Agilent Technologies Inc. announced introduction of LTE-Advanced 8x8 MIMO signal-generation and analysis solutions. The offerings complement Agilent's other industry-first solutions for the LTE-Advanced standard. LTE-Advanced is the evolution of LTE to 4G.

Standardization work was done as part of Release 10 of the 3GPP specification, with further enhancements in Release 11 and beyond. LTE-Advanced introduces a number of enhancements and new technologies to enable peak data rates of up to 1 Gbps in the downlink and 500 Mbps in the uplink. To achieve such a high peak data rate, LTE-Advanced supports a maximum bandwidth of 100 MHz by aggregating up to five component carriers, each up to 20 MHz wide, and improved multi-antenna techniques in both uplink and downlink.

For downlink, LTE-Advanced introduces transmission mode 9, which enables Multiple-Input Multiple-Output with up to 8 spatial streams and antennas. Agilent's comprehensive LTE-Advanced 8x8 MIMO signal-generation and analysis solutions comprise Signal Studio and 89600 VSA software, as well as the Agilent X-Series vector signal generators and multi-channel signal analyzer with up to eight measurement channels. The solutions support generation and analysis of FDD and TDD signals compliant with the 3GPP Release 10 standard, and are well suited for R&D and test engineers designing and evaluating transmitters, receivers, basebands, and components for LTE-Advanced base stations and mobile terminals.

Using the Signal Studio and 89600 VSA software, engineers can start testing physical layer implementations of LTE-Advanced devices with greater insight and confidence, while gaining a deeper understanding of the root causes of design problems. The multi-channel signal analyzer enables full analysis of LTE-Advanced standards on next-generation antennas, base stations and user equipment. Working with the 89600 VSA, it enables phase-synchronous and cross-channel measurements with up to eight RF channels in a single mainframe. Unlike competing solutions, Agilent's LTE-Advanced solutions fully support 8x8 MIMO signal generation and analysis.

Access to such capabilities enables design engineers to actively engage in LTE-Advanced development work in support of broad deployment planning in coming years. Extending the availability of Agilent's inter-band carrier aggregation solutions, which already comprised signal analysis, Agilent is also adding a signal-generation capability with cross-carrier scheduling. As an added benefit, Signal Studio's new advanced LTE-Advanced option allows design engineers to perform receiver tests with fully channel-coded waveforms, including support of Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) Format 3. The waveforms can be created for receiver bit-error-rate, block-error-rate, packet-error-rate, or frame-error-rate analysis in a range of applications.

Agilent's LTE-Advanced signal-generation and analysis solutions with 8x8 MIMO test are now available. Pricing is as follows: N7624B-TFP, Signal Studio Advanced LTE-Advanced FDD R10 (requires N7624B-HFP and -JFP) with the price of $3,300; N7625B-TFP, Signal Studio Advanced LTE-Advanced TDD R10 (requires N7625B-EFP and -JFP) with the price of $3,300; N7109A-C08, Multi-Channel Signal Analyzer, 8-channel configuration with the price of $208,500; 89601B-BHG, 89600 VSA software for LTE-Advanced FDD (requires 89601B-BHD LTE-FDD) with the price of $3,600; 89601B-BHH, 89600 VSA software for LTE-Advanced TDD (requires 89601B-BHE LTE-TDD) with the price of $3,600.