Rohde & Schwarz and Synopsys form strategic collaboration for LTE/LTE-advanced design acceleration

MUNICH, GERMANY & MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Synopsys Inc. and Rohde & Schwarz, a premium supplier of test and measurement solutions to the wireless and cellular industry, today announced the formation of a strategic collaboration to accelerate the design and verification of chipsets, handsets and base stations that serve the next-generation LTE and LTE-Advanced standards.

Synopsys is contributing to the collaboration its strength in algorithm design and verification solutions, including standard-compliant reference libraries. Rohde & Schwarz is contributing its signal generation expertise and proven test and measurement solutions that are used worldwide in research and development, verification, production and service.

Synopsys' LTE Library for its System Studio and SPW algorithm design products includes models of the transmitter and the physical channel as defined in the standard, as well as functional models of ideal receivers that can serve as references. The library provides an end-to-end simulation chain for both uplink and downlink transmission and reception.

Through the collaboration, Synopsys' LTE library, including the upcoming LTE-Advanced enhancements, will be verified against Rohde & Schwarz's test and measurement solutions, greatly increasing design confidence for algorithm designers needing to achieve standards compliance. Starting with signal generators, Rohde & Schwarz test equipment will be able to automatically derive its configuration from the Synopsys simulation setup.

Since typical configurations consist of more than 100 parameters, this integration significantly reduces the time it takes to achieve a correct setup. It also reduces the risk of configuration inconsistencies that often result in losing days of system integration time in the lab.

"As long-time users of both Synopsys' SPW algorithm design and analysis products and the Rohde & Schwarz signal generator solutions, a combined compliance approach significantly reduces the time to the first test and enables the most efficient interaction between our algorithm designers and system integration engineers," said Robert Peloso, Director of Engineering Management at InterDigital.

"In making robust contributions to the standards bodies and other partners, we rely on standard-compliant signal generation in simulation and hardware testing. Ensuring full compliance between both simulation and hardware testing gives us an additional level of confidence in this verified approach. Just as important, bringing our advanced solutions in to the market more rapidly helps to proliferate the advances in wireless technologies more rapidly."

LTE and LTE-Advanced, standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), are evolutionary advancements of today's mobile communication technologies such as GSM and WCDMA/HSPA. The primary goal for LTE/LTE-Advanced is to serve the surging demand for mobile broadband data by increasing peak and average data throughput, as well as to significantly reduce latency. These improvements, combined with a simpler network architecture, lower operation and maintenance costs for the service provider.

"Synopsys has been a supplier to leading wireless algorithm design teams since the early days of GSM. The collaboration with Rohde & Schwarz enables us to deliver additional customer value by providing the fastest simulation technology and validated reference models," said John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP and systems at Synopsys. "With this joint design-to-lab technology, we expect our customers to realize a significant reduction in time-to-volume."

"With this strategic collaboration, we are able to provide a complete solution that seamlessly bridges the gap between system design and hardware prototype verification," said Wolfgang Kernchen, director of test & measurement subdivision for signal generators, power meters, audio analyzers at Rohde & Schwarz. "System simulation customers will benefit from Rohde & Schwarz's strength in test and measurement, and test equipment users will be able to minimize efforts to verify real silicon against the simulation results. We are happy that we have found a strategic partner that stands for the same values as Rohde & Schwarz and are looking forward to a great business relationship that will add unique value in the market."

The validated Synopsys LTE library will become available with the 2011.06 release. This will also include the initial version of LTE-Advanced. Access is free to all Synopsys LTE library customers under maintenance. The LTE library works for both SPW and System Studio.

The automatic configuration of Rohde & Schwarz signal generators from Synopsys' algorithm simulation tools, SPW and System Studio, will become available to select customers in June 2011, with general availability expected in October 2011.