
Europe
: Racal Instruments Wireless Solutions (RIWS), an Aeroflex company,
has become the first test equipment manufacturer to have approved
test cases for use in the UMTS 1900 MHz 'FDD Band II'. At last week's
PTCRB meeting, the US Standards Body approved 55 test cases for the
6401 AIME/CT Protocol Conformance test platform making RIWS the only
supplier to offer handset manufacturers the capability to test the
compliance of 3G handsets in this frequency band.
The approval
coincides with the announcement made by AT&T Wireless Services
and Nortel Networks launching North America's first commercial UMTS
(Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) wireless networks, the
first to operate in the 1900 MHz radio frequency band. This announcement
is expected to accelerate the demand for thorough and rigorous testing
of mobile handsets in this frequency band.
The test
cases have been validated by the Validation Competence Center of CETECOM,
in Essen and include Inter-System Handover between 1900 MHz UMTS and
1900 MHz GSM. The 6401 AIME/CT system provides the capability to run
the standard UMTS protocol conformance tests, as defined in 3GPP TS
34.123 and implemented in TTCN. The system features direct RF connection
to the mobile and is controlled from a standard Windows 2000 PC, connected
to the system via Ethernet. Easy test selection and automated test
execution facilities are provided, as are comprehensive logging facilities.
Captured logs can be exported to HTML format, retaining message decode
capability. The system can incorporate a comprehensive range of 3GPP-compliant,
GCF-approved test cases.