Wireless Design Forum - Challenges for Today’s Smartphone Tests

The complexity of modern devices is growing rapidly as wireless applications place demands on processing horsepower, battery performance, and data transfer speeds, on top of the traditional demands of designing to the latest RF and protocol standards. Ensuring a positive end user experience presents significant challenges for developers and test engineers. This forum will educate engineers on the evolution of 2G/3G/LTE test standards, the implication this has for device testing, and new solutions to ensure design goals are met. The format for the forum is presentations and demonstrations by technology experts on technology advancements and corresponding test solutions 

What to Expect:
Expect a description of what is driving technology changes, advances in 3G technologies that keep 3G competitive with 4G, and advances in test capability. The term "forum" is used because we expect two way dialogues between presenters and attendees. This is your chance to probe for answers to your toughest test challenges. Sessions will include presentations and demos.
Who Should Attend:
This seminar is recommended for: Mobile phone designers, application developers, test engineers, and managers responsible for phone design, test, integration, or acceptance test.

Agenda
09:00 - 09:20 Registration and coffee
09.20 - 09.30 Introduction
09.30 - 10.30 Paper 1: Overview of Wireless Standards Evolution and Expected Future Test Needs
10.30 – 10:45 Break
10.45 - 12.00 Paper 2: HSPA+ and Continuous Packet Connectivity Concepts, Demo of 21 Mbps Measurements
12.00 - 12.45 Lunch
12.45 - 13.45 Paper 3: Introduction of the new LTE PXT Wireless Communications Test Set
13.45 - 14.00 Break
14.00 - 15.00 Paper 4: Testing Today’s Smartphones – Data Throughput Test and Packet Data Performance Optimization
15.00 - 15.15 Break
15.15 - 16.15 Paper 5: Assisted GPS and Why Testing is Required
16.15 - 16.30 Summary and close

How to register
For further information or registration visit www.agilent.co.uk/find/wirelessdesign or call our contact centre on +44(0)118 927 6201

Paper Overview

Paper 1: Overview of Wireless Standards Evolution and Expected Future Test Needs
Cellular technology continues to evolve for both 3G and 4G. Given the high cost of deploying 4G technology, operators, equipment manufacturers, and content providers are working to maximize the data rate capabilities and spectral efficiency they can achieve through 3G technology. They are doing remarkably well achieving unprecedented performance. In doing, so they have introduced new test needs and raised questions about the transition to 4G. This presentation will discuss trends in the wireless industry, the evolution of 2G/3G technology, and the transition to 4G.

Paper 2: HSPA+ and Continuous Packet Connectivity Concepts, Demo of 21 Mbps Measurements
Currently, UMTS High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) networks increase data rate and capacity for downlink and uplink packet data. While HSDPA was introduced as a release 5 feature in 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), HSUPA is an important feature of 3GPP release 6. The combination of HSDPA and HSUPA is often referred to as HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). Within 3GPP release 7 and 8,further improvements to HSPA have been specified in the context of HSPA+ or HSPA evolution. HSPA+ will bring significant enhancements in 3GPP release 7 and 8. The objective is to enhance performance of HSPA based radio networks in terms of spectrum efficiency, peak data rate and latency, and to exploit the full potential of WCDMA operation.

This presentation provides a market update on HSPA+, the goals and value of HSPA+, comparisons to other data standards, new items to be aware of for receiver and transmitter testing, concepts of Continuous Packet Connectivity (CPC), and solutions for testing HSPA+ devices.

Paper 3: Introduction of the new LTE PXT Wireless Communications Test Set
The PXT is a powerful, common hardware test platform for use across the LTE development lifecycle, and applicable to RF characterization, protocol verification and end-to-end application testing of LTE UEs. The PXT gives development engineers, of different disciplines, a vast range of test and verification capabilities on their bench, providing greater insight to complex LTE design issues in a controlled laboratory environment.

Paper 4: Testing Today’s Smartphones – Data Throughput Test and Packet Data Performance Optimisation
The complexity of modern devices is growing rapidly as wireless applications place demands on processing horsepower, battery performance, and data transfer speeds, on top of the traditional demands of designing to the latest RF and protocol standards. Ensuring a positive end user experience presents significant challenges for application developers and test engineers. By changing the test approach to more accurately emulate the activities and services that real users would utilize on a smart phone, engineers can assess the performance of their devices in a lab environment. Many aspects of a device's performance can be evaluated and optimized by using this type of real-world user profile test approach, including data throughput, battery life, and application performance. This presentation will focus on testing the packet data performance of smartphones and their applications, simulating real world conditions in the lab and tools for measuring and optimizing data throughput and performance.

Paper 5: Assisted GPS and Why Testing is Required
Some of the hottest mobile phone applications are enabled by A-GPS. These applications include navigation, retail & food establishment location, theater show times, emergency location and more. A-GPS is now standard in smart phones, and common in many of the latest mobile devices. For these applications to work properly, and ultimately for customers to be satisfied by the user experience, the hardware, firmware, and software in the device must be designed properly to quickly and accurately report location information in real-world conditions. This presentation describes why A-GPS performance must be tested, three types of A-GPS testing, and equipment that is required for test.