September 8, 2015

The latest edition of the GCF Certification News confirms that 60% of current device certification is for LTE systems and establishes the Forum's commitment to ensuring that "the scope of certification remains in sync with the steady stream of enhancements and new features that continue to emerge from 3GPP."

The GCF sees Carrier Aggregation as the focus of much of its work, acknowledging the importance of 3GPP's Band Combination Capability Signaling (BCCS) - which allows a device to advise the network which bands it is capable of supporting.

The GCF has recently approved a Work Item Description to verify Rel-11 BCCS and now also has an umbrella Work Item Description for the certification of Rel-12 devices incorporating LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation with three downlinks. The GCF reports that "So far, 42 inter-frequency combinations have been identified for 3DL Carrier Aggregation."

In addition to Carrier Aggregation work, the GCF are focusing on Voice over LTE quality testing, on supporting e-MBMS for broadcast and on certification of a variety of features for various bands, including;

• Enhanced Downlink Multiple Antenna Transmission,
• Requirements to improve interference rejection,
• Coordinated MultiPoint Operation (CoMP),
• Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (before ringing)

To receive a copy of GCF Certification News, sign-up at www.globalcertificationforum.org

Did you know?

For the certification of devices based on 3GPP standards, GCF uses the conformance test cases specified by the Technical Specification Group (TSG) RAN Working Group 5 (RAN5) within 3GPP. The signalling and protocol conformance test cases of RAN5 are implemented in the ETSI-standardized language TTCN-3 (Testing and Test Control Notation version 3) by a 3GPP-specific task force (TF160) of 20 testing experts hosted and managed by ETSI. 

Contact for this article: Kevin FLYNN, Marketing and Communications Officer, 3GPP