Aeroflex announced at CTIA Super Mobility Week that the Aeroflex TM500 family of network test systems now supports the offload of live data calls between LTE and WLAN 802.11ac as well as 802.11a/b/g/n. The complete Wi-Fi offload test system comprises an Aeroflex E500 LTE Capacity Test System, including a real data service generator, Evolved Packet Core (EPC) for LTE/Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi STA (station) systems.
Wi-Fi offload is becoming an essential way for mobile operators to balance the load on their networks and to proactively manage the increasing demands on network capacity for optimum user experience. The TM500 family is the industry-standard handset simulator used by leading operators and infrastructure vendors for performance benchmarking, and has developed a reputation for staying ahead with tracking the LTE ecosystem roadmap to provide advanced test capability ahead of market need. Service providers are keen to offload their traffic onto Wi-Fi, and only the 802.11ac standard has enough capacity to cope with emerging trends such as bring-your-own-device (BYOD). In order for network operators to validate LTE to Wi-Fi offload, they need to be able to simulate real network loads during handover.
