Measurement of 4G LTE Cells with SDR Technology

Abstract

Today, measurements on wireless mobile systems require specific, high-cost instruments. This hinders both its access from academia for education and research, and its widespread use by service providers for optimization of their networks. To address these problems, we present and demonstrate choices for measurement of 4G LTE access networks through open-source Software Defined Radio (SDR) tools. As first contribution, we survey and sort the most relevant measurements present in commercial equipment for measurement of LTE cells. In second place, we survey and compare available SDR libraries for this application, describing their technical details and trade-offs. As third and main contribution, we combine these tools for selected measurements, demonstrating its application in field measurement cases. The applications of our work go from teaching, research and development, to health monitoring of in-service networks.