TRIAL WORKING GROUP


Working Group Leaders
ZHANG Dawei (Chair), China Mobile
Philippe BESSON (Vice-Chair), FT / Orange


Contact: Franck EMMERICH, NGMN Office (office(at)ngmn.org)


Scope & Objectives

NGMN recognises that trial and validation activities are vital to accelerate the development of the NGMN eco system and its services by taking into account the lessons learned from other/previous technologies. Concerted trial initiatives will lead to accelerated development cycles and early time to market.

 

The NGMN Alliance has established a Trial Working Group to accompany, guide and leverage industry activities and initiatives in the field of testing and validation of NGMN candidate technologies.

 

Objectives of the NGMN Trial Working Group: 

  • Set up a framework to enable open collaboration between NGMN Partners and external trial initiatives;
  • Consolidate and evaluate trial results for different NGMN candidate technologies;
  • Provide evidence of key technology capabilities in technical field trials and friendly customer trials;
  • Benchmark technologies  against common NGMN requirements and recommendations (White Paper 3.0).

NGMN will not setup or execute trials on its own, but leverages existing trial initiatives of NGMN Partners or other industry forums based on an open and transparent collaboration framework. In a first stage, the NGMN Trial Group generates common trial requirements and test cases and provides these to the respective trial initiatives for consideration to get results in a consistent manner. In the second stage, the Trial Group accumulates specific trial results delivered from those initiatives and evaluates these trial results against the NGMN requirements and recommendations.


Working Principle


The NGMN Trial Working Group takes into consideration all NGMN candidate technologies. The LTE/SAE trials are driven and executed by the so-called LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI, www.lstiforum.org). The development of 3GPP2 UMB is monitored with limited effort, since none of the NGMN Members is considerably involved in any UMB trials.

 

LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI)

The LTE/SAE Trial Initiative is an open initiative driven by vendors and operators founded in May 2007. LSTI joins the leading operators and the key LTE/SAE vendors comprising 22 members as of mid. 2008. For more information visit www.lstiforum.org

 

The main objectives of LSTI are:

 

  • Demonstrate 3GPP LTE/SAE capabilities
  • Stimulate development of LTE/SAE ecosystem
  • Promote industrialization of LTE/SAE
  • Promote LTE/SAE as NGMN technology
  • Consider NGMN and 3GPP requirements as input for LSTI tests

 

LSTI established different work streams to reflect the different stages in the technology development process. The Proof of Concept phase verifies the basic LTE/SAE functionality and performance using pre-standard proprietary equipment. LSTI co-ordinates industry-wide interoperability testing of standards compliant equipment from different vendor pairs, stimulating early feedback into the standard. In 2009 LSTI will demonstrate LTE capabilities and advantages in near-commercial conditions. Friendly users will be testing mobile broadband applications, using pre-commercial form factor terminals in several field trials.


Main Deliverables

Main deliverables of the NGMN Trial Working Group:

 

  • Field Trial Requirements document (2 releases in 2008),
    Describes test requirements to enable the verification of the NGMN White Paper requirements through field trials, including
    - Trial setup recommendations
    - End-to-end proof point descriptions
    - Reporting recommendations;
  • Concept for NGMN-approved trials;
  • Evaluation reports on proof-of-concept, technical field trials, and friendly customer trials.

Achievements

In the initial phase of the NGMN Trial Group activities, a collaboration framework has been established defining the informal interface towards LSTI and towards the WiMAX trial activity, as well as legal and confidentiality aspects. Furthermore, the first release of the NGMN Field Trial Requirements has been finalised.


 Printpage



 Copyright © 2008 - 2010, NGMN Ltd., All rights reserved