Remote testing event included Rel. 15 rail transportation capabilities
1,350 tests. 169 test sessions. Around 50 new test cases. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s most recent plugtest event for mission-critical technologies achieved an interoperability rate of 95%, which the organization says gives the industry “a reliable set of standards for successful implementations.” For the first time, the event — which is ETSI’s fifth MC-focused plugtest — included railway-specific mission-critical features.
The remote testing event was held from Sept. 21-Oct. 2, and included tests of capabilities including Future Railway Mobile Communications System (FRMCS) and specific rail-focused features from 3GPP’s Release 15.
“These tests are essential to ensure seamless access to mission critical services over 4G networks across different vendors’ products and implementations,” ETSI said in its report on the plugtest results.
The tests were designed for system components including application servers for mission-critical services (mission-critical push-to-talk, data and video), clients for MC services, IMS/SIP cores, Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS)/LTE Broadcast and test equipment for mission-critical services. Application servers from 18 companies were tested, along with MC clients from 22 companies and test tools from five vendors.
ETSI said that the sessions “proved once again very useful” to help with specificity in wording of 3GPP and ETSI technical specifications, and to identify practical deployment problems that might mean that standards bodies need to weigh in or clarify details on implementation.
ETSI also noted that in parallel to the plugtest event, it held a two-day online observer program that provided a forum for public safety network operators, user organizations, government organizations and others to discuss updates on mission-critical communications standards, network implementations around the world (including Project Broadway) and testing and certification activities.
“With the standardization of MCX (Mission-Critical PTT, Video & Data), IOPS (Isolated Operation for Public Safety), and other critical communications features by 3GPP, LTE and 5G NR networks are increasingly gaining recognition as an all-inclusive communications platform for public safety, rail and other critical communications sectors,” the organization noted in its plugtest report.
