ACTON, MA- September 20, 2011 - Azimuth Systems, Inc., a leading provider of comprehensive real world wireless test solutions for 2G/3G/4G, LTE-Advanced and beyond, today announced the release of the latest version of its award-winning ACE™ MX channel emulator which includes new, upgraded features to its powerful Director™ II management software.

The powerful enhancements to Director II™ management software --  the flexible tool that provides centralized control over Azimuth test platforms --  address the critical needs of Azimuth’s growing and diverse customer base, including improved ease-of-use and functionality, increased bandwidth for support of carrier aggregation, and updated standard channel models in line with the current industry specifications. Significantly, the ACE MX now includes support for new IMT-A and SCME-A channel models.    Azimuth has already benefited from global interest in higher order MIMO testing for TD-LTE. These new channel models enable additional support for TD-LTE and enhance the impact of Azimuth’s solution on TD-LTE ecosystem.

In addition, ACE and Director II now includes new visualization features which enable simultaneous display and control of multiple features. For example, users may more clearly model SNR though simultaneous selection of output power and signal bandwidth. Azimuth also expanded ACE functionality and increased the Noise Power Density available for AWGN. This expanded functionality will then support a greater range of interference scenarios. Lastly, this latest version will feature unrivaled automatic input power tracking capabilities and support for 50 MHz bandwidth without the need for hardware upgrades.

“Azimuth is committed to continuous improvement, and periodically makes new product releases available to our valued customer base to address their requests, meet specification changes, and bring them the latest enhancements that we can offer,” said Ajay Patel, executive director, product management, Azimuth Systems. “Our goal is always to provide our customers a reliable means to test 4G/LTE infrastructure and devices in a repeatable and cost-effective way. The latest additions to our popular ACE MX channel emulator will allow us to better enable improved product quality and reduced time-to-market for our customers’ products.”

 The ACE MX wireless channel emulator replicates real-world channel conditions in a controllable and repeatable fashion through the use of sophisticated channel models and multiple programmable parameters, enabling mobile infrastructure, chip set and device vendors, operators and test labs to test devices in real-world conditions while minimizing the time and expense of testing in the field. A purpose-built, enhanced testing solution, the ACE MX wireless channel emulator is architected to meet the demanding needs of Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based systems for testing LTE and other advanced wireless infrastructure equipment and devices, and also includes all of the backwards-compatible channel emulation features to test 2G/3G cellular products.

Azimuth’s Director II management software, along with the ACE MX MIMO channel emulator’s inherent bi-directional capability, makes testing network performance and real-world interoperability between a base station and user device efficient and easy to achieve. Whether integrated into a customer’s existing test bed or used with Azimuth’s TestBuilder automation software, Azimuth’s automation capabilities reduce the chances of human error and facilitate increased and improved wireless testing in less time.