National Instruments Announces LTE-U/LAA Testbed

National Instruments (NI), has released a system for testing, experimenting on and prototyping LTE Unlicensed and/or License Assisted Access wireless access technologies.

The real-time testbed includes a FPGA-based LTE physical layer in source code so that different scenarios of LTE-U and LAA can be tested, evaluated and potentially augmented to assess performance and increase data rates for systems built on existing LTE and 802.11 infrastructure.

The NI testbed provides a ready-to-run system composed of the following components:

•  LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite
•  LabVIEW Communications LTE Application Framework
•  Configurable LTE-U and LAA reference software
•  Two USRP-2953R FPGA-based software defined radios

“Several proposals have been incorporated in the proposed 3GPP standard to minimize interference with existing unlicensed band users,” said James Kimery, director of RF Research and SDR Marketing at NI. “However, with any new standard, thorough prototyping and testing are necessary to ensure a smooth adoption. NI’s LTE-U/LAA testbed will help researchers assess the impact of the new standard in specific test scenarios.”

For more information, visit National Instruments.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.