Agilent Technologies has added new functional test features to its E6651A Mobile WiMAX test set family. Now offering support for mobile station (MS) and basestation (BS) initiated handover, sleep and idle mode, and security features, the set suits Mobile WiMAX developers performing R&D, system integration and verification, or conformance test in RF, protocol, and functional application test (see the figure).

The E6651A enables engineers to check the MS’s handover capabilities prior to testing on a real network. The sleep and idle mode support allows engineers to test the functionality of the device under test’s sleep and idle modes. The E6651A currently supports MS and BS initiated idle mode and provides added flexibility for the paging parameters.

Support for a “pass through” between the E6651A and the FreeRADIUS AAA server and PKMv2 security/authorization/encryption permits engineers to perform functional test on an MS’s security features without having to test on a live network. PKMv2 support is necessary to perform network entry without disabling implementation under test (IUT) security.

The test set’s uplink collaborative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capability enables the protocol to connect to and functionally test an MS in uplink collaborative mode. Analog IQ hardware inputs added to the baseband analyzer’s uplink path support baseband chipset/module tests during development and integration.

According to Agilent, the E6651A is the industry’s first integrated test set for testing Mobile WiMAX devices. It combines flexible basestation emulation and RF parametric tests for subscriber station tests in one integrated unit, with support for IEEE 802.16e 2005 conformance test. Also, it provides instrument-grade RF signal generation and signal analysis capability up to 6 GHz. And, it can address current and planned WiMAX profiles.

A full suite of RF measurements can be used for characterization, calibration and verification of WiMAX transmitter and receiver performance. Available now, the firmware may be downloaded, free of charge, by existing E6651A customers, at www.agilent.com/find/e6651A_software. New customers will receive the features as part of the E6651A’s standard feature set. The E6651A has a starting base-unit price of $130,000.