The Importance of Conformance Test Systems

Conformance testing is designed to determine if implementation meets the requirements of a standard or specification. There are many types of testing including testing for performance, robustness, behavior, functions and interoperability. Although conformance testing may include some of these kinds of tests, it has one fundamental difference — the requirements or criteria for conformance must be specified in the standard or specification. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), this is usually in a conformance clause or conformance statement, but sometimes some of the criteria can be found in the body of the specification. Some standards have subsequent documentation for the test methodology and assertions to be tested. If the criteria or requirements for conformance are not specified, there can be no conformance testing.

“The general definition for conformance has changed over time and been refined for specific standards. In 1991, ISO/IEC DIS 10641 defined conformance testing as “test to evaluate the adherence or non-adherence of a candidate implementation to a standard.” ISO/IEC TR 13233 defined conformance and conformity as “fulfillment by a product, process or service of all relevant specified conformance requirements.” In recent years, the term conformity has gained international use and has generally replaced the term conformance in ISO documents.”

In 1996 ISO/IEC Guide 2 defined the three major terms used in this field.

• conformity – fulfillment of a product, process or service of specified requirements
• conformity assessment – any activity concerned with determining directly or indirectly that relevant requirements are fulfilled.
• conformity testing – conformity assessment by means of testing. [1]

Conformance testing is often performed by external organizations, which is sometimes the standards body itself, to give greater guarantees of compliance. For the wireless world, this means making sure the network and technology is up to the standards put in place by the 3GPP.

Companies such as Agilent, Spirent, Anritsu, Rohde & Schwarz and more all have developed conformance test systems for this exact need. Products tested in such a manner are then advertised as being certified by that external organization as complying with the standard. Service providers, equipment manufacturers, and equipment suppliers rely on this data to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) through this conformance process. Conformance testing is also often sometimes referred to as protocol testing. These conformance test systems can cover an array of technologies including LTE, W-CDMA, HSPA, HSPA Evolution, GSM, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and more.