Anritsu has integrated channel fading simulation into its 4G LTE-Advanced Signalling Tester. The MD8430A is used by LTE and LTE-Advanced development engineers as a signalling tester for simulating LTE networks in the lab. The new digital baseband fading options convert the MD8430A into a full-featured fading simulator supporting industry standard 3GPP-defined fading profiles. This additional feature can reduce the investment required for additional hardware to perform signalling tests under realistic radio frequency (RF) conditions. This is the first LTE-Advanced signalling solution with built-in fading supporting the 4x4 MIMO downlink configuration.
Tall structures, such as buildings and trees, reflect and scatter transmitted radio waves, meaning the receiver actually receives multiple original signals arriving from ‘multipaths’ with different strengths, times, and directions. A key feature of LTE-Advanced is the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna system that improves device performance by exploiting multipaths. To test such MIMO devices thoroughly, multipath fading effects must be applied accurately to every antenna in a reproducible manner.
Using internal digital baseband processing, the MD8430A applies multipath effects during test execution, and the Rapid Test Designer (RTD) software provides testers with an integrated environment for creating and running fading simulation tests. Support for LTE-Advanced features, such as Carrier Aggregation and MIMO, make this test set an ideal solution for testing next generation of high-performance mobile devices. In addition to testing devices over an RF connection, the MD8430A with fading option also supports a slow-clock digital interface to verify designs in a simulation environment before starting expensive ASIC production.
