EV-DO Testing Help

Recent announcements by Verizon Wireless, Sprint and even Alaska Communications Systems point to increasingly pervasive deployment of CDMA 1X EV-DO technology. With the related monitoring and testing task in mind, Comarco Wireless Test Solutions has announced Seven.Five for EV-DO, a drive-test and in-building test system for EV-DO network operators and infrastructure vendors.

The new system combines an integrated multi-band radio frequency scanning receiver with data and video tests for QOS, according to the Irvine, Calif., company. It tests QOS from the perspective of a subscriber, while also finding the root cause of quality problems.

The Comarco unit also tackles the problems with measuring throughput that can occur when test systems share IP stacks and end-user applications simultaneously among multiple calling modules. Peak throughput on an EV-DO network is about 2.4 Mb/s, and average speeds can run 300 kb/s to 500 kb/s, but sharing IP stacks and applications over several modules potentially could provide faulty readings.

The Seven. Five for EV-DO system's single-board computer architecture allows for a dedicated computer for each calling module, which translates to having an isolated test platform for each phone.