Aeroflex Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Aeroflex Holding Corp., announced that the TM500 family now supports aggregation of two 4 x 4 MIMO carriers, allowing mobile network operators to validate the performance of networks with data rates of up to 600 Mb/s.

4x4 MIMO gives mobile users faster and more reliable data connections by making use of spatial multiplexing, where multiple data streams are transmitted simultaneously via separate antennas to improve throughput. Combining two of these 4 x 4 MIMO channels using carrier aggregation doubles the available bandwidth, hence giving a further x2 improvement in data rate.

“Operators with high density cell deployments, particularly those in APAC, are keen to employ 4 x 4 MIMO with carrier aggregation to provide an enhanced experience to their data-hungry users,” said Shusina Ngwa, product manager at Aeroflex. “For this to happen, infrastructure vendors need to begin testing their development models in the lab under realistic usage scenarios at the earliest possible opportunity. Using the TM500 family of handset simulators is the only way to achieve this right now.”

The TM500 is the industry-standard base station tester in use by infrastructure vendors across the world, and the E500—part of the TM500 family—is used by leading network operators to verify the performance of new network features.

For more information, contact your local Aeroflex sales office by visiting or calling Aeroflex Sales at (800) 835-2352 [US], +44 (0)1438 742200 [UK] or info-test@aeroflex.com.