Signals Research Group Tests Smartphone GPS Performance with Spirent Solution

Spirent Communications – a company that specializes in networks, services and devices testing –announced today that its Spirent 8100 Location Technology solution was used by Signals Research Group (SRG) in an industry-first independent benchmark study of the performance and location technologies in modern mobile chipset platforms.

Right off the bat, the SRG's report reveals that there are significant performance differences in the Assisted GPS (A-GPS) receiver sensitivity in modern smartphones.

The report also found that a multi GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) approach, which uses Russia's GLONASS satellite system along with A-GPS, offers benefits over using only one system or the other.

"Although we expected some performance differences in over-the-air testing of commercially-purchased smartphones from leading suppliers, we had no anticipation that the performance differences would be so dramatic,” commented Michael Thelander, CEO at Signals Research Group. “We observed that the receive sensitivity of the two best performing models, from Samsung and Nokia, was better than the worst performing smartphone model that we tested by a factor of 15."

Thelander added that one of the most common smartphone accessories, the phone case, can dramatically impact A-GPS performance.

In a lab-based testing approach which featured industry-accepted test criteria established by the CTIA and 3GPP, SRG used Spirent's solution to collect and analyze the performance of 10 different device/chipset configurations from five A-GNSS chipset companies: Broadcom, CSR, Qualcomm, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments.

Overall, based on the performance criteria used to conduct the analysis, the study found that the performance of each of these platforms is fairly comparable.

However, a key finding in the report is that the overall performance consistency of A-GNSS platforms doesn't necessarily hold up when used in a smartphone.

Sirent recently introduced a new LTE Call Reliability test solution on its 8100 Test System, validated by a North American wireless operator for immediate use in its acceptance testing of pre-launch devices.

Want to learn more about today’s powerful mobile ecosystem? Don't miss the Mobility Tech Conference & Expo, collocated with ITEXPO West 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5 2012, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at Mobility Tech Conference & Expo. Follow us on Twitter.