Friday 3 July 2009

Create your own LTE tests in 15 minutes with Anritsu’s RTD

Today we take an exclusive look in this blog inside Anritsu’s Rapid Test Designer (a.k.a. RTD) tool. RTD is a very powerful tool that can be used to design LTE tests for R&D purpose. RTD works in conjunction with Anritsu’s MD8430A. MD8430A has not very long back won the CTIA Emerging technology award.

For WCDMA/HSPA testing, Anritsu offered Protocol Test System (PTS) for R&D purpose. For LTE the basic tool is the RTD. The advantage of RTD as opposed to earlier generation PTS is that RTD is GUI based development environment that can speed up development and very little knowledge of test script development environment like TTCN-2 and TTCN-3 is required.
The RTD is a software tool that sits on top of a control PC. It controls the Signalling Tester (hardware) MD8430A. The diagram above shows the setup and connections of different components. The hardware (MD8430A) simulates Layer 1 (PHY), MAC, RLC and PDCP. The software (RTD) is used to simulate RRC and NAS.

When the tool starts up you are offered typical options as in case of any software. Once you have clicked on new test and provided it with a name, you are up and creating your own scenario.

The simple procedures already have a name defined but you can start giving meaningful names to complex procedures. Each name signifies the action it will be performing. For example Cell Configuration will be used initially to configure the parameters of the cell.

Clicking on the Cell Configuration will provide you with the possible options that can be used to configure the cells like the SFN Offsets, etc. All the channels that are necessary for a cell can be configured here.

Here is my attempt to randomly create something :)

And try sending some message like RRC Connection release. Didn’t quite work because it’s not in the right sequence but just shows the ease with which things can be done.


This is run time result of one of the test cases.

It may take few hours to get the hang of RTD, but once you understand how it works, you can start creating your own tests and scenarios at full speed. There are also example procedures available to get you started ;)

"The MD8430A is being used by LTE chipset manufacturers to ensure the quality of their products, speed time to market, and reduce design and production test costs." - Wade Hulon, Vice President and General Manager of Anritsu Company, Americas Sales Region.

You can learn more about MD8430A and RTD by following the links below:

Note: All the information mentioned in this post is my personal view and does not represent Anritsu's official views. Also if you manage to take few more minutes to create your own test then please do not blame me ;)

1 comment:

ABHISHEK KUMAR said...

Hi blogger, I need a brief explanation about Anritsu RTD, I also try to download docs from which the link is mentioned in the blog but these links are expired. if you have these docs please share them again or mail them to AK00638482@gmail.com. Thanks you