March 4, 2010 - Anite, a global leader in testing technology for the wireless industry, recently announced the industry’s first protocol test solution for TD-LTE devices. The Anite solution is already helping to push forward pioneering implementations of TD-LTE. 4G chip maker Sequans Communications is utilising Anite’s Development Toolset to test the chips and USB dongles for the first trial TD-LTE (Long Term Evolution for TDD spectrum) network at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. 

“The Chinese mobile operator market is driving TD-LTE technology forwards at tremendous speed,” said Paul Beaver, 3GPP Business Unit Director, Anite. “The schedule it is setting for the trials and deployment of TD-LTE is throwing down the gauntlet to manufacturers to deliver the user equipment that will showcase the performance of the new networks. By providing the first protocol testing solution, we’re helping manufacturers to stay ahead, accelerating the rate of development and speeding device time to market.”

"Sequans aims to be at the heart of LTE. Anite is helping us stay in front by speeding time to market for our LTE chipset and protocol stack development,” said Bertrand Debray, VP of Engineering, Sequans Communications. “Anite’s Development Toolset offers great flexibility – providing the means to emulate the behaviour of an eNodeB as we verify the performance of chipset designs, but also helping us to assess compliance with the TD-LTE standard."

Pressure to bring devices to market sooner places a greater emphasis on testing that helps to verify designs, identify and resolve errors at each stage of development. Anite’s Development Toolset provides a single solution to facilitate an integrated test process - starting with pre-silicon and software-only protocol development tools that help developers test designs before the final chipset hardware is ready, through to advanced development tools to aid design-verification testing in target hardware.

Anite’s Development Toolset builds upon a common software core that is shared by all of Anite’s protocol test solutions. This modular approach means that today’s achievements with TD-LTE will also accelerate the availability of Anite’s test solutions for later phases of testing, such as conformance and interoperability testing, and which will be required to make the commercial deployment of TD-LTE a success.