EB Propsim Radio Channel Emulator 
Icera Success Story
The Company
Icera Inc. is a leader in silicon solutions for next generation mobile data devices. These include optimized cellular modems for broadband cellular datacards and USB sticks, cellular WWAN minicard modules for laptops and cellular data modules for PDA's and the emerging ultra mobile web devices. Icera's cellular modem solution provides the ideal slim modem for high performance smartphone devices.
Icera's first wireless soft modem chipset, Livanto® and Adaptive Wireless™ software, launched in November 2005, are designed to support HSPA, UMTS, GSM and EDGE multimode capability with a seamless upgrade path to HSPA+ and LTE.
The Challenge
Icera needed a way to model radio propagation channels to verify performance of its chipset solution. These radio propagation channels had to be fully controllable and the tests repeatable, applying 3GPP standard channel profiles. To find a way to solve this, Icera contacted EB.
The Solution
Icera uses an EB Propsim C2 radio channel emulator as part of the R&D test setup. The two-channel emulator allows the engineers to test the communications in the laboratory between a base station simulator and the device under test by applying the radio channel fading effects on the emulator either on the uplink, downlink or both. The EB Propsim C2 emulator provides Icera with the needed 3GPP standard channel models with full editing capabilities, should that be necessary. The user interface with the integrated touch-screen display and keyboard is easy to use and the engineers at Icera did not even need specific training in starting to use the system.
The Benefits
Providing the highest performance and unprecedented flexibility at extremely low power, Icera's platform solutions give manufacturers maximum flexibility to deliver differentiated, high performance cellular devices in the shortest time possible. Icera has developed a breakthrough baseband processor and advanced wireless modem technology which deliver high performance, low power and cost-effective multimode wireless capability. Unlike conventional baseband devices for mobiles phones, the Icera solution is optimized for data devices.
The 3GPP modem categories define an upper bound on the performance that can be achieved by an HSPA modem. However, different modems from the same category can have significantly different performance in the field. As well as supporting enhanced type 3 performance requirements, Icera's Adaptive Wireless™ software dynamically selects the optimum mix of receivers to maximize system performance, based on a large number of criteria and optimization constraints. Channel conditions are continuously monitored, together with other performance metrics, to determine the best receiver configuration. This enables dynamic receiver architecture to deliver the highest performance HSPA.
Steve Allpress, CTO, VP Modem Software and co-founder of Icera, adds: "The EB Propsim C2 has a good graphical display, is easy to use, easy to set up and simple to configure. It is proving to be a reliable solution for Icera for both development work and customer demonstrations." The EB Propsim C2 enables Icera to demonstrate these performance advantages to customers in a range of challenging radio channel conditions.