Aeroflex Test Solutions in Burnham, England, is adding radio-channel fading capability to its 6401 AIME 3G mobile protocol test system. The 6401 AIME’s radio-channel emulation capability addresses the drawbacks of traditional RF-based radio-channel emulation methods by integrating these functions at baseband. Applying the time varying radio-channel characteristics digitally facilitates accuracy and precise repeatability for thorough testing of the physical layer of 3G devices. Traditionally, radio-channel emulation requires expensive additional test equipment, such as fading simulators and AWGN noise sources, connected at the RF between the signal generator and the unit under test, Aeroflex officials say. For complicated testing scenarios like soft handover, antenna diversity, and MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) the cost of multiple external RF-fading simulators and AWGN sources, and the complexity of their control and calibration can become prohibitive. The 6401 AIME’s integrated radio-channel fading capability makes available as many as eight paths for each of its three UMTS carriers, which enables users to simulate multi-path conditions with each path independently controlled to provide either Constant, Rayleigh, Doppler, Periodic or Log-normal gain and Constant, Periodic or Pseudo-random Delay conditions. This satisfies the current 3GPP RF and protocol conformance test radio channel fading profiles and also gives the user the ability to create their own. An AWGN generator for each cell is also incorporated to provide simulation of interference signals. A highly accurate and repeatable solution results, as both the Fading and AWGN are implemented digitally at baseband. For more information contact Aeroflex online at www.aeroflex.com.
