NTS Wireless Performance

The NTS Performance Wireless Certification allows companies developing wireless solutions to test their products against various competitive products in standard test environments to measure throughput vs. distance for their products. Each test environment is selected to measure particular commonly encountered wireless situations. In order to measure performance, NTS has developed three (3) typical "real-world" test environments in which we measure performance:

• Commercial Business environment, line of sight
• Indoor Office environment, non-line of sight, and
• Open Field environment, line of sight testing.

The Commercial Business environment configuration uses a line of sight connection between the wireless device and the wireless access point. Although this is an optimal internal environment (due to the lack of obstructions like walls, desks, doors, floors, etc. and lack of outdoor environment influences, such as temperature, humidity, etc.), performance issues still may be encountered due to wireless leakage (e.g., from microwave ovens, other wireless products like cellular phones, poorly shielded computers, etc.). Testing in this environment allows NTS to measure the effect of these data-points on the wireless product-under-test.

The Indoor Office environment configuration provides more of a typical "real-world" measure of product performance as used in the corporate world. Testing is performed using a non-line-of-sight environment which negatively effects the performance between a wireless device and a wireless access point. Testing is performed in non-optimal conditions to evaluate the product performance when it encounters reflections, cancellations, and other distortions in the wireless signal.

The Open Field environment uses a line of sight configuration which is an almost ideal performance throughput testing environment. The purpose of conducting this testing is to determine the effect on performance with various outdoor environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, humidity, altitude, wind, etc.).

Testing is typically performed using tools such as IxChariot, an industry-standard tool used for emulating real-world performance scenarios for performance measurements. Measurements are typically performed using a long file send/receive which allows time for a "ramp" at the beginning of the connection and ultimately steady-state performance. These measurements are repeated at regular intervals (e.g., every 10 meters from the wireless access point) until the signal drops off completely.

Let NTS evaluate your wireless product in our independent testing facilities to provide you with true and accurate results on how your wireless products perform.

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