Granted Patent B2

US 8,331,261 · App. 12/987,277 · Granted Dec 11, 2012

Abstract

Claims (38)

1. A testing method, comprising:

establishing a connection between a transmitter and a receiver with at least two carriers;

introducing interference from at least one neighboring cell;

selecting a previously unmeasured one of the at least two carriers for a measurement;

measuring at least one received signal, characteristic on the selected carrier after fading caused by passing the selected carrier through a set of fading channel emulators; and

repeating the above introducing, selecting and measuring steps until all of the at least two carriers of the established connection have been measured.

2. The testing method according to claim 1 , the method further comprising selecting the at least two carriers sequentially or in a random order.

3. The testing method according to claim 1 , the method further comprising emulating noise in a radio channel by adding white noise prior to the measuring step.

4. The testing method according to claim 1 , the method further comprising switching to a different set of fading channel emulators for the measuring if the selected carrier is located in another frequency band.

5. The testing method according to claim 1 , wherein the at least one received signal characteristic is a data throughput against a type 3 i receiver requirement of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project specifications.

6. The testing method according to claim 5 , the method further comprising:

outputting a test pass mark if the requirement is met for the selected carrier; or

outputting a test failed mark if the requirement is not met for the selected carrier.

7. The testing method according to claim 6 , the method further comprising:

deeming an overall test outcome to be a pass result if test pass marks are output for all configured carriers; or

deeming the overall test outcome to be a fail result if a test fail mark is output for any configured carrier.

8. The testing method according to claim 1 , the method further comprising checking Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HAM messages and corresponding Acknowledgement (ACK/NACK) messages in order to identify carrier data of transmitted packets.

9. The testing method according to claim 1 , the method further comprising introducing interference from two neighboring cells to the selected carrier before the measuring step.

10. The testing method according to claim 1 , wherein the established connection is a multicell, multi-band High-Speed Downlink Packet Access connection.

11. A testing apparatus, comprising:

a transmitter and a receiver configured to establish a connection with at least two carriers;

at least one interference source configured to introduce interference from at least one neighbouring cell;

at least one set of fading channel emulators; and

a set of switches enabling the at least one set of fading channel emulators to be connected to a single selected carrier at a time for a measurement of at least one received signal characteristic on the selected carrier after fading;

wherein the apparatus switches the carriers to sets of fading channel emulators for measurement of at least one received signal characteristic on the selected carrier after fading until all of the at least two carriers of the established connection have been measured.

12. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein six fading channel emulators in connection with transmitted signals of the selected carrier are used during a single measurement phase.

13. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein transmitted signals regarding unselected carriers are directly fed to the receiver without fading during a single measurement phase.

14. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , the testing apparatus further comprising at least one additional white Gaussian noise module to emulate the noise in the radio channel.

15. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein two fading channel emulators are used for a wanted signal, two further fading channel, emulators are used for a first interference source from a first neighboring cell, and two further fading channel emulators are used for a second interference source from a second neighboring cell.

16. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein a fading channel of a first antenna branch of the receiver is independent of a fading channel of a second antenna branch of the receiver during all measurement phases.

17. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein the testing apparatus further comprises a control unit for controlling at least one of connection establishing, the set of switches and the measurement of the at least one received signal characteristic on the selected carrier.

18. The testing apparatus according to claim 11 , wherein the testing apparatus is implemented in at least one separate or embedded hardware module usable for an existing testing device.

19. A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing a computer program comprising code configured to perform the following steps, when executed on a data-processing system:

establishing a connection between a transmitter and a receiver with at least two carriers;

introducing interference from at least one neighbouring cell;

selecting a previously unmeasured one of the at least two carriers for a measurement;

measuring at least one received signal characteristic on the selected carrier after fading caused by passing the selected carrier through a set of fading channel emulators; and

repeating the above introducing, selecting and measuring steps until all of the at least two carriers of the established connection have been measured.

Assignments (8)