Making cellular device testing easier— from legacy GSM to the latest 5G standards—was the vision NOFFZ Technologies had when developing the Base Station Emulator (BSE) sUTP 5018. Validating cellular devices, like automotive telematic control units, new generation vehicle-to-vehicle communication modules, smartphones and IoT cellular interfaces, requires emulating complex RF testing scenarios in the lab. The NOFFZ BSE makes this possible by creating a custom cellular network in a compact (7U size) and cost-effective unit, combining high-power, real-time computing and a software-defined radio platform.
The BSE can configure up to four cells and attach up to 32 phone modules in parallel. The device under test (DUT) can initiate voice calls, send and receive text messages, exercise handovers or call emergency numbers like a “real” network. The BSE manager software enables monitoring the connections and high-level parameters of DUT calls: signal-to-noise ratio, bit error rate, transmit power, RSSI and the presence of the proper logical channels. Accessing data services exercises the download and upload test to verify the data throughput capabilities of the DUT with different modulations and MIMO modes.
For 5G testing, the BSE is compliant with NR release 15 and supports both non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) network configurations with 256-QAM modulation. It emulates SISO, 2 x 2 MIMO for NSA and SA, 4 x 4 MIMO in SA mode and 3 x CC carrier aggregation.
The NOFFZ application focuses on verifying phone modules over long periods, where the test time is not minutes but days. The BSE enables testing and monitoring the performance of several devices in parallel under extreme conditions and extensive usage.
NOFFZ Technologies GmbH
Toenisvorst, Germany
www.noffz.com