Xiao Shanpeng: Application prospects and requirements of test instruments are complicated

The TD-LTE test technology seminar was held on December 17 at the National Convention Center in Beijing. The seminar was hosted by the Institute of Telecommunications and the TD Technology Forum of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Xiaoshan Peng: Leaders, good afternoon everyone, I am very happy to share with you some of our research results!

Today's content is broadly divided into three aspects. The first is from the point of view of the testing industry, to analyze some of our current problems, and where we will go in the future. The second aspect is that we have an overall architectural vision for China Mobile Testing System. I will discuss some of the differences in the architecture of China Mobile Testing System based on the needs of TD-LTE. Finally, there are some special tools we need for the TD-LTE test system we are currently experimenting with, and some suggestions for the production of test tools to develop.

As a department of China Mobile focusing on testing, the Institute’s test center has a very wide range of systems in our laboratory, that is, from the 2G GSM system to the CDMA system that is currently in use, and is currently undergoing experimentation. LTE system, from the terminal system to the business system test, in the entire mobile test system, the task we face is very difficult to have such a complex test environment in many organizations. From our exploration over the past few years, we have discovered from our perspective what problems the testing is facing.

The first demand for our instrumentation is growing, because with the development of new wireless technologies and the emergence of new businesses, our original business also needs continuous expansion, so the complexity of our current system is constantly increasing. The test task has also been continuously improved. From the test meter, we need more and more instruments. From the scale of our laboratory, our laboratory has originally been on the 5th floor, moved to the 3rd and 4th floors, and is constantly filling in the test equipment, but still can not meet the growing test requirements.

The second aspect is the heavy use and maintenance of pressure. This and the previous requirements are in fact the same strain. Because of the increase in the number of tools and instruments and the increase in demand, we are managing how to manage such a large number of meters, and how to maintain and upgrade it. The pressure is very high, which often results in very confusing management and low equipment utilization. On the one hand, test requirements cannot be met. On the other hand, test equipment utilization is very low.

The third aspect is that our entire industry development is also very complicated. On the one hand, the competition among instrument manufacturers is very fierce. On the other hand, the development of test standards is relatively slow. From the basic wireless test standards, the relative development is relatively faster. However, relatively speaking, the test standards for business are relatively slow. For example, how do we evaluate the quality of our video? Such standards tend to lag behind some of our needs for testing. In addition, the requirements of test instruments are not particularly clear, because the development of test instruments is related to the standards. Because some of the standards are not well-formulated, it is difficult for us to make the instrument perfect. In addition, the development direction of the market segment is not clear. Everyone is now talking about the fierce competition in the instrument itself. We all want to find some differences in the direction of development. Differentiated development, we do not know where to go, and differentiation is in conflict with the requirements of economies of scale. Therefore, the development of the entire test instrumentation and test tool for the entire industry is also very complicated.

The fourth aspect is that our entire instrument resources are very independent and distributed. Just now we talked about the test equipment in our laboratory, from the various wireless technologies from the terminal to the network of wireless devices, we have tested these resources are independent of each other. For example, I want to measure the terminal, this set of tables is used to measure the terminal, wireless measurement is measured wireless, the entire resources are not centralized management. We do the instrument itself is to look at the short-term interests, that is, to solve this problem is to focus on this issue, there is no feeling of the entire system. In addition, our instruments focus on their own integration. For example, in terms of terminal tests, we have protocol tests, LTE tests, and system tests. The types of instruments provided by different companies are different, and everyone's focus is not the same. However, it is very difficult for you to concentrate on the instruments of different companies.

There are many modules and meters supplied by a single company. For example, a company has different types of test instruments, development stages, tested products, and production instruments. Many of these instruments are supplied on the instrument manufacturers' own platforms. , but if you make it impossible on the Agilent platform, for us the entire instrument resource is independent and distributed. In the face of so many problems, we need to think about how our testing system needs to develop and how our instruments need to meet our needs.

