Azimuth Systems Press Release - March 1, 2011

Azimuth Systems Enhances Azimuth Field-to-Lab Solution
with Unrivaled Capabilities

- Only Solution Available that Provides Full End-to-End Automation for the Entire Testbed

Azimuth Systems

ACTON, MA – March 1, 2011 -  Azimuth Systems Inc., a leading provider of wireless channel emulators and targeted test solutions, today announced that it has added several cutting-edge new features to its trusted Azimuth Field-to-Lab™  (FTL) solution that were previously unavailable in the testing marketplace, designed  to help customers improve product quality and reduce time to market.
 
Azimuth’s Field-to-Lab solution provides a test environment that is closer to the “real world” than ever before. It is the first in the industry that allows users to automate the entire testbed by using Azimuth’s DIRECTOR II Test Builder, a modular, intuitive, non-programming environment which allows even novice users to automate testing. Test Builder is integrated with DIRECTOR II to create a logical flow in the sequence of events, ensuring a seamless user experience with modular automation tools that are extremely easy-to-use. The Azimuth Field-to-Lab automation architecture facilitates sharing of automation modules not only within individual companies, but also across entire ecosystems, driving consistency in the way things are tested -- and providing more reliable and repeatable results.
 
Since its initial launch in February, 2010, Azimuth’s revolutionary Field-to-Lab solution has helped bridge the gap between laboratory and field-measured test results more effectively than ever before by allowing dynamically-changing RF conditions collected by drive test scanners/tools to be replayed in the laboratory through the company’s ACE™ MX Universal MIMO channel emulator. Leading operators, handset vendors, infrastructure and chipset manufacturers from the entire 2G, 3G and 4G ecosystems use Azimuth Field-to-Lab to reduce time to market, save money and improve product quality. Now, the Field-to-Lab solution has been enhanced with additional features, available immediately, to offer even greater benefits to the users.
 
New features include:
  • Support for additional scanners and drive test tools: The Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution now supports the Rohde & Schwarz TSM-W Universal Radio Network Analyzer. With the addition of this product, Azimuth’s Field-to-Lab solution now supports all top-tier, commercially-available 3G/LTE drive test tools including products from Accuver, Anite, Ascom, JDSU and PCTEL, as well as several diagnostic monitor tools such as QXDM from leading 3G/LTE semiconductor and handset companies.
  • Automation: The Azimuth Field-to-Lab Solution offers full end-to-end automation for the entire testbed (including third party products such as BS/BSE, UE/UEE, TEMS, ROMES) and even allows creation of data logs and graphs using DIRECTOR II’s integrated Test Builder. The automation capabilities facilitate the setup of test suites, allowing for a series of tests to be run one after another, enabling customers to run long and complete test suites at the click of a button. Users can also automate Field-to-Lab using Azimuth’s industry-wide accepted TCL API so that it can be integrated into an existing automation framework.
  • Technical enhancements: Azimuth has added new “real world” intelligent mapping algorithms that allow users to better interpret and translate field conditions to the lab, featuring support for a multitude of different technologies to accurately reflect the coexistence of multiple technologies in the real world. Azimuth’s Field-to-Lab solution now also provides seamless support for various SISO and MIMO topologies that allow users to test handsets in different modes of operation. Furthermore, it is the only solution that offers inherent support for bidirectional operation.
  • Ease-of-use enhancements: Azimuth has added even more features that increase the ease-of-use of its Field-to-Lab solution, including intuitive and powerful graphical displays and the ability to automatically repeat drive tests, to improve the productivity of the user and make testing more affordable.
“Our Field-to-Lab solution has not only been successfully deployed by individual companies seeking to improve product quality and optimize testing, but has actually revolutionized entire wireless ecosystems,” said Peter Paglia, senior vice president of field operations, Azimuth Systems. “Azimuth’s Field-to-Lab simply provides the strongest correlation available between real-world performance and performance in the lab, which has been proven time and time again in its use with multiple technologies, across multiple UEs under different conditions. These newly-added features have taken ease-of -use to the next level and will only enhance the trusted stability of our product, provide substantial product differentiation and, most importantly, deliver even greater functionality to our customers. ”
 
With the Azimuth Field-to-Lab solution, R&D and QA engineers can augment current test conditions- testing products not only using industry standard models, but with real-world conditions from actual field data collected from locations of interest. Field-to-Lab also helps customers in optimizing their networks and debugging post deployment issues by collecting logs from problem areas and recreating these conditions in the lab.  
 
Additionally, Azimuth has  enhanced the ACE MX MIMO channel emulator to enable users to test 3GPP carrier aggregation (R10 and R11) scenarios with very little effort, making the ACE MX channel emulator the platform of choice for LTE-A testing due to its superior RF characteristics and support for higher order MIMO topologies, beamforming and complex transmission schemes.


The company is based near Boston, Massachusetts, USA and may be contacted at +1 (978) 263-6610 or at www.azimuthsystems.com.  Follow Azimuth Systems on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/azimuthsystems
 
Azimuth® is a registered trademark of Azimuth Systems and ACE™ and Azimuth Field-to-Lab™ solution are trademarks of Azimuth Systems.



For additional information contact:

George Reed
Azimuth Systems, Inc.           
+1 978-263-6610
george_reed@azimuthsystems.com





Posted  3/2/2011