[SatNews] LTE (Long Term Evolution) protocol standard is generally considered the 4G (4th Generation) mobile standard in the ever-evolving mobile technologies environment—its distinguishing feature is an all IP infrastructure and significantly greater air interface bandwidth to the mobile handset.

LTE was developed as an enhancement to the existing 3G UMTS System (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) to provide users enhanced mobile radio and Internet access. The LTE air interface is a completely new system based on orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) in the downlink and single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA) in the uplink. The system efficiently supports multi-antenna technologies (MIMO). OFDMA is considered much better at handling the varying propagation conditions seen in mobile radio. This is similar to WiMAX. In MIMO techniques, either multiple antennas can transmit the same data stream to improve data-transmission reliability or different antennas can transmit different data streams simultaneously to increase throughput.

GL's LTE Analyzer is capable of capturing, decoding and performing various test measurements across various interfaces over LTE and IMS networks. GL's MAPS™ - a multi-protocol and multi-interface simulation software can be used to simulate almost all elements in the wireless 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. One can also setup a virtual real-time network simulating all the network elements using ‘MAPS™ 2G 3G 4G Wireless Lab Suite.' On the other hand, MAPS™ LTE Emulator supports emulation of several interfaces in LTE and IMS network S1 - MME, X2-AP, eGTP-c (S3, S4, S5, S8, S10, S11 and S16), and Diameter (S6a, S6d, S13, Cx, Dx, Gx, and Rx) . It can simulate up to 500 Smartphones (UEs) powering up and down.

Apart from analyzer's unlimited capturing, decoding, and measurement capability, it also supports variety of protocol stack for decoding S1, S3, S4, S5 (or S8), S6a, S10, S11, S13 and X2 interfaces and Diameter sessions over S6a, S6d, Cx, Dx, Sh, Gx, and Rx interfaces. Some of the important features include:

• Displays Summary, Detail, Hex-dump, Statistics, and Call Trace Views, the contents of this view can also be copied to clipboard
• Search and filtering capabilities
• Exports Summary View information to a comma delimited file for subsequent import into a database or spreadsheet
• Capability to export detailed decode information to an ASCII file
• Any protocol field can be added to the summary view, filtering, and search features providing users more flexibility to monitor required protocol fields
• Remote monitoring capability using GL's Network Surveillance System
• Capable of capturing, decoding and performing various test measurements across various interfaces i.e. S1, S3, S4, S5 (or S8), S6a, S10, S11, S13 and X2 interfaces of the LTE network

For more information, please visit the LTE Protocol Analyzer infopage at.