Test and Measurement

TEST AND MEASUREMENT

Topics

A two and a half day programme for engineers and market and research team leaders involved in radio communication test and measurement including cellular radio and network testing and local area and personal area network and system test, measurement and management.

Objective

* To provide a vendor independent perspective of test and measurement requirements for present and future radio systems.
* To qualify how spectral analysis requirements will change over the next 5 to10 years.
* To study how signal analysis requirements will change over the next 5 to ten years
* To review how protocol analysis requirements will change over the next 5 to ten years.
* To study transport and network layer performance measurement methodologies
* To assess how session layer performance will be measured and managed
* To review how application layer performance will be measured and managed and integrated with Key Performance Indices and QOS based Service Level Agreements.
* To study inter RAT measurements and related handover and mobility management protocol tests including wide area to local area to personal area handover management.

Scope

This programme is directly relevant to design engineers, product managers and technology and market research team leaders working on present and future test and measurement systems.The programme draws on over 20 years of research and active involvement in radio test and measurement methodologies and will be of direct interest to engineers and product and market managers with responsibility for defining future test and measurement design and performance policy and/or for managers and team leaders with responsibility for strategic technology planning. Typical delegate organisations include test equipment manufacturers and test equipment end users with an interest in future performance measurement trends. We pay particular attention to the levels of resolution and accuracy needed for radio and system testing both now and in the future and suggest possible optimisation techniques for improving future conformance and performance test techniques.

DAY 1

18.30 Registration and Welcome

19.00 - 21.00 Dinner

21.00 - 22.00
Test and Measurement in Perspective

Test and measurement from DC to 10 GHz, signal characteristics and frequency margins, typical bit rates and resolution and accuracy requirements, co-existence issues of present radio communication systems including wide area, local area and personal area technologies, impact of OFDM on test and measurement requirements, impact of UWB (Ultra Wide Band) on test and measurement requirements,test and measurement from 10 to 30 GHZ, impact of higher order modulation schemes, test and measurement from 30 to 300 GHz, frequency margins, phase and amplitude accuracy, test and measurement from 300 GHz to 3000 GHZ (3 THz), commonalities between RF and optical testing, 'narrow band' channels in the optical domain,''wide band' channels in the RF domain, physical layer performance and its impact on upper layer behaviour, likely future trends in protocol analysis and application performance testing.

DAY 2

08.00 - 09.00 Breakfast

09.00 - 10.30
Physical Layer Spectral Analysis

Typical bandwidths and channel spacing in present radio systems, spectral analysis requirements of narrow band and wide band signals up to 10 GHz, harmonic content, dynamic range and sensitivity, power measurement, frequency measurement, adjacent channel leakage and mask measurement, typical (frequency domain) resolution bandwidths and signal purity requirements, amplitude level measurements and amplitude correction techniques, 10 to 30 GHz and 30 to 300 GHz measurements, harmonic mixing and related image suppression techniques, 300 to 3000 GHz RF spectral analysis, related optical spectral analysis techniques, wavelength accuracy, sweep times and sensitivity.

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee

11.00 - 12.30 Physical Layer Signal Analysis
Data rates and modulated waveforms in present radio systems, impact of spread spectrum on measurement requirements,code spurs, peak to average ratios and related statistical approaches to signal characterisation,(complementary cumulative distribution functions),issues of jitter when using spread spectrum systems at high data rates, the effect of OFDM and higher level modulation techniques on signal properties, typical peak to average amplitude of OFDM waveforms, constellation errors, centre frequency leakage and spectral flatness, time domain analysis of signal timing and amplitude ( measurement of transmitter turn on times, PA linearity, VCO stability, modulator timing, phase accuracy and spurii), frequency domain analysis with time gating (using an FFT to measure power on/power off signal bursts, VCO settling time and carrier stability), modulation quality measurements (using a DSP to analyse error vector magnitude by sub carrier and error vector magnitude at symbol level), impact of PA non linearity,clipping,signal filtering and phase noise on modulation accuracy, impact of modulation accuracy on spectral efficiency and related impact on spectral utilisation, (signal properties and their effect on occupied bandwidth), UWB signal properties, pulse durations and bandwidths, pulse train effects and their impact on other radio systems, related UWB system test requirements.

