Simulation, Test and Reference Environment for Mobile Operations (“SumO”)

As part of the SumO project, Fraunhofer IIS together with the Bundeswehr Technical Center for Information Technology and Electronics (WTD 81) creates the design concept and develops specific test and measurement equipment as well as an automated sequence control system for a simulation, test, and reference environment for mobile operations. Fraunhofer IIS is contributing its expertise and project experience acquired in the field of radio channel modeling and emulation.

The aim is to set up a permanent, flexible test infrastructure to be used for various validation and verification tests. SumO – the simulation, test, and reference environment for mobile operations – operates across different laboratories and locations and can integrate existing test and analysis facilities.

Current information and communications networks are built on IP-based communication. In this regard, it is important that these networks provide the applications with a sufficient connection quality, in other words, that they transmit speech with sufficient intelligibility and without any disruptive delays, for example. This is challenging, particularly for heterogeneous networks with mobile data transmission, as often only low transmission rates with sometimes high latency are available.

When setting up complex wireless networks, all components must therefore be carefully selected and coordinated with one another. During operation, it must be ensured that all applications can be used with the required quality at all times. This is a complex task that, depending on the information exchange requirements and the technical boundary conditions, demands difficult network balancing, configuration, parametrization, and adaptation. This calls for an appropriate test environment that brings a wide variety of component, connection, and system tests together in an overall architecture. It must also enable ongoing testing of an integrated network’s performance, examination of its behavior, and discovery of an optimum configuration and parametrization.

All in all, SumO is a complex test system that has a wide range of functions and is easy to use. Users are given access to standardized test procedures and result logs. The test system also offers a high degree of transparency with regard to the results, since log files that log the results at definable measurement and test points in the setup can be accessed. Black-, gray-, and white-box tests can therefore also be combined in a highly heterogeneous integrated network. At the same time, the uniform, documented test procedures foster acceptance of the test results among users and component manufacturers.