CTIA: Anritsu making the most of NetTest acquisition

LAS VEGAS--Anritsu is developing a new generation of test solutions for the coming fixed/mobile convergence market by leveraging its own portfolio as well as that of recently acquired NetTest. The company introduced some of those products at CTIA's Wireless 2006 this week.

Anritsu has developed interference analyzer and channel scanner options for its MT8220A UMTS Master and MS2721A Spectrum Master products. It also demonstrated and introduced an enhanced version of its signaling testers. The MD8480C, has added HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) testing capability to its comprehensive HSDPA coverage. New software for the MD8470A allows the signaling tester to perform user equipment to user equipment (UE-to-UE) application tests. It also supports test scenario-based simulation for EGPRS packet data communication.

“There is new hardware for connecting multiple base stations, but the new capability is all software,” said Jack Landau, marketing manager at Anritsu. “We want application layer testing to be a bigger part of our business.”

Developers of WCDMA/HSDPA base stations will be able to take advantage of new analysis capabilities such as Modulation Quality Measurements in the MS2781A Signature High Performance Signal Analyzer. And a new set of features for the MasterClaw (formerly NetTest's MasterQuest) monitoring solution and NetClaw (formerly InterQuest) advanced network and service performance analyzer were also introduced at the show.

“As we add more IP capability, it will bring us into the sweet spot for fixed-mobile convergence,” said Karl Erik Traberg, director of marketing at Anritsu. Traberg was part of the NetTest organization.

New UE-to-UE connectivity in the MD8470A makes the product the wireless industry’s only single-instrument solution for end-to-end application testing of voice, video and SMS/MMS calls, he said.

It uses Anritsu’s Couple-UE Network Simulator (CNS) application software to provide the network simulation that creates the voice call, video call and SMS/MMS exchange between two UEs. All the tests can be done with UEs from different operators, creating a real-world environment. This type of testing is becoming more important for UE manufacturers and network operators because of new applications and increased functionality in mobile devices. Additionally, the CNS minimizes the setup time for the system.

A built-in Wireless Network Simulator (WNS) supports all basic call processing, while a unique 3GPP multi-call simulation capability enables the simultaneous testing of voice and data packet transmission. Simulations are performed on an internal PC running Windows XP. An internal application server simplifies application functional testing, and an external server can also be used.