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch

13.30 - 15.00
Physical layer test resolution and accuracy

Data rates and physical layer transmission time intervals, frame lengths (milliseconds), slot lengths(microseconds), pulse widths (nanoseconds), related time domain test resolution and accuracy requirements, frequency domain resolution and accuracy requirements (selectivity and adjacent channel performance), phase domain accuracy (phase noise limitations), resolution and accuracy in the amplitude domain(dynamic range), impact of modulator timing errors, non linear distortion and filtering on error vectors, impact of error vectors on bit error rates and symbol error rates, impact of bit and symbol errors on frame errors (MAC layer effects) and packet loss (transport layer effects).

15.00 - 15.30 Tea

15.30 - 17.00
Protocol analysis - MAC layer performance

The W-CDMA MAC, source adaptation, static and dynamic rate matching and outer and inner loop fast power control, frame structure and admission control protocols, the EDGE MAC, link adaptation and incremental redundancy, measurement reporting and integration with enhanced and fast power control, the HSDPA MAC, Channel Quality Indication(CQI), ACH/NACK signalling and fast scheduling, frame structure and admission control protocols, EUDCH(enhanced uplink) capabilities, latency comparisons, WiFi MAC, the transition from contention to connection based MAC functionality, measurement reporting in WiFi and network assisted handover protocols, Bluetooth and PAN MAC requirements, flexible MAC/flexible PHY functionality, impact of MAC performance on higher layer protocol performance.

19.00 - 21.00 Dinner

21.00 - 22.00 Special Interest Session
Delegates are encouraged to nominate topics of particular interest to be addressed in this session.

DAY 3

08.00 - 09.00 Breakfast

09.00 - 10.30
Protocol analysis - transport and network layer measurements

TCP/IP and UDP performance, IPV4 versus IPV6 functionality, header and data payloads,header classification and packet classification, impact of tunnelling on table searching, IP security and IP QOS integration, IP voice, IP audio and IP video implementation issues, packet lengths and fragmentation, RTP packet management and related jitter management requirements, end to end delay metrics, delay and delay variability budgets, UDP packet loss thresholds, IP performance measurement and IP performance management methodologies.

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee

11.00 - 12.30
Protocol analysis - session layer measurements

Effect of traffic shaping and prioritisation protocols on session performance, merits/demerits of RSVP, Diffserv and MPLS, SIP and session establishment, session success rates, dropped session rates, consistency metrics and their impact on higher layer(application layer) behaviour, session persistency over time,user plane and control plane signalling, merits/demerits of the IP/SS7 transition, implications for session layer performance measurement and management.

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch

13.30 - 15.00
Protocol analysis- application layer measurements

Voice quality measurements,intrusive and non intrusive options, subjective measurements(mean opinion scoring) and objective measurements, conversational performance,call clarity indices and perceptual scoring, AMR codec performance comparisons, IP voice bearer measurements, impact of packet loss, jitter and resequencing, importance of packet loss distribution and error distribution,video quality metrics, perceptual video models and predicted quality scores, integration of perceptual engineering into IP QOS based Service Level Agreements (SLA's) and Service Level Guarantees, how these relate to present and likely future network KPI's (key performance indices), parallel audio fidelity and text integrity measurements, merits/demerits of data SLA's, application performance measurement good practice and likely future test requirements.

15.00 - 15.30 Tea

15.30 - 17.00
Inter RAT measurements

Impact of Release 5 and 6 on inter radio technology measurements, UMTS/W-CDMA to GSM handover and mobility management, GSM to UMTS handover and mobility management , handover testing and typical test scripts, issues of device to device and application to application transparency(transaction validation), RRC measurement reports and signalling flows,location/routing updates, PDP context management,user plane and control plane signalling components, inter RAT latency comparisons, cellular to WiFi, WiFi to cellular handovers, neighbour lists and measurement reporting, resource management beacons and their role in handover control, test and handover optimisation techniques, related network KPI's (call success rates, dropped call rates, call completion rates), lessons learnt from early implementations.

17.00 Summary and Close