RF channel fading option for Modus 6 LTE Composer

A Cellmetric product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Oct 1, 2009

Cellmetric launched an LTE radio-frequency (RF) channel fading option for Modus 6 LTE Composer at Telecom 2009 in Geneva.

The company's LTE Composer tester provides an RF and protocol sequence generation environment in which LTE RF and baseband chipset companies and cellular handset developers can test their solutions against a repeatable and deterministic test stimulus over the air.

LTE Composer now offers the option to provide industry-standard fading channel modelling for RF transmission as defined in TR36.803.

This features full Doppler capability and multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) modelling, including spatial correlation.

A user-defined 10-tap fading model is also provided.

Standard channel fading models included in the Composer option include the Extended Pedestrian A Model (EPA), the Extended Vehicular A Model (EVA) and the Extended Typical Urban Model (ETU).

Cellmetric's Modus 6 LTE test solution is compliant with Release 8 of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard and supports both Time Domain Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Domain Duplex (FDD) modes.

The Modus 6 LTE base station test signal generator consists of one or more Modus 6 air interface units providing the RF transmission and LTE Composer, a PC-based application that generates the protocol and RF transmission scenarios to emulate eNodeB base station transmissions.

The combination of the two tools provides a flexible and cost-effective solution for LTE User Equipment (UE) and handset baseband and RF development and testing, according to the company.

This capability includes RF channel emulation, allowing the signal generator to produce an RF signal as seen either at the output of the base station transmit antennas or at the input of the user equipment's receive antennas.

Both transmit and receive MIMO antenna configurations can be emulated by using two synchronised Modus 6 air interfaces.

Modus 6 supports LTE RF channel bandwidths of 1.4MHz, 3MHz, 5MHz and 10MHz in the 824MHz to 2,155MHz band, which is FDD bands I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VIII, IX and X and TDD bands a, b and c.

The user has complete control over the Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) with respect to Downlink Control Information (DCI) format types and search space locations.

The following physical transport channels, synch signals and reference signals are supported: the PCFICH Physical Control Format Indicator Channel; the PHICH Physical Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request Indicator Channel; the PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel; the PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel; the PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel; the P-SCH Primary Synchronization Channel; the S-SCH Secondary Synchronization Channel; and CRS Cell Specific Reference Symbols.

Cellmetric's LTE base station test signal generator, comprising the LTE Composer Base Station Emulator software and Modus 6 air interface units, is available now.