Azimuth Systems Inc., a leading provider of comprehensive real world wireless test solutions for 2G/3G/4G, LTE-Advanced and beyond, announced the availability of the latest release of its popular Azimuth Field-to-Lab™ (FTL) solution, version 2.4. The product now offers complex test cases with added support for new scanners and file formats including TD-SCDMA with QXDM and JDSU, UMTS with Anite Nemo, and native support for LTE with XCAL, as well as mapping enhancements and increased built-in mapper intelligence.
The award-winning Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution allows service providers and equipment manufacturers to emulate real world test conditions in the lab more efficiently than ever before by taking dynamic channel conditions collected from drive testing and replaying this data in Azimuth’s award-winning ACE MX/MX2 MIMO Channel Emulators. An ACE MX or ACE MX2is used to replicate real-world channel conditions in a controllable and repeatable fashion. As a result, the Field-to-Lab solution improves product quality, user satisfaction, and speeds the vendors’ time-to-market by providing a bridge between laboratory and field-measured test results. It also significantly reduces the need for multiple rounds of drive testing, which is costly, time consuming and often unreliable.
Field-to-Lab release 2.4 is the first real world wireless test solution to support TD-SCDMA playback with QXDM. Support for enhanced multi-frequency playback with QXDM complements existing support for FDD LTE and TD-LTE and will allow the Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution to accurately play back scenarios with inter frequency and iRAT handovers (for instance, handover from 900 MHz to 1800MHz and between TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE). Operators frequently need to deal with testing iRAT handovers; most have overlay networks with LTE on top of UMTS/CDMA/TD-SCDMA. The new functionality included in the latest Field-to-Lab release, developed with input from a leading chipset and scanner vendor, solves a significant problem faced by most mobile operators as users often report problems under these conditions in the field and, with new bands being added for 4G, additional complications are arising.Additionally, Azimuth has added support for JDSU for a Datang chipset, one of the most prevalent chipsets for TD-SCDMA in China.
“Azimuth’s continuous focus on superior ease-of-use has led the company to further develop its complete end-to-end automation plan and add increased functionalities to the popular Field-to-Lab solution,” said Ajay Patel, executive director of product management for Azimuth Systems. “With the latest release of Field-to-Lab, version 2.4, Azimuth has made a number of enhancements to better meet the needs of the wireless test market –from GUI improvements to providing support for the latest industry standards– in order to keep up with the growing complexity of testing 4G and LTE products. For example, Azimuth’s UE automation capability for mobile devices enables comprehensive heterogeneous test beds to be created, making Field-to-Lab testing an even more compelling option. “
Field-to-Lab release 2.4 also features built-in intelligence to analyze drive logs and provide critical statistics such as the average gap size, as well as reporting on how changing a parameter impacts playback. This will make AzMapper, a key component of the Field-to-Lab solution, easier to use and enable new customers to use the tool with minimal training.
Additionally, release 2.4 includes increased data segmentation functionality, allowing the user to choose segments of the log to map and playback. This capability further simplifies testing by enabling the customer to select only particular sections of interest.