. Agilent’s new N5973A IFT automation software for the Verizon Wireless compliance test plan implements the LTE-CDMA inter-RAT compliance test plan with simultaneous voice and data. N5974A IFT automation software for the AT&T compliance test plan is focused on battery-drain testing for UMTS and LTE. N5978A IFT automation software for the China Mobile compliance test plan is focused on TD-LTE interoperability testing.

In addition, Agilent announced a new application based on its N7300 series chipset software platform. The Agilent N7304A-2, used with the company’s EXT wireless communications test set, was created in collaboration with Altair Semiconductor and optimized for high-volume manufacturing test for equipment based on Altair’s FourGee 3100/6200 TDD/FDD LTE chipset. The N7304A-2, a fully integrated and automated solution, provides fast RF calibration and verification of TDD/FDD LTE technologies for handsets, mobile devices and customer-premise equipment based on Altair’s FourGee 3100/6200. The N7304A-2 leverages the measurement science and advanced sequence analyzer techniques of Agilent X-series signal analyzers. The solution offers OEMs, ODMs, module manufacturers and design houses a reliable and efficient test solution to speed their TDD/FDD LTE devices to market.

LitePoint also addressed Altair Semiconductor's FourGee-3100/6200, saying it has released a new test solution designed specifically for the TDD/FDD LTE cellular chipset. LitePoint’s IQxstream cellular test platform, created in tandem with Altair, offers complete four-device parallel verification and calibration of the FourGee-3100/6200 LTE chipset in both TDD and FDD modes. “As one of the first chipset companies to offer LTE support for both TDD and FDD, it is essential that our manufacturing partners maintain the ability to easily and efficiently scale up production levels,” said Eran Eshed, co-founder and vice president of marketing and business development for Altair. LitePoint earlier had announced the LitePoint IQxel manufacturing test solution for very high throughput wireless devices supporting the 802.11ac standard. IQxel rapidly tests 802.11 a/b/g/n/p/ac and Bluetooth 1.0, 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 devices in an easy to deploy, single-box instrument.