At the same time, with the development of test instruments, our test needs have also brought about new changes. The first one is that the application scenario is becoming more and more complicated. In the morning many experts also talked about the test requirements of TD-LTE, and it is important that TD-LTE will face interoperability with LTE and TD in the future. This is a technical aspect. At the business level, wireless level, and network level, our testing also faces more and more test requirements at each level. So, when we talk about the equipment of operators and testers being put into operation, we need to conduct more and more in-depth tests and become more and more complex. At the same time, with the development of wireless technology, terminal devices and the entire network are facing more and more Internet, and the user experience is increasingly important. Because it is different from the 2G era, we used to do a good job of text messaging, the phone can not drop calls, high connection rate can be, and now the user experience is a wide variety, the user experience in various scenarios is also becoming more and more complex. From the equipment we are testing, from the original single-device, single-interface off-line testing, to multi-device, multi-interface, to the end will develop the current network system intelligent test. This means that the user is currently on the Internet, for example, he is browsing the web or browsing microblogging, his user experience is what kind of, we want to get him in the presence of the current network from time to time. Therefore, in terms of these increasingly complex demands, we need more and more convenient use of our test tools and test instruments. This is how we can easily and more efficiently operate the instrument. It is a must for our next step in the development of the test industry. problem. Because faced with such a complex test, if you simply use the previous ideas to solve the test requirements, it seems impossible. Therefore, based on the above analysis and the problems faced by the industry, we insist on the idea of ​​system development, and based on chemistry, meet the end-to-end requirements of the test system. This “four modernizations” means platformization, networking, and intelligence. automation. Later, I will simply use the concept of mature explanations to explain the "four modernizations" for our test instrument testing capabilities, test system construction ideas.

The first is the platformization of the test system. In simple terms, it is subtraction. From the aspect of testing capability, we hope to be the integrated management of the current line, that is, the entire testing capability we hope to build on a unified platform and can effectively organize. The centralized scheduling of test resources means that our testing capabilities, software, and hardware facilities can be efficiently managed on a unified platform and centralized scheduling can be achieved. The other one is always in control, that is, all tests can be monitored from time to time. Because China Mobile originally stated that network equipment is the basic infrastructure, all services rely on network equipment, and all network equipment now has centralized management. In the China Mobile headquarters building, you can see the working status of each Chinese mobile base station. From the aspect of testing, we will treat test instruments and tools and test platforms as an infrastructure of China Mobile to manage and make it platform-based. From the perspective of the current development of LTE, FDD and TDD have basically achieved a common platform for test instruments. For the testing of our network equipment and testing of terminal equipment, these decentralized test capabilities will enable us to realize platform management and mobilization in the future. , Exerting collaboration and sharing advantages, can effectively use test resources and improve testing capabilities. This is simply our requirement for platformization. The second point is the networking, speaking from three aspects. The first of our test tools wanted to be able to achieve remote control of the tube. This is actually a very high requirement, that is to say that we currently build a laboratory, buy instruments, recruit people and then start the test report. This is Our current mode of work. In the future, if our instruments are managed centrally and centrally, then our management control can not be realized remotely. This will be of great significance for our future development. Then the test resources and test capabilities can be shared in different places, because in terms of China Mobile, our testing needs are spread all over the country. The ability to test is actually concentrated in a few places. It is impossible to say that China Mobile has more than 30 provincial companies. Each provincial company establishes a comprehensive test system to meet the test requirements, but they do have such test requirements.

For example, taking TD-SCDMA as an example, how do they solve the problems that occur during their operations? For example, where the failure rate is high, he will send these test requirements to us. These people will verify this problem in the laboratory and monitor this. The problem is that this efficiency is very low. If we can achieve the sharing of testing resources and testing capabilities in the future, we can increase the efficiency of provincial companies, increase the use of resources, and increase efficiency. The third is a new tool and instrument based on technologies such as cloud computing. Its basic idea is to make full use of idle computing resources and use virtualization and cloud computing technologies to conduct research and development of new test tools and instruments, and to solve future IP-based large-capacity high-performance devices. Tool instrumentation requirements. The TD-LTE all-IP, flattened architecture provides a good platform for the network management of test systems, and can be used to breakthrough test instrument capabilities from the laboratory to the entire network. This is our thinking about the networking of test systems.

