With 26 wireless operators and carriers committing to it so far, Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the next big cell-phone technology. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards group is nearing the final approval of the LTE specifications and infrastructure equipment, and handsets are already under development.

While some industry experts predicted adoption as early as late 2009, the economic slowdown and the great success of the inexpensive 3.9G HSPA+ technology have slowed LTE’s potential rollout. Nevertheless, development is continuing on all fronts, and initiation of LTE service will no doubt come in 2010.

ABI Research predicts as many as 32 million LTE subscribers by 2013. Cantab Wireless Research says there could be up to 85 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2013. And thanks to test equipment manufacturers, testing is becoming faster and easier for this complex technology. In fact, Agilent Technology recently announced a whole slew of new LTE related products.

For example, Agilent and its partner Anite plc have successfully demonstrated 3GPP LTE interoperability showing end-to-end streaming video with LTE user equipment (UE) devices from Signalion and Blue Wonder Communications. The demo included Agilent’s E6620A LTE wireless communications test set, Anite’s SAT LTE Protocol Development Toolset, Blue Wonder’s UE chipset, and Signalion’s LTE UE simulator.

This interoperability between two major LTE UE designs enables LTE designers to achieve faster time-to-market in all phases of their work. The key component in the streaming video demo, Agilent’s E6620A wireless communications test set, is a common hardware platform integrating a 3GPP Release 8-compliant protocol stack that was jointly developed with Anite (see the figure, below).

This test setup provides real-time, system-rate network emulation for L1/L2/L3 uplink and downlink via RF or digital baseband. Anite’s SAT LTE Protocol Development Toolset is a suite of development tools for UE designers. Like the E6620A system, it speeds development and debug cycles.

Agilent’s N6050A LTE Mobile Test Software (LMTS) is designed to run on the E6620A. Protocol and RF developers can use it to characterize LTE RF devices. The key LMTS features include integrated fading and MIMO/diversity test, end-to-end IP date connectivity test, and real-time protocol stack. LMTS also provides LTE EVM, transmitter power measurements, and downlink transmit diversity for mobile devices.

The Agilent 3GPP LTE TDD Wireless Library (W1910/E8895) is designed to expedite development and testing or the alternative TD-LTE standard, also known as LTE TDD (time-division duplexing). Most LTE uses frequency-division duplexing (FDD), but countries like China with less spectrum or unpaired spectrum can use TD-LTE to their advantage. Agilent’s software works with the company’s MXA signal analyzer. The library can be used to create TD-LTE signals and to perform modulation analysis on the vector signal analyzer. The products are the N7625B Signal Studio for LTE TDD and the VSA software for the Agilent 89600.

Agilent’s RDX (Radio Digital Cross Domain) solution provides a test environment for the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) and Digital Radio Frequency (DigRF) v3 and v4 protocols. Both of these interfaces are quickly being designed into handsets everywhere, and RDX provides an easy way to test them. RDX lets baseband and RF IC designers work in either the digital or RF domains for protocol test. It also provides RF (digital IQ) physical-layer (PHY) stimulus and analysis of RF and baseband ICs.

Finally, Agilent has published a 450-page book on LTE entitled “LTE and the Evolution to 4G Wireless.” Written by 30 authors, including Agilent’s measurement experts and LTE authorities K.F. Tsang and Anite Telecoms, it covers the air interface at the PHY as well as signaling and protocol facts. I will review the book here when I get a hold of a copy. To order, go to www.agilent.com/find/ltebook. It should be available in April.

Agilent Technologies