Mobile communications testing expert Rohde & Schwarz and fabless semiconductor company UNISOC Technology Co. have joined efforts to successfully pass RF and radio resource management (RRM) conformance test cases for the new Cat-1bis category for LTE user equipment as defined by the Global Certification Forum (GCF). By opening up this new 3GPP Release 13 feature for certification, both companies are driving the implementation of future internet of things (IoT) scenarios forward.
Rohde & Schwarz and UNISOC recently conducted the new LTE UE category Cat-1bis conformance test cases. All validated test cases passed successfully on the DUT with the embedded UNISOC IVY series IoT chipset, thus fulfilling the GCF certification entry criteria. Rohde & Schwarz is the first and, to date, only test and measurement equipment manufacturer to meet the GCF test platform approval criteria (TPAC).
The company offers validated test cases for both types of conformance testing with the R&S TS8980 for RF tests and the R&S TS-RRM for radio resource management (RRM) tests. Additional frequency bands have been verified on the used conformance test systems. At the latest GCF Conformance Agreement Group (CAG) meeting held in Shanghai from April 9 to 10, work items were activated for certification in five currently introduced LTE bands (1, 3, 7, 20 and 28).
The new LTE UE category Cat-1bis corresponds to category 0 known from machine type communications (MTC), but offers data rates as high as category 1. It is consequently suitable for a variety of applications such as wearables or feature phones. With an uplink rate of 5 Mbps and a downlink rate of 10 Mbps, this highly cost-effective cellular communications technology fills the gap between low-power narrowband IoT and traditional broadband IoT, meeting 80 % of today’s IoT application requirements while providing additional solutions for future IoT scenarios.
