Agilent Enhances Drive Test Functionality w/ WiMAX

Agilent Technologies (News - Alert), a provider of electronic measurement solutions, is announcing a new software feature for handheld wireless management on its E6474A network optimization platform that turns a standard WiMAX (News - Alert) PC card into the industry’s smallest WiMAX scanning solution for drive test.

 

The new mode of operation gives network equipment manufacturers and wireless operators’ Radio Frequency (RF) engineering teams the most cost-effective way to confirm WiMAX coverage and provide basic troubleshooting tasks to assess signal quality, according to the company.

 

“Our new WiMAX scanning functionality enables the subscriber device to be used as a dedicated scanner,” said Jonathan Dunbar, general manager of drive test business at Agilent. “This delivers the Wireless industry’s smallest and most cost-effective solution for basic WiMAX coverage and signal quality assessment.”

 

Engineers, scientists, manufacturers, businesses, researchers and government agencies rely on Agilent tools and solutions, according to the company’s website. From home entertainment to homeland security, from good safety to network reliability, and from communicating wirelessly to discovering the genetic basis of disease, Agilent provides the measurement capabilities.

 

No other company offers the breadth and depth of measurement tools and expertise to meet the world’s critical requirements for electronic and bio-analytical measurement, the company says.

 

The company claims that the WiMAX PC card (CPE) and its E6474A network optimization platform with option E6474-655 enables this new mode of operation. A single WiMAX CPE can be used either in ‘Phone’ mode as a standard WiMAX CPE or in ‘Scanning Mode,’ providing dedicated RF measurements on up to 10 channels.

 

For each channel, a Preamble Index Decode, BSID, RSSI, CINR and MAC messages are reported for the dominant, visible server, providing a comprehensive view of the surrounding network.