Test and measurement (T&M) company Rohde & Schwarz has tied up with security firm Gemalto to minimize multi-region drive testing for LTE-Advanced wireless modules.
Germany-based Rohde & Schwarz and Gemalto will develop T&M tools that significantly reduce expensive drive tests for LTE and LTE-Advanced modules. These tools solve the challenge of characterizing RF, protocol and application layers in diverse mobile operator networks where different network configurations can cause issues during handovers and roaming.
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The solution will automatically reproduce field-recorded network configurations of Gemalto Cinterion modules on an R&S CMW500 mobile radio tester. Manufacturers can use virtual drive tests during the development phase of LTE and LTE-Advanced modules that will be used in smartphones as well as in M2M and automotive applications.
Network-specific integration tests and field tests include analysis of call drops, cell handover problems and roaming issues, which are especially critical when crossing country and cellular network borders.
Andreas Haegele, SVP IoT products, Gemalto, said: “The new solution reproduces conditions from field test logs in a lab environment allowing us to validate devices under real network conditions and solve potential issues while eliminating time consuming and cost intensive analysis in the field.”
Anton Meßmer, vice president Mobile Radio Tester at Rohde & Schwarz, said: “Using the extracted parameters, Gemalto can test its cellular modules in various simulation scenarios under controlled, reproducible conditions in the lab.”
Meanwhile, Rohde & Schwarz has developed R&S CMWcards software – a graphical protocol test tool that provides a wizard for importing field logs generated by different types of drive test tools (R&S ROMES) and chipset logging tools.
After import, R&S CMWcards extracts the base station and core network parameters are extracted along with RF data such as power levels. All field network parameters can be used to recreate the collected drive test data in the lab, using R&S CMWcards for protocol and application tests.
Rohde & Schwarz has tied up with NextNav to enable the location determination capabilities in mobile devices. Rohde & Schwarz and NextNav have developed and verified MBS OTA antenna performance tests. This completes a critical step towards the availability of an MBS certification test solution. This MBS technology is expected to become part of the CTIA OTA test plan during 2018.
NextNav has leveraged Rohde & Schwarz’s location based services (LBS) and over-the-air (OTA) test solutions to provide a test bed for early standardization, performance evaluation and repeatability of MBS tests for consumer mass market devices.
“This partnership ensures availability of the MBS technology as part of the Rohde & Schwarz test platform and marks an important and exciting next step in making MBS mass market capable for mobile devices,” said Tom Wrappe, Vice President Ecosystem Development, NextNav.
