Agilent intros industry’s first LTE-advanced 8x8 MIMO signal-generation and analysis solutions

USA: Agilent Technologies Inc. affirmed its technology leadership in LTE-Advanced test with its introduction of the industry’s first LTE-Advanced 8x8 MIMO signal-generation and analysis solutions. The offerings complement Agilent’s other industry-first solutions for the LTE-Advanced standard.

LTE-Advanced is the evolution of LTE to 4G. Standardization work was done as part of Release 10 of the 3GPP specification, with further enhancements in Release 11 and beyond. LTE-Advanced introduces a number of enhancements and new technologies to enable peak data rates of up to 1 Gbps in the downlink and 500 Mbps in the uplink.

To achieve such a high peak data rate, LTE-Advanced supports a maximum bandwidth of 100 MHz by aggregating up to five component carriers, each up to 20 MHz wide, and improved multi-antenna techniques in both uplink and downlink. For downlink, LTE-Advanced introduces transmission mode 9, which enables Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) with up to 8 spatial streams and antennas.

Agilent’s comprehensive LTE-Advanced 8x8 MIMO signal-generation and analysis solutions comprise Signal Studio and 89600 VSA software, as well as the Agilent X-Series vector signal generators and multi-channel signal analyzer with up to eight measurement channels.

The solutions support generation and analysis of FDD and TDD signals compliant with the 3GPP Release 10 standard, and are well suited for R&D and test engineers designing and evaluating transmitters, receivers, basebands, and components for LTE-Advanced base stations and mobile terminals.

Using the Signal Studio and 89600 VSA software, engineers can start testing physical layer implementations of LTE-Advanced devices with greater insight and confidence, while gaining a deeper understanding of the root causes of design problems. The multi-channel signal analyzer enables full analysis of LTE-Advanced standards on next-generation antennas, base stations and user equipment. Working with the 89600 VSA, it enables phase-synchronous and cross-channel measurements with up to eight RF channels in a single mainframe.

Unlike competing solutions, Agilent’s LTE-Advanced solutions fully support 8x8 MIMO signal generation and analysis. Access to such capabilities enables design engineers to actively engage in LTE-Advanced development work in support of broad deployment planning in coming years.

“As a recognized leader and provider of world-class LTE solutions, Agilent plays a pivotal role in the development, revision and implementation of the 4G technology, LTE-Advanced,” said Andy Botka, VP and GM, Agilent’s Microwave and Communications Division. “Our first-to-market 8x8 MIMO test solutions further complement Agilent’s comprehensive portfolio of LTE-Advanced signal-generation and analysis solutions, and reaffirm our commitment to actively leading the evolution of LTE to a 4G technology.”

Extending the availability of Agilent’s inter-band carrier aggregation solutions, which already comprised signal analysis, Agilent is also adding a signal-generation capability with cross-carrier scheduling. As an added benefit, Signal Studio’s new advanced LTE-Advanced option allows design engineers to perform receiver tests with fully channel-coded waveforms, including support of Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) Format 3.

The waveforms can be created for receiver bit-error-rate, block-error-rate, packet-error-rate, or frame-error-rate analysis in a range of applications (e.g., performance verification and functional testing of receivers during RF/baseband integration and system verification, and for coding verification of baseband subsystems).