4 Overview

36.523-13GPPEvolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) and Evolved Packet Core (EPC)Part 1: Protocol conformance specificationRelease 17TSUser Equipment (UE) conformance specification

4.1 Test methodology

4.1.1 Testing of optional functions and procedures

Any function or procedure which is optional, as indicated in the present document, may be subject to a conformance test if it is implemented in the UE.

A declaration by the apparatus supplier (ICS) is used to determine whether an optional function/procedure has been implemented.

4.1.2 Test interfaces and facilities

Detailed descriptions of the UE test interfaces and special facilities for testing are provided in 3GPP TS 36.509 [25].

4.2 Implicit testing

For some 3GPP signalling and protocol features conformance is not verified explicitly in the present document. This does not imply that correct functioning of these features is not essential, but that these are implicitly tested to a sufficient degree in other tests.

4.3 Repetition of tests

As a general rule, the test cases specified in the present document are highly reproducible and don’t need to be repeated unless otherwise stated. However, the rate of correct UE behaviour such as cell re-selection, measurement and handover is specified statistically, e.g. "at least 90%" [34]. Additionally, in some of the test cases , presented in TS 36.523-3 clause 7.3.2, HARQ retransmissions are not tolerated, because of characteristics of the test case [20]. It is the case that for those tests expecting such UE behaviour (stated above) are not 100% reproducible, therefore if a UE does not pass the test after its first trial and the tester suspects the reason is due to the statistical nature of the test, then the UE should be re-tested one or more times. For non-HARQ retransmission tolerant test cases re-testing applies, when test case does not pass, which is caused by unspecified HARQ retransmission.

4.4 Handling of differences between conformance requirements in different releases of cores specifications

The conformance requirements which determine the scope of each test case are explicitly copy-pasted from relevant core specifications in the especially dedicated for this section of each test with the title ‘Conformance requirements’.

When differences between conformance requirements in different releases of the cores specifications have impact on the Pre-test conditions, Test procedure sequence or/and the Specific message contents, the Conformance requirements related to different releases are specified separately with clear indication of the Release of the spec from which they were copied.

When there is no Release indicated for a conformance requirement text, this should be understood either as the Conformance requirements in the latest version of the spec with release = the TC Applicability release (which can be found in TS 36.523-2, Table 4-1: Applicability of tests and additional information for testing, column ‘Release’), or, as the Conformance requirements in the latest version of the spec of the release when the feature was introduced to the core specs.