Toggle Menu
White Papers
Legacy 3GPP Radio Access Technologies (RAT) such as WCDMA and LTE operate in the sub-6 GHz band, and network emulator platforms designed to support functional testing of these RATs primarily focus on conducted setups. Newer standards such as the Verizon 5G Technology Forum (5G TF) and 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR), however, are designed to operate in higher millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency, such as 28 GHz, and incorporate beamforming as an enabling technology. This paper proposes a new approach to perform over-the-air (OTA) test of beamforming with multiple angles of arrivals (AoA) from multiple simultaneous downlink beams. This new approach combines sub-6 GHz network emulators with mmWave RF heads and dual-polarized horns to address the challenges of testing beamforming OTA.
Wireless communications systems with mmWave radio technology such those specified by 5G TF and 3GPP 5G NR are promising candidates for next generation wireless communications since they can address the challenge of bandwidth shortage that’s needed for increased network capacity. Signals transmitted at high frequency electromagnetic waves, however, experience significantly higher propagation loss, higher diffraction, as well as foliage and structure penetration losses. To overcome this high path loss and provide sufficient bandwidth to cell edge users, beamformed signal transmissions with high directivity in the desired direction can be deployed.
Conceptually, beamforming is implemented by applying phase and gain adjustments on waveform(s) transmitted by an array of antenna elements, thereby providing high gain in specific spatial directions. Implementation methods of digital, analog or hybrid beamforming offer different degrees of freedom in terms of controlling the beam shape and directivity, number of beams, cost/complexity, and achievable MIMO configurations.
×
Please have a salesperson contact me.
*Indicates required field
Thank you.
A sales representative will contact you soon.
