Aeroflex has launched the commercially available test system for HSUPA, providing full support for the latest 3GPP Release 6 high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA) wireless technology. HSUPA is the latest enhancement to the Aeroflex TM500 Test Mobile system. It delivers extensive HSUPA/HSDPA system functionality long before commercial handsets become available. The TM500 is established as an industry-standard test tool for 3G infrastructure design and development testing.

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HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) technology is already providing a major improvement to the downlink capacity of the latest 3G networks. HSUPA will deliver a similarly important enhancement to the uplink through the introduction of higher throughputs, reduced latency and higher spectral efficiency. By offering data rates up to 5.76 million bits per second (Mbps) and reduced packet latency in the uplink, HSUPA paves the way for a wide range of wireless broadband data services.

HSUPA presents numerous challenges to the infrastructure developer. In addition to supporting new features to enable efficient reception and decoding of the uplink data, the Node B is responsible for managing the spectral resource. The Node B controls the uplink loading by means of a scheduling algorithm that allocates grants to each mobile terminal, indicating the amount of data that it is allowed to transmit at any time. The addition of soft handover support in HSUPA serves to improve uplink efficiency but increases scheduling complexity.

The TM500 HSUPA test system implementation delivers full support of 3GPP Enhanced Uplink technology, enabling detailed operation, testing and analysis of complex packet-based services and applications. Uplink and downlink data services can be configured and run simultaneously on the TM500 at the maximum HSUPA and HSDPA rates of 5.76 Mbps and 13.97 Mbps, respectively.

The TM500 HSUPA offers a wide range of test modes and logging options, including scripted configuration, test sequences and measurement capture. These features allow a detailed and incremental analysis of functionality at Layer 1, Layer 2 and higher layers. Test procedures can also be automated for use in regression testing.

Innovative test features assist the 3G engineer in Node B and RNC development and regression test. These include Aeroflex’s new Data Service Generator tool, allowing the creation of realistic usage profiles of packet-based services including voice, web-browsing and gaming applications. Additionally, flexible configuration options for serving and non-serving radio links enable the effects and operation of soft handover scenarios to be analyzed in detail.

The TM500 HSUPA Layer 1/Layer 2 option is available for immediate delivery as a software upgrade to the TM500 test mobile platform. The 3GPP Release 6 Higher Layer option will be available in the first quarter of 2006.