China Mobile has used R&S CMX500 radio communication tester from Rohde & Schwarz for conducting audio quality test cases to ensure that all 5G enabled mobile phones to support voice services over 5G NR (VoNR).
Rohde & Schwarz for 5G VoNR test verification
The current deployment of 5G standalone (SA) networks is paving the way for high-quality 5G voice over New Radio. The enhanced voice service (EVS) codec used by VoNR focuses on high-quality multimedia services. The service has wider audio bandwidth, a higher sampling rate, a better quantization level and higher definition.
Rohde & Schwarz and China Mobile performed 2G/3G/4G audio quality testing with the R&S CMW500 wideband radio communication tester, and the companies are now continuing this collaboration with 5G VoNR audio quality test cases using the R&S CMX500 5G radio communication tester.
Germany-based Rohde & Schwarz, a leading test and measurement company, coordinated VoNR test cases such as IMS, SIP protocol and emergency call tests with chip manufacturers and terminal manufacturers earlier this year, which can now be leveraged for the China Mobile VoNR acceptance tests.
The IMS is the voice service enabler that uses the 5G core and needs to be thoroughly tested. However, testing voice services in 5G also includes VoLTE aspects for the non-standalone (NSA) and EPS fallback scenarios, which enable the handover from NR to LTE when 5G coverage is limited.
The test setup for 5G voice and video applications includes the R&S CMX500 5G radio communication tester, which supports LTE and 5G NR devices and is used for network-independent signaling testing. The internal IMS server of the R&S CMX500 provides virtual UE emulation and an audio loopback mode for fast and simple VoNR functional testing.
Telecommunication engineers of China Mobile can extend the setup with an audio analyzer for electrical audio performance measurements and a dummy head with an artificial ear and mouth for high-quality acoustic tests in line with 3GPP and ETSI audio measurements, Rohde & Schwarz said.
