UWB / WiMedia / Wireless-USB

UWBTracer™ / UWBTrainer™
Protocol verification for Certified Wireless USB (WUSB) and WiMedia Ultra wideband applications

The UWBTracer/Trainer system is the industry’s most advanced verification tool for radio-based communications using WiMedia™ Alliance’s Ultra Wideband (UWB) common radio platform and Certified Wireless USB protocol. The UWBTracer is a completely non-intrusive analysis system capable of capturing and decoding wireless traffic transmitted on multiple logical channels within a WiMedia network. It faithfully records the exchange between a single host and multiple endpoint devices and displays protocol events using the defacto standard CATC Trace display. The UWBTrainer is a traffic generator that can be used to transmit valid and invalid WiMedia packets. Invaluable in the development of UWB silicon, firmware and software, LeCroy’s integrated analyzer / exerciser system allows design engineers to test functionality, error recovery and compliance for protocols based on WiMedia including Wireless USB and WiNET.
Key Features

    * Integrated Analyzer / Exerciser configuration allows simultaneous transmit and record in a single system
    * Flexible generator API supports sophisticated traffic generation scenarios
    * Designed to help verify interoperability between WiMedia devices
    * Supports the latest WiMedia , Certified Wireless USB and WLP/WiNet Specifications
    * Disk spooling mode provides real-time time display of link and protocol activity
    * RF listening technology is completely non-intrusive within the wireless USB network
    * View protocol information using the CATC Trace™ display
    * Interchangeable RF modules allows swapping radio front-ends to add support for future changes in the RF specifications
    * Isolate specific areas of interest with real time triggering on Beacon frames, WiMedia and encrypted Wireless USB link and transaction events
    * Pre-capture filtering excludes non-essential and redundant packets from the trace to focus the analysis effort
    * Traffic Summaries automatically report error rates and protocol level metrics which are linked to trace level detail
    * Full support for Certified Wireless USB Security including 4-way encryption handshake and USB cable association option
    * Export UWBTracer analyzer recordings to exerciser format to quickly re-create test sequences

The UWBTracer system captures and decodes WiMedia and Certified Wireless USB protocol using the CATC Trace display

Flexible and Extendable Verification Platform

UWBTracer/Trainer is designed to verify functionality and interoperability between WiMedia devices. Small, and portable, this flexible platform offers pluggable modules that allow users to upgrade the system in the field. This enables LeCroy to deliver the industry’s first wireless analyzer that supports interchangeable RF modules from alternate PHY vendors. The ability to purchase additional radio modules allows users to upgrade the analyzer front-end to support future changes in the UWB specifications or to optimize compatibility with their current test environment.

Swappable RF modules allow users to upgrade the analyzer front-end to support future changes in the UWB specification

Exerciser Overview:

The UWBTracer/Trainer is the first fully integrated analyzer - exerciser combination designed for cradle-to-grave verification of WiMedia devices. The exerciser is also based on a plug-in module design that installs in the CATC 5K expandable chassis. The UWBTrainer can operate as a standalone generator; or when configured with the companion UWBTracer analyzer module, can simultaneously record and transmit WiMedia packets. When not using the Generator, the exerciser hardware can serve as 2nd analyzer channel. This dual recording capability is useful for debugging hidden-neighbor and channel switching algorithms.

The exerciser module also allows low-cost field upgrades as next generation RF components become available

The UWBTrainer allows users to transmit custom packets with low-level control of headers, payload, timing and channels. Exerciser test scenarios can be authored using either a text or graphical interface. In both cases, sophisticated, multi-stage traffic generation scripts can be developed using boolean expressions including IF-THEN logical branching and compound WAIT states. This flexible system is capable of monitoring multiple concurrent link states to effectively emulate the most complex device behaviors. A library of predefined test scenarios including source code is provided allowing developers to adapt the suite for their own specific applications.

Market Leadership

Formed out of its acquisition of Computer Access Technology (CATC), LeCroy’s Protocol Solutions Group is uniquely positioned to bring world-class test solutions to the UWB Market. As developers of the first USB and Bluetooth protocol analyzers, LeCroy’s Protocol Solutions Group has the knowledge and expertise to build comprehensive Ultra-wideband test solutions complemented by a fully featured software suite.

Find the Issues Fast

The UWBTracer features LeCroy’s exclusive BusEngine technology which offers real-time triggering to pinpoint specific WiMedia events of interest. This hardware based recording engine is field upgradeable and provides an easy drag-and-drop interface for setting up multilevel triggering. The event triggering can include up to 256 sequential wait states. There’s full support for counters, timers and looping within the trigger logic. Users can also trigger on protocol errors like length mismatch, aborted frames or FCS errors.

