June 8, 2014. Agilent Technologies Inc. has announced that the Agilent EEsof EDA W1918 LTE-Advanced baseband verification library has added support for key 4G technologies, such as Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) and Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP).
The new modeling and simulation capability enables wireless system architects to model sophisticated dynamic behaviors and realistic performance at cell edges according to the physical layer (PHY) specifications of 3GPP Releases 10 and 11, thereby accelerating the design and verification process for 4G chipsets and infrastructure, enabling faster deployment.
The newly supported 4G technologies enable wireless infrastructure to tailor signals in marginal coverage areas to a particular mobile phone, using adaptive and cooperative techniques that go beyond simple 1:1 interaction between the transmitter and receiver. This dynamic behavior makes validation of the PHY algorithms, RF components, and link-level throughput progressively more difficult in R&D—both in EDA simulations as well as test equipment—because negotiation and interaction are often required. A complete working system is required to verify baseband algorithms, RF components, and throughput under realistic conditions, making this process problematic in early R&D, prior to final hardware integration and test.
The SystemVue simulation environment, Agilent’s premier platform for electronic system-level design, is able to reproduce these conditions in R&D with the help of the W1918 LTE-Advanced library.
Updates to the W1918 library include
- AMC with active HARQ feedback, which reconfigures the modulation and coding rates during simulation, varying the sample rates as needed, while maintaining the full RF accuracy of the physical layer models;
- Dynamic Point Selection (DPS), a CoMP technique that enables multiple basestations to provide coordinated signals to a single mobile; and
- Simulation support for PUCCH format 3.
“SystemVue stands alone as a development platform that can pull together sophisticated ‘executable’ standards references like LTE-Advanced Release 11, accurate RF models, wideband test equipment links, and open algorithm modeling interfaces such as MATLAB, C++ and HDL,” said Frank Ditore, SystemVue product planner at Agilent. “As the industry moves toward 5G, all of these modeling domains are getting more difficult. Agilent is pleased to offer a platform that is truly ready today for 5G innovation.”
Agilent’s W1918 LTE-Advanced baseband verification library, part of SystemVue 2013.08 Service Pack 1, is available for download at www.agilent.com/find/eesof-systemvue-latest-downloads. This update to the W1918 library is expected in early June. Pricing for the SystemVue environment starts at approximately $17,687. A free, 30-day evaluation copy of SystemVue is available at www.agilent.com/find/eesof-systemvue-evaluation.