Testing Framework for 4G Wireless Communication Systems

With the increasing requirement of higher data rates to support various multimedia applications, a demand for an enhanced wireless communication system has become a necessity. During the development-stage of any such wireless communication system it is necessary to perform continuous functional and performance tests for a reliable and efficient end-product. It is also necessary to develop a cost effective and easy to use framework. In addition, to meet the reduced time to market requirement, the infrastructure required for testing and validation needs to be automated in order to speed up the product development cycle and prevent errors due to manual intervention. In this paper we aim to introduce an effective and low cost test and validation framework that can be utilized for a 4G wireless system such as an LTE/LTE-A. Considering the performance requirements specified in the 3GPP specifications, the framework is enhanced to perform various levels of testing in a fully automated environment and a provision is included to generate different detailed level of reports based on the outcomes of the tests and validations. This framework also keeps the track of the previous results and hence product health progress can be monitored quickly.