MCX and IWF Testing part of ETSI Plugtests Event

With the support of several European organizations, ETSI recently organized its 6th MCX Plugtest event.  The event, held virtually and in-person, focused on testing with radio equipment, as well as testing of Mission Critical Services and Clients. Both vendors and observers were invited to help define the scope.  Valid8 was honored to be among the test equipment vendors to participate in the event.  

The event, held during the week of November 8th to the 19th, allowed the testing to be performed remotely and included the option for vendors to send their equipment to the University of Malaga, Spain, where it was able to interoperate with live LTE connectivity via remote access.  

Valid8 came prepared to perform tests for MCData, MCVideo, MCPTT, and IWF. Along with demonstrating test cases for MCPTT and MCData one-to-one standalone SDS (Short Data Service) over SIP, Valid8 was able to successfully demonstrate IWF Test Cases.

For MCPTT, Valid8 performed an on-demand prearranged Group Call, Emergency Group Call, Imminent Peril Group Call, Broadcast Group Call, and on-demand private call in automatic and manual commencement with floor control.

For IWF cases, Valid8 achieved testing prearranged Group calls, Emergency Group calls, Private calls initiated both by the Mission Critical side and the LMR side over P25 ISSI.  In these tests, the Valid8 simulator was configured as the LMR P25 ISSI role to run the tests against a commercially available IWF and MCX server.  By demonstrating this, Valid8 has shown the feasibility of testing IWF calls over ISSI between a Mission Critical system and an LMR P25 system.

The 6th MCX Plugtest event had the goal of “validating the interoperability of a variety of implementations using different scenarios based on 3GPP Mission Critical Services in Release-16". In addition, the event focused on “tests with radio equipment (eNBs, UEs, EPCs) with Unicast and Multicast support but will also allow Over-The-Top (OTT) testing of Mission Critical Servers and Clients, as well as include tests of railways-oriented capabilities.’  

Valid8 has the unique capability of testing P25 ISS/CSSI, MCPTT, MCData, MCVideo, and IWF together in a single solution. The testing technology offers the flexibility of deployment through hardware provided by Valid8 or through a virtual machine (VM) deployment. The solution leverages Valid8’s proven expertise for performance, conformance and load testing in telecommunication.

Learn more about the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the mission-critical Plugtests event at www.etsi.org.  

Learn more about Valid8's MCX Conformance Testing.

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