Keysight Technologies TD-LTE Base Station Performance Test Solution

LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology is the main direction of the evolution of the third generation of mobile communications. As an advanced technology, the LTE system has great advantages in improving peak data rate, cell edge rate, spectrum utilization, control plane and user plane delay, and reducing operation and network construction costs. At the same time, the LTE system can coexist with the existing system (2G/2.5G/3G) and achieve smooth evolution.

LTE systems are divided into two types according to the duplex mode: frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD). Compared with the FDD system, the LTE-TDD system has many advantages such as flexible spectrum utilization and support for asymmetric services. It is an international standard promoted by the Chinese communications industry.

System throughput is an important indicator for measuring the comprehensive performance of TD-LTE base stations. The throughput test requires real-time feedback and dynamic adjustment between the base station (eNB) and the test instrument (simulated UE). The test instrument not only needs to be able to generate TD-LTE uplink signals that comply with the 3GPP standard, but also needs to simulate the corresponding channel fading model and adjust the coding redundancy factor of the transmitted signal in real time according to the ACK/NACK instructions issued by the base station to simulate the real communication environment. This solution uses Keysight's baseband signal generator and channel emulator N5106A PXB or Keysight's latest signal generator N5182B/N5172B as the test platform, and generates TD-LTE test signals through the Real-time version of Signal Studio N7625 for LTE TDD and sends them to the base station for decoding after channel fading, so that the base station throughput can be counted.

1 HARQ Test Principle

1.1 Uplink HARQ method

The LTE system will use synchronous non-adaptive HARQ technology in the uplink. Although asynchronous adaptive HARQ technology has higher scheduling flexibility than synchronous non-adaptive technology, the latter requires less signaling overhead. Due to the complexity of the uplink, the interference from users in other cells is uncertain, so the base station cannot accurately estimate the actual signal-to-interference ratio (SINR) value of each user. Due to the inaccuracy of the SINR value, the selection of the modulation and coding mode (MCS) in the uplink is not accurate enough, so more reliance is placed on HARQ technology to ensure system performance. Therefore, the average number of transmissions in the uplink will be higher than that in the downlink. Therefore, considering the overhead of control signaling, synchronous non-adaptive HARQ technology is used in the uplink.

1.2 Uplink HARQ Timing

The uplink and downlink signals of the LTE TDD standard are staggered in the time domain, so its HARQ timing mapping relationship is more complicated than that of FDD. According to 3GPP TS 36.213, under different UL/DL Configurations of the TDD standard, the downlink subframe only sends ACK/NACK instructions at the specified position, and the ACK/NACK instructions sent at each position correspond to a specific uplink subframe signal, as shown in Table 1.

3GPP TS 36.141 stipulates that performance testing only needs to be performed under configuration 1, so the timing diagram for configuration 1 can be obtained according to the description in Table 1:

In configuration 1, the uplink signal is only sent in subframes 2, 3, 7 and 8. The base station sends ACK/NACK instructions in subframes 1, 4, 6 and 9 for the downlink. The relationship between the instruction object and the retransmission position is shown in Figure 1.

2 Test Platform

2.1 Hardware Platform

The purpose of performance testing is to simulate the system throughput in the actual environment, so the base station and the test instrument need to be jointly debugged. The hardware test platform includes: TD-LTE eNB base station supporting 2-antenna reception, Keysight baseband signal generator and channel simulator PXB, Keysight vector signal generator MXG (mainly used for up-conversion) and a four-channel oscilloscope (for system debugging). The test system structure is as follows:

Figure 2 N5106 PXB test system

PXB generates TD-LTE uplink signals in real time and after fading under a specific channel model, the output baseband I/Q signals are up-converted by MXG and sent to the two receiving antennas of the base station. The base station demodulates and decodes the received RF signals and transmits the feedback results (ACK/NACK instructions) back to PXB via RS232C serial communication. PXB adjusts the RV factor in real time according to the ACK/NACK instructions to resend the data packet or choose to abandon the current data packet (when the eNB sends an ACK signal or the maximum number of retransmissions has been reached). Finally, the base station obtains the system throughput through statistics. [page]

If the test environment does want to use an external channel emulator, the above system test can be completed using only the Keysight N5182B/N5172B RF signal generator. The typical measurement system is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 N5182B/72B MXG-B test system 2.2 Software platform

The PXB or N5182B/72B generates specific reference test signals through the Signal Studio N7625B-WFP for LTE TDD software and adjusts the coding redundancy factor in real time.

Figure 4 Uplink signal configuration

Figure 5 HARQ setting 2.3 Feedback signal format

The ACK/NACK signal sