Microwave Journal
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TM500 LTE Test Mobile Enhancement

January 17, 2011

eMBMS test capability now available on the industry standard LTE test mobile

Stevenage, UK— November 9, 2011— Aeroflex Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Aeroflex Holding Corp. (NYSE:ARX), announced today that the TM500 LTE Test Mobile now supports enhanced Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) as defined in Release 9 of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard for Long Term Evolution (LTE). The TM500 Test Mobile platform is the industry’s de facto standard test mobile, and is already being used by all of the world’s major infrastructure vendors and most femtocell vendors.

With the addition of the eMBMS feature, the Aeroflex TM500 LTE Single-UE Test Mobile now supports all the headline features announced with Release 9 of the 3GPP LTE standard. The TM500 provides demodulation and decoding of eMBMS signals—including video—for both FDD and TDD versions of LTE, and will include dedicated measurements for low level debugging.

eMBMS allows LTE mobile network operators to maximize Return on Investment (RoI) by providing high end services such as mobile TV, localized news and traffic updates without making large additional investments in network infrastructure. eMBMS is the most viable technique for providing IP multicast data transmission over an LTE network in a scalable manner. It allows for efficient sharing of the resources of a single network between multicast broadcast traffic and more traditional data services. This is achieved by dynamically changing the resource usage between the two types of traffic depending on their instantaneous needs.

The TM500 LTE Test Mobile enables operators and infrastructure vendors to verify the functionality and performance of eMBMS. Engineers developing and integrating LTE base stations (eNodeB) can test and validate the system level end-to-end performance of the network equipment.

The eMBMS testing capability of the TM500 includes: demodulation and decoding of IP multicast transmission from different cells; reception of simultaneous unicast and multicast transmissions; MBMS protocol logging and validation; and power measurement of the eMBMS-specific reference signal. Verification of both eMBMS signal quality and synchronized cells within a Multimedia Broadcast Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) area is also performed. Multiple multicast channels (MCH) from different MBMS service areas can be demodulated.

“The Aeroflex TM500 is leading the market with full support for3GPP Release 9 headline features including support for eMBMS measurements,” said Nicola Logli, product manager at Aeroflex. “The TM500 provides a fully software-upgradeable path for the test of LTE eNodeBs. This includes everything from functional single-UE test through multi-UE to load testing based on the emulation of thousands of UEs working in multiple cells.”

Price and availability
For more information, contact your local Aeroflex sales office by visiting or calling Aeroflex Sales at (800) 835-2352 or info-test@aeroflex.com.

About Aeroflex LTE Expertise
Aeroflex LTE leadership started with the delivery of test systems in 2007 and now continues with a complete range of end-to-end test systems that cover R&D, performance, service and manufacturing test applications for LTE TDD and FDD network equipment and terminals.

The TM500 Test Mobile family is in use with almost every base station manufacturer across the world, and can be regarded as the de facto standard for eNodeB development and testing. EAST500 is the only network capacity test solution that incorporates the proven Aeroflex TM500 LTE air interface.

The Aeroflex 7100 LTE Digital Radio Test Set is a complete one-box test system providing all the tools required for the measurement and characterization of user equipment (UE) chip sets and mobile terminals to 3GPP LTE standards, including optional signal fading simulation.

The PXI 3000 Series modular RF test system based on PXI technology is a proven solution to accelerate throughput in manufacturing and time to market in R&D while catering for current and future RF test needs. It is particularly suited to modern cellular and wireless data communications and critical testing in a high volume manufacturing environment.

Aeroflex has engineers working in centers around the world on its LTE and LTE-Advanced test systems, to support the current and next generation of networks and devices.

For more information visit the company’s website by clicking the link below our logo on this page.