Spirent Supports New CTIA A-GPS Over The Air (OTA) Test Standard with Integrated Solution
Spirent Communications, a global leader in mobile device, application and wireless network testing, today announced that ETS-Lindgren’s EMQuestâ„¢ Antenna Measurement Software now supports Spirent’s UMTS Location Test System (ULTS). ETS-Lindgren is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of enclosed Radio Frequency (RF) chambers and antenna measurement solutions for wireless test applications.
This new capability will enable wireless device manufacturers to quickly and easily add Spirent’s market-leading A-GPS instrumentation to ETS-Lindgren’s over the air (OTA) wireless test solutions, streamlining efforts to meet emerging standards for wireless device A-GPS performance. The combined offering of Spirent’s A-GPS instrumentation and ETS-Lindgren’s OTA test facilities, antennas, and EMQuest software provide wireless device manufacturers with the ability to test their products in compliance with the upcoming 3.0 release of the CTIA’s Test Plan for Mobile Station Over the Air Performance. The requirements of this new release will become mandatory at all CTIA Authorized Test Labs that perform OTA testing.
“We are delighted that the Spirent ULTS solution is now supported by ETS-Lindgren. It is a natural step to link Spirent’s market leadership in A-GPS testing with ETS-Lindgren’s leadership in wireless OTA test solutions,” said Ron Borsato, solutions architect at Spirent Communications, who also chairs the CTIA’s GPS OTA Subgroup. “The large percentage of CTIA Authorized Test Labs that use ETS-Lindgren’s OTA solutions for testing GSM and UMTS devices now have a straightforward upgrade path to add A-GPS OTA support.”
Poor GPS antenna performance often leads to a disappointing user experience of location-based services (LBS) which can reflect negatively on operators’ revenues. However, adding a GPS antenna to a densely-packed mobile device form factor can be a major challenge. Because the industry’s existing certification standards for A-GPS do not include OTA testing, performance issues due to the GPS antenna are not always caught prior to commercial deployment. This has led the CTIA to broaden the scope of its existing Test Plan for Mobile Station Over the Air Performance to include A-GPS.
Built upon the expertise gained from Spirent’s Position Location Test System (PLTS), launched into the CDMA market in 2001, the ULTS was the first commercially-available UMTS A-GPS test system. Since then, most of the world’s largest network operators, together with all the major mobile device and A-GPS chipset manufacturers, have relied on the Spirent ULTS to design, test and certify their LBS solutions.
Demonstrations of Spirent ULTS and other wireless device, application and infrastructure testing solutions from Spirent will be held at Booth #744 at CTIA Wireless 2009, April 1-3, Las Vegas, NV. For more information visit www.spirent.com/go/ults.
