Aeroflex announced that the TM500 family (LTE Test Set) now supports aggregation of two 4x4 MIMO carriers, allowing mobile network operators to validate the performance of networks with data rates of up to 600Mb/s. The 4x4 MIMO option 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 4x4 MIMO channels using carrier aggregation doubles the available bandwidth, hence giving a further 2x improvement in data rate.
Using the TM500 family of handset simulators, infrastructure vendors can test their development models in the lab under realistic usage scenarios. Operators with high density cell deployments, particularly those in APAC, can employ 4x4 MIMO with carrier aggregation to provide an enhanced experience to their data-hungry users. 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.
