dc.description.abstract | During the past two decades, the mobile communications technology has experienced an unprecedented development, from 2G, 3G to 4G LTE. Various international telecommunications organizations, such as the European Global Certification Forum (GCF). the North American PCS Type Certification Review Board (PTCRB), and the China Quality Inspection Alliance, and China Testing Center (CTA), have published many different mobile communications certification standards. The purpose is to ensure that those certified terminal devices entering the market, will not cause radio frequency interference and to assure stability, legality and inter-operability of these products. In order to keep up with the rapid technological development, the requisite certification item has grown from 5,000 items for 2G to 10,000 for 4G LTE. This results in ever increasing costs and lead time for testing.
Company Q in this study is a designer/producer for mobile communications chip-set, which is the heart of all mobile devices. Thus, before handing over a new product to customers who produce mobile devices, Company Q has to perform more and more testing, and the lead time required increases exponentially. For all communications device producers, “time to market” is one of the most important factors to compete. As a result, the ever increasing test set becomes a critical bottleneck for Company Q.
When confront increasingly short product life cycles. Global mobile communications device manufacturers are all depending on the is one of the key indicators of survival.
This study aims at proposing a viable solution to the problem, by planning for an automatic testing system. First, it looks into the international certification standards, the current status of Company Q’s laboratory and professional engineering human resources, and analyzing the problems faced with mobile device producers. Next, it conducted a system integration exercise, and designed an automatic certification mechanism to link up the testing equipment, so that efficiency can be markedly improved. The proposed solution effectively improved the time and human resources required for testing. A feasibility study shows that the solution is viable. The proposal will potentially realize several benefits, including enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced operating costs of the laboratory, reduced the chipset outsourcing testing cost, and shortened certification schedule by 7 to 15 days. These will result in the ability for Company Q a shorter time to market, and increased competitiveness.
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