The third point is the intelligence of the test system. It turns out that the nature of the Internet of Things called test systems is essentially the same. First of all, we hope to be able to achieve the organic combination of test capabilities and measured objects. In terms of the concept of the Internet of Things, the object to be measured is capable of sensing and feedback. If he himself can participate in the testing process, he can implement many new types of tests for the expansion of test capabilities. At the same time, for the implementation of quality perception, we can position the problem more accurately. Due to the perceived ability of the measured object, we can sample the measured data and can sense it. In the future, the current user experience on the live network can be analyzed very accurately. If problems are found, the location can be resolved in time. The third aspect is the precise test that is highly fitted to the existing network. At present, our laboratory test basically sets the basic scenario to simulate the scene in the existing network. If we are highly responsible for testing the user experience in the future, the experience of one place or the experience of a certain model is difficult to achieve through independent laboratory testing. Because of each user's user experience at that moment, it is difficult for us to simulate with a unified laboratory environment. Therefore, the intelligence of the test system requires that we be able to fit the scene at the time highly. This will have the advantage of improving the efficiency of solving some problems for users. TD-LTE itself is an all-IP system design, and its business can be very strong. We should focus on SMS and telephony services from the 2G era to a high-bandwidth, flexible system for TD-LTE. Its service quality requirements are very high. Strong, these require us to have the ability to sense time, which puts very high demands on the test system.

The fourth is the automation of the test system. This is the aspect that everyone feels most direct. Automated testing can improve test efficiency and reduce test costs. For our understanding of test automation will require higher, we hope to achieve automatic discovery, automatic deployment, automatic configuration and automatic monitoring of test resources and test capabilities, not just a test execution automation, but the entire test resources and test capabilities configuration Automation, automatic data association and synchronization between multiple systems. Now for example, we measured the consistency of a terminal to do a very good job, indicating that its technical performance is still possible, but its user experience is often not doing so well, which in the end this link occurs, which requires us to put more The test data of the two systems are automatically linked. We analyze what links have resulted in our technical performance measurement being good, but it does not mean that users use it well. The second aspect is that we can automate the deployment of our testing capabilities and resources. We can automate the distribution and scheduling of testing resources and capabilities, including some remote controls. Then there is the intelligent mass data analysis. If we can analyze the massive amount of test data, its degree of knowledge of the network and the quality of the service is very good for the continuous improvement of laboratory testing methods, and it can be increased. Effective support for existing network operations. TD-LTE itself is a very flexible system, including its high bandwidth, and its flexible allocation of video resources, including flexible allocation of TD-LTE and flexible bandwidth support. This flexibility brings with it the problem of testing flexibility, which is the need to design a very large number of projects for testing, which places high demands on automated testing. In fact, in the course of our TD-LTE testing, many manufacturers have very poor support for automation from the very beginning. In fact, we have improved many requirements.

What degree of automation can be used as a TD-LTE has a great influence on our test cost and test cycle. Now our test system does not say on the one hand that it can be done in a few days. On the other hand, operators say that you have to do measurement points. If you do less, I will not be able to implement it. Then, the operating company will complain that it cannot support it. How do we solve these problems? We hope to be more automated and fully utilize instrumentation and human resources. We hope that through these efforts, our testing costs will be lower, the cycle will be shorter, and the efficiency will be higher.

For the TD-LTE test system, we have an overall plan. The planning of our China Mobile TD-LTE instrument system has also been demonstrated. Our TD-LTE is mainly two methods, one is network instrumentation, and the other is multi-class instrumentation. Network instruments are divided into several large blocks, such as RF, baseband, simulation, performance, channel monitoring, signaling, and outfield. The terminal instruments are divided into eight categories: terminal type consistency tester, signaling test network supervision, and field network supervision type. This system we hope in the future can use the "four modernization" thinking to use these resources in a unified way. Sometimes we find that we have bought many sets of meters, but we still have to go elsewhere to solve them. In fact, sometimes these meters are idle. , so we hope to re-use all the test resources in the entire system.

Based on our previous analysis of the system and the concept of the test architecture, we have two suggestions for the future development of TD-LTE. The first one is for the technical characteristics of TD-LTE, adhere to the synchronization with LTE FDD, a common platform development strategy, and build a TD-LTE test system that meets the end-to-end test requirements. On the other hand, based on the requirements of “four modernizations”, we will improve the overall level of our entire TD-LTE test system, realize remote control, operation, and control, improve test efficiency, and reduce test costs. We hope that in the future, the TD-LTE test system can achieve the most efficient use of efficiency. I hope that everyone present here will also be able to make its own contribution to the future development of our test platform and to better meet the needs of TD-LTE testing.