IxLoad Wireless

Problem: Scaling New Services,  Virtualizing, and Preparing for 5G

Today’s insatiable drive for more throughput and LTE penetration drives network capacity and scalability beyond what was envisioned only a few years ago. Carrier grade solutions required to carry all wireless traffic need to be characterized and validated continuously in the lab and pre-production deployments.

Challenges brought by voice over LTE (VoLTE) and video streaming need to be addressed before becoming bottlenecks in live networks. Scaling new services requires validating every level, including:

• Optimizing diversified LTE infrastructures that use equipment, systems, and applications from many different vendors

• Withstanding spikes in already-hard-to-predict signaling traffic (smartphones generate up to 20x more) that can lead to outages

• Handling simultaneous protocol requests for tunneling-, session-, or Diameter-based signaling

Understanding how to make the best of virtualization technologies—and when and where to deploy them in wireless networks—raises the bar for service providers preparing for the leap towards 5G.

Solution: Pre-Deployment Validation  Using Real-World Subscriber and  Channel Modeling

IxLoad Wireless is a powerful and easy-to-use solution for comprehensive performance testing of all aspects of LTE nodes and interfaces. Using IxLoad’s real-world subscriber modeling, testers do not need to be protocol experts to develop realistic test scenarios. From a single application, users can perform capacity tests, detail a device’s throughput, measure voice and video quality, model a wide variety of mobility scenarios, and much more. 

IxLoad is uniquely positioned in the market as the only test tool capable of simulating user equipment (UE) over the Radio and every other LTE node or interface. 

Full automation via Tcl, Python, and REST APIs is available through a graphical user interface (GUI), allowing users to create regressions for continuous validation of product quality.

Real-world subscriber simulation is achieved by implementing:

• Mobile application modeling with voice, video, and data traffic, including audio quality (MOS, PESQ, POLQA) and quality of service (QoS) measurements
• Complex signaling operations, including Attach, Detach, Handover, TAU, and Idle Mode operation 
• Channel modeling that allows UE cell center/edge simulation with LTE DL Fast Fading emulations including Pedestrian, Vehicle, Urban, and High-Speed Train

Highlights

Ixia's IxLoad Wireless solution allows users to: 

• Perform service quality validation with subscriber modeling, multiplay voice, video, and data traffic generation, and quality of experience (QoE) measurement
• Validate complex mobility scenarios, including intra-LTE and iRAT
• Simulate the behavior of several million subscribers using stateful application traffic mixes that can interact with real servers and peers
• Control test traffic mix and intensity using network objective to independently manage control and user planes
• Validate LTE networks via specialized Ixia hardware or IxLoad Virtual Edition (VE)

IxLoad Wireless Evolved Packet Core Simulation

IxLoad is the one-stop-shop for testing Evolved Packet Core. From end-to-end to node isolation, the tool simultaneously simulates multiple protocol activities, making it perfect for testing application delivery systems and components that use deep packet inspection (DPI).