SORBAS 210 3GPP LTE Test UE Solution

The SORBAS 3GPP LTE Test UE product line is designed for testing evolving LTE mobile communications infrastructure and networks.

3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a standard within the Third Generation Partnership Project to further evolve the UMTS mobile phone standard to cope with future requirements. Moving to LTE includes increasing efficiency, lowering costs, improving services, using new spectrum opportunities, and having a better integration with other open standards. Standardization for LTE is not yet complete. However, its completion in the near future will result in the new evolved release 8 of the UMTS standard. The SORBAS 3GPP LTE Test UE is designed for testing evolving LTE mobile communications infrastructure and networks. It has the capabilities of a 3GPP LTE mobile terminal, with additional advanced test interfaces and features, making it an ideal tool for network infrastructure equipment developers.

RF-Bandwidth

• 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 & 20 MHz

Hardware

• based on a modular and extendable hardware platform
• software defined radio concept
• main LTE features are software defined

Supported Data Rates

• supports of all transport formats defined for LTE
• maximum MAC throughput of 80 Mbps (Downlink) and 50Mbps (Uplink).
• increased to maximum MAC throughput of 150 Mbps and 50Mbps available from Q2’2008

RF Frequency

• all LTE RF frequency bands are supported.
• Multiple Antennas
• provides the flexibility for up to 4 transmit and 4 receive antennas

Supported Test-Cases

• PHY, MAC & RLC tests
• IODT and IOT testing
• full feature protocol test (in combination with standard protocol tester)
• monitoring for field trials

PHY, MAC & RLC Testing

USE CASE 1: LAYER 1 / 2 TESTING & VERIFICATION

In this use case the SORBAS LTE Test-UE simulates
the complete behavior of a user equipment
(UE) regarding PHY, MAC & RLC. With this
setup, the eNB can be tested against a standard-
conform implementation of an LTE-UE.
This allows the identifi cation of implementation
faults at the very beginning of the development
cycle.

eNB Testing

USE CASE 2: ENB PROTOCOL EVALUATION

Testing the eNB only from the RF side is not
suffi cient. The network interface must also be
tested. In the past this has been an area of
protocol testers and was a separate test case
without any RF-testing.
With the advanced LTE standard, the eNB
comprises the former RNC (Radio Network Control)
functionality. Therefore, isolated networkprotocol
testing is no longer possible. SORBAS
offers a clear and open interface to protocol
test solutions from established vendors like
Catapult, Ercom, Nethawk and Tektronix.

UDP based 100 Mbps Ethernet interface (2 x Gigabit Ethernet interface available in December 2007) GUI for Test-UE configuration and control:

• IP configuration
• PHY configuration
• manual layer 2 configuration GUI for trace data processing
• graphical representation
• data logging to file API to L3

GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
Graphical user interfaces (GUI) are provided for easy-to-use confi guration of the SORBAS System:

• for L1/2 confi guration and control from a host PC connected via Ethernet.
• to display/dump traces generated by the Test-UE such as:
• BER (Bit Error Rate)
• FER (Frame Error Rate)
• CRC-checksum
• CQI vector
• AGC (Automated Gain Control) and many more.
• Addition of customer defi ned traces are possible

PROTOCOL API (APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE)

The API is open to customers and allows to integrate SORBAS into exiting protocol
simulators and –testers.
The interface to the user plane offers

• Configuration based on service primitives and
• direct IP input/output

The interface control plane is based on service primitives (API to layer 3 implementation)
Layer 1 / 2 testing needs to be closely integrated with protocol tests as well as with network interface testing. SORBAS offers a defi ned and tested interface to well established cellular protocol test solutions:

Tektronix G35

Catapult DCT 2000

Nethawk EAST

Ercom Mobipass

STANDARD EVOLUTION

The 3GPP standardization is still ongoing. Some features of the future LTE system are not yet
defi ned nor standardized. The main features of SORBAS are software defined. On this basis,
the LTE Test UE can be quickly adapted to the ongoing standardization. Open features that are
not yet standardized can be tentatively custom defined, e.g. on the basis of HSDPA/HSUPA, or
they can be defi ned by Signalion based on our expertise.

The UE PHY implementation is compliant with FDD Mode according to 3GPP Release 8:

• TS 36.201
• TS 36.211
• TS 36.212
• TS 36.213

The UE MAC & RLC implementation is compliant with FDD Mode according to 3GPP
Release 8:

• TS 36.321
• TS 36.322

All information are subject to change © Signalion GmbH 2007

Download the Sorbas 210 product flyer (pdf, 1979 kb) >>