Aeroflex achieved a world first by adding the UE CAT3 and UE CAT4 support to its market-leading TM500 LTE Test Mobile. As use of the LTE specification moves toward the delivery of bandwidth-hungry applications users demand, LTE CAT 3 and CAT 4 data channels support data rates of up to 150Mbps on the downlink and 50Mbps on the uplink. The UE CAT 3 and UE CAT 4 support on the TM500 LTE now enables infrastructure vendors to fully verify and validate the performance of their eNBs.

“With extensive operator interest in both LTE-FDD and TD-LTE, and their respective ongoing lab and field trials, the Aeroflex TM500 LTE test mobile is seen as the test tool of choice to support and accelerate the development and test of LTE deployment programs,” said Ross Broadhurst, product manager for the Aeroflex TM500 LTE test mobile. “The Aeroflex TM500 LTE test mobile provides the earliest access to the latest LTE functionality, even before the availability of real handsets, as well as layered operation and a high degree of control and logging.”

With every major basestation vendor in the world using the Aeroflex TM500, it has become the telecommunications industry’s de-facto global test mobile standard for verifying, validating and optimizing base station performance.

The Aeroflex TM500 LTE test mobile is designed to address the challenges of 3GPP LTE network infrastructure development test and rollout for both LTE-FDD and TD-LTE. The Aeroflex TM500 LTE test mobile meets this challenge by providing low level UE control and configuration flexibility combined with the detailed measurement data required by infrastructure engineers to rapidly diagnose and fix engineering issues.

The Aeroflex TM500 LTE’s extensive Layer 1, Layer 2 and higher layer test features make it an indispensable testing peer that provides complete visibility into even the lowest layers of the radio modem by generating the detailed diagnostic data needed for engineers to verify the required functionality and optimize network operation and performance. The Aeroflex TM500 LTE not only provides the ability to test an LTE basestation and network against a single mobile both in the lab and over the air but also supports multi-UE configurations enabling basestation and core network designs to be load tested, stressed and optimized to ensure that robust, flexible and high performance solutions are delivered to network operators.