Either CDMA2000 or WCDMA...
Hewlett Packard is putting on a series of meetings to introduce their field testing gear for CDMA base stations:
System, switch, network, and RF engineers, technicians, supervisors, and
managers responsible for the installation, maintenance, and optimization of
2G digital cellular and PCS networks. This symposium will be of interest to
those who are just becoming involved with 2G technology or who need to have
a deeper understanding of measurement techniques and procedures. Also, those
who may be required to evaluate, certify, or specify the 2.5 and 3G networks
of the future should find the first paper of particular value.
The papers are available:
agilent.com
I attended the meeting in San Jose. The test gear is very well designed and supports CDMA2000 very well. They have signal generators, and amazing portable logging receivers for drive testing and backpacks for testing inside malls and airports. The other attendees were all field technicians from Sprint, Verizon, and a number of RF repeater (???) companies.
After the meeting I asked the technical guru about WCDMA's curious use of asynchronous operation and HP's lack of supporting test gear. "Async-bad idea, and never having seen any WCDMA system, there was no need for test gear."
Speaking as an engineer with 5 years experience doing RF propagation measurements on spread spectrum systems in the field, "HP gear works under severe field conditions."
I think this is a useful angle to watch the CDMA2000 vs. WCDMA battles. If there is no test gear, there will be no deployment. And test gear takes some time to get to the field. CDMA2000 gear is available, now, off the shelf. WCDMA gear??? |
