Europe : Actix announced the launch of version 2.0 of its UMTS Rollout Verification Solution (A-RVS). The solution has already been deployed by a range of operators and infrastructure providers including Swisscom in Switzerland, mobilkom in Austria, and 3GIS in Sweden.

Both Swisscom and mobilkom launched their commercial 3G UMTS networks this year, and 3GIS is providing the UMTS infrastructure in rural areas for the 3G operators Vodafone and 3 in Sweden.

A-RVS enables engineers to meet the challenge of assessing subscriber-perceived performance for wireless voice and packet data networks, and can be used as an integral part of network rollout prior to launch and on an ongoing basis thereafter. Version 2.0 of A-RVS adds to, and enhances the range of features that wireless operators using Actix' technology already benefit from. Three of these key features include intelligence embedded into software, pre-defined analyses, and filters.

Embedded intelligence is able to indicate to engineers potential reasons, for example pilot pollution or a missing neighbor, for events like dropped calls. The pre-defined analyses feature supports the generation of reports, stateforms, queries and filters. The stateforms functionality enables engineers to track the state of various parameters while replaying through a log file. Engineers can also perform complex analysis of the data using queries, and can refine the available data using filters.

Duncan Vardy, Product Manager, Actix said, "A-RVS version 2.0 is designed to ease routine engineering tasks for network rollout. Embedded intelligence helps to quickly identify issues such as pilot pollution, interference, and missing neighbors. New pre-defined analyses allow users to view advanced reporting and replay through problem voice and data calls." He adds: "Existing customers such as mobilkom, Swisscom and 3GIS are using RVS 2.0 to reduce rollout time and speed up the problem diagnosis/resolution cycle."

A-RVS
A-RVS streamlines and de-risks the rollout of UMTS networks during the critical rollout phase and thereafter. The solution reduces the time required to generate performance reports for new site or new cluster acceptance, enables sign-off of contractually agreed performance metrics, and provides support for all equipment vendors' and infrastructure providers ' data formats on a single platform.

The solution allows regional filtering for detailed analysis per area, the
comparison of WCDMA scanner data against UMTS UE measurements, and expertise in troubleshooting radio problems is embedded into the software.

By automating many common tasks and analyses and by embedding intelligence, the Actix solution is able to significantly boost the productivity of ad-hoc troubleshooting and optimization, as well as enhancing the skill set of the engineering team.

Actix A-RVS is based on the ActixVision open architecture platform, which includes user-definable query and open data import capabilities, so it may be used for many other ad-hoc troubleshooting and performance analysis tasks. Actix has embedded intelligence in the software to allow the RF engineer to visualize specific events and understand real problems occurring in the network.