Azimuth Systems Inc. announced the ACE™ MX2 wireless channel emulator together with its comprehensive strategy for real world test. The ACE MX2 MIMO Channel Emulator, Azimuth’s newest channel emulator, is the first product created in support of the new strategy.
In today’s complex wireless environment, with a rapidly growing number of protocols, topologies and frequencies, one size does not fit all. As a result, Azimuth will build on its market leading position for real world test solutions (device performance, benchmarking and interoperability) while continuing to add more platforms to its portfolio. Over the next year, Azimuth will release multiple products, platforms, and solutions which, together, will offer the most comprehensive real world test coverage and automation capabilities on the market. The new platforms will optimize existing products for power, noise, size and weight while also providing the technological foundation necessary to support the challenges of upcoming protocols and network deployments with up to 200 MHz of Channel Bandwidth and 16x16 bidirectional MIMO topologies.
With the ACE MX2 MIMO channel emulator, Azimuth marks its continued commitment to easy-to-use, high performing and effective solutions. Built on Azimuth’s field-proven and market-leading design for the ACE MX channel emulator, ACE MX2 has been designed to address the complexities of modern test labs. In particular, testbeds created to support test cases for Inter-RAT handovers (iRAT), Co-ordinated Multipoint (CoMP), as well as Heterogeneous Networks (HetNet) have quickly become very large and complex. The ACE MX2 MIMO channel emulator will simplify the implementation of complex testbeds in a very scalable and modular way, while also addressing the physical constraints (power, size, weight and noise) that modern test labs must also consider.
A successful real world test strategy must have several components. First, each platform should provide market-leading performance and efficiency for the test solutions that it supports. Secondly, a common automation environment for transparent real world test collaboration by ecosystem partners is essential. In support of this, Azimuth will continue to expand the capabilities of the Director II Test Management and Automation suite while ensuring seamless compatibility across all test platforms. Next, a scalable, modular design needs to be a key component of future platforms. The ultimate real world test strategy also requires a solutions team with the express charter of leveraging new platforms and implementing highly automated solutions for customers to help maximize value. Azimuth’s solutions team, led by Dr. Deepak Das, delivers value-added solutions to Azimuth customers that bring together its leading wireless channel emulators and Director II test management software to address the latest issues confronted by operators and equipment vendors.
“The proliferation of wireless enabled products and the complexity of MIMO technologies demand new test tools,” said Jim Iuliano, CEO of Azimuth Systems. “Customers across the wireless ecosystem are already seeing the benefits of bringing our advanced test capabilities into the lab to measure how the real world affects performance of wireless devices and infrastructure. The products we will introduce, beginning with the ACE MX2 MIMO channel emulator, mark Azimuth’s continued commitment to rapidly developing and integrating, our easy-to-use and market leading solutions for real world test.