Test equipment company Anritsu announced that its equipment now supports TD-LTE carrier aggregation (CA) testing, claiming the slot as the first LTE network simulator that supports CA for Time Division Duplex (TDD) Long Term Evolution, the variant favored by operators such as China Mobile.
The company this week launched software upgrades to its MD8430A signaling tester to support the simulation of a network to test TDD-LTE CA. Carrier aggregation involves the combining of radio channels within or across bands (intra-band and inter-band) to increase user data rates, with expected downlink throughput speeds of up to 150 megabits per second.
Anritsu noted that the TDD-LTE CA testing ability on the MD8430A can be coupled with its FDD-LTE (Frequency Division Duplex) carrier aggregation testing capability, as well as other LTE-Advanced features such as eICIC for addressing small cell and macro site interference, and advanced beamforming functionality. There are five models of the network simulator, designed for device testing during development through various certification procedures, as well as carrier acceptance testing for a device to be launched on a mobile operator’s network.
–National Instruments is collaborating with more than half a dozen universities on research into fifth-generation wireless communications, through its RF/Communications Lead User program.
Wireless communications researchers can come up prototypes more quickly with graphical system design and unified tools, compared to traditional methods that involved disparate development tools that NI said could sometimes add years to prototype development.
NYU Wireless professor Sundeep Rangan said that “the complexity of today’s wireless communication challenges requires a new design approach,” and added that his program was able to build a functional LTE network prototype in a few months in order to use it for research. NYU is also looking into measuring and developing channel models for deployment of networks in spectrum above traditional cellular frequencies, according to NYU professor Ted Rappaport, with the expectation that due to limited spectrum resources, 5G wireless will “inevitably involve deployments in these new frequencies.”
TU Dresden has been part of the lead user program since 2011 and demonstrated a prototype of a fully functional generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) prototype at NIWeek 2013 in Austin, Texas.
Professor Gerhard Fettweis of TU Dresden and the university’s Vodafone Chair, said that the quick progression was simulations to a prototype was “surprising.”
“We now have a functional GFDM prototype to clearly demonstrate the benefit of this approach to 5G wireless systems, but it also enables our team to continue to iterate and explore other aspects of 5G systems including cross layer optimization with a new physical layer,” Fettweis added.
—Anite said that a “leading North American mobile operator” has validated its new data performance test solution, and uses Anite’s equipment in its device acceptance program to evaluate the performance of new LTE devices before they are launched.
—Agilent Technologies introduced a new modular software application recently, the M9099 Waveform Creator, for design and modeling. The solution is meant to address the fact that as electronics in various industries become more complex, they are creating more complex signals that must be evaluated in a uniform way. The product is designed to be used by people developing and testing electronics for defense; military radios; and next-generation wireless devices.
Agilent also added more realistic testing functions to its M8190A high-speed arbitrary waveform generator, for engineers who are working on low-observable radar or high-density communications. Agilent said the streaming and multi-channel synchronization functions for the M8190A allow users to “take simulation to the extreme” and, say, simulate an entire plane flight’s worth of data instead of milliseconds, and allow for real-time events to influence signal scenarios.
