NEC Corporation successfully completed interoperability testing of its multi-vendor SON and Small Cell Femto Solution at the Small Cell LTE Plugfest 2, which was organized by the Small Cell Forum, in partnership with ETSI, and hosted by Orange Labs in Paris. The Plugfest was supported by 27 companies, including equipment vendors, test tool vendors and companies providing test network infrastructure.
Testing concentrated on S1 and X2 interfaces in a multi-vendor environment, such as Regression Testing, Handover, Mobility and SON. As well as testing small cell/macro cell handover and security gateways, another key area of focus was the testing of auto-tuning SON features in multi-vendor heterogeneous networks (HetNets).
SON test cases were provided by the Next Generation Mobile Network (NGMN) P-SmallCells project, which is driving the development of multi-vendor SON. The test cases covered the major SON features such as self-configuration of neighbor relations, load balancing and self-optimization of mobility, coverage and capacity.
NEC demonstrated the effectiveness of the 3GPP LTE standards in ensuring interoperability between Small Cell Gateway Systems and LTE Small Cell access points to Evolved Packet Core (EPC) equipment to verify the S1 interface implementations. Also, NEC's microcell eNodeB successfully connected to the macro eNodeB via X2 interfaces in a multi-vendor environment and demonstrated good interoperability of the auto-tuning SON features.
"This is the second consecutive year in which NEC has participated in the tests, each time with great results. Our cooperation with all participants paves the way for a technology breakthrough," said Katsumi Tanoue, assistant general manager, Radio Access Network Division, NEC Corporation. "Multi-vendor SON is the most important key technology helping operators get the most out of their existing network assets as part of a future-proof HetNet strategy."
"During the event, we witnessed the great results of NEC's commitment to 3GPP open interfaces. The Plugfest has demonstrated the ability of NEC to offer a complete end-to-end LTE Femto Small Cell Solution (Access Points, Gateway Systems) which can work seamlessly in a multi-vendor HetNet deployment," said Neeraj Gupta, senior group manager from NEC Telecom Modus, UK.
Going forward, NEC will continue interconnectivity tests with leading global vendors in order to prove that Small Cell solutions can enable quick and smooth deployment for mobile operators globally.