Advanced triggering option supports sequential events and timers for identifying CTA fairness issues in Wireless USB protocol

UWBTracer allows on-the-fly filtering to remove repetitive events like bus conditions or non-essential data payloads. UWBTracer also makes it easy to filter in or out traffic transmitted on specific channels or sent from specific device addresses.

Comprehensive search is supported for all WiMedia and wireless USB layers. Additionally, the advanced search capabilities allow users to find specific combinations of protocol events using Boolean search functions. The analyzer system also includes real-time statistics that offer a live display of device traffic, including signal strength (RSSI) and frame occurrences.

Real Time Graphical Views Make Debug More Efficient

The UWBTracer now supports spool-to-disk capture to allow extended recording sessions - for hours or even days. In spooled mode, captured traffic is shown in real-time. The ability to instantly view link status and beacon group occupancy in real-time makes debugging interoperability issues faster and more efficient. State changes can be observed - as they occur - without stopping and restarting the test. Signal strength (RSSI) and Link Quality (LQI) are displayed graphically and error events are also flagged in real-time.

Custom Data Displays for Easier Analysis of Protocol Traffic

The UWBTracer analyzer utilizes the CATC Trace™ display that has become the industry’s de facto standard for wired USB protocol analysis. The UWBTracer software shows packets time-synchronized in separate rows with every field labeled and color-coded. At the WiMedia Layer, it provides a chronological view of frames transmitted by devices. At the Wireless USB transfer layer, the software automatically groups the WiMedia frames that are part of a logical USB transaction and decodes the equivalents for USB Token, Data and Handshake packets.

The UWBTracer includes several graphical displays that show both timing and protocol information synchronized to trace level detail. These graphical views help users improve performance by making it easy to identify marginal timing conditions that may affect throughput.

The Wireless USB Details View provides a graphical view allowing fast measurements between actual packet timing and scheduled transmit windows.

Certified Wireless USB Association & WiMedia Security

The UWBTracer now offers full support for Certified Wireless USB Association Models. This includes the ability to derive the Pair-wise Temporal Keys (PTK) for each session by using the Connection Context to decode the 4-way handshake. This enables UWBTracer to record and trigger on decrypted secured traffic in real-time. Users can manually enter a Connection Context before recording, or, for devices that utilize the Cable Association Model, users can purchase an optional plug-in for capturing the Connection Context using a wired USB tap. In both cases, the UWBTracer system stores the Connection Context for each host-device pair and automatically derives the session key for decrypting secure payloads.

Optional plug-in for capturing Certified Wireless USB cable association

Designed to help explain WiMedia protocol, the tool tips contain extensive information about Wireless USB

Pre-Test System for WiMedia Platform Certification

The UWBTracer/Trainer system now includes UWBSpekChek™ – an automated application that allows vendors to pretest devices for WiMedia certification. UWBSpekchek provides a fully integrated environment that manages the LeCroy analyzer/exerciser hardware, loads the appropriate compliance scripts, captures the exchange, and automatically validates the results. UWBSpekChek walks through each test, directing the user to start and stop the DUTs, after each test, it automatically saves the trace and displays pass / fail results for each test. UWBSpekChek itself is built on LeCroy’s published COM interface which provides a complete framework automating routine testing. The LeCroy exerciser, analyzer and post processing verification scripts provide a model for building complete test applications for WiMedia and Wireless USB.

UWBSpekChek provides automated compliance testing for WiMedia devices

The CATC Trace software also provides continuous compliance checking for each trace by automatically detecting potential violations at all layers of the protocol. The proper formation of each frame is checked for validity and compliance to the specification, including validating FCS and HCS values. The actual USB channel time is compared to the CTA intervals to automate analysis of wireless USB channel efficiency. Verifying USB packets against reported CTA start time helps ensure interoperability between wireless USB devices. For beacon frames, it provides full decoding of Distributed Reservation Protocol (DRP) and verifies that transmission timing adheres to DRP requests.
Comprehensive Solution

Only LeCroy’s Protocol Solutions Group could anticipate and deliver the innovative features needed by early developers in this emerging wireless market. The UWBTracer’s extensible design provides for future upgrades as the needs of early adopters change and this new communication standard matures. Beginning with the initial debug of the MAC-PHY communication path, to eventual interoperability testing between different WiMedia-based RF devices, the UWBTracer/Trainer verification system is designed to reduce time-to-market for Certified WUSB chipsets, devices and software. LeCroy’s leadership in designing innovative and reliable debug tools for the USB market make the UWBTracer the ideal choice both for migrating existing USB devices as well as developing new device categories using the WiMedia wireless interface.