Tester upgrade adds radio resource management

RFI Global Services can now provide cellular customers with radio resource management testing as well as enhancements to support the RF testing of region 2 and 5 UMTS terminals.

RFI Global Services has invested more than GBP 750,000 in upgrading its Anritsu ME7873 3G RF conformance test platform.

This will provide cellular customers with radio resource management (RRM) testing as well as enhancements to support the RF testing of region 2 and 5 UMTS terminals for the North American market.

Due for delivery on 1st August this will make RFI the first completely independent compliance laboratory to be equipped with this latest hardware and software from Anritsu.

3G RRM testing assesses the handset's ability to correctly control the physical layer with respect to the information provided by the higher layers.

This is a key aspect to providing continuous high quality services in a real network environment.

RFI's Operations Manager, Stuart Thomas, believes: "RRM testing may prove critical for handset manufacturers that are new to the market place".

RFI's research shows that RRM testing, unlike other testing, shows massive run-time variations that are entirely dependent on the quality of the handset".

"Good quality handsets from well-established manufacturers take around 30 hours to pass the RRM test".

For "marginal" handsets this increases by up to a factor of 20, and Thomas believes that "the prohibitive costs associated with up to 600 hours of testing may make the difference between new players being able to enter the market place or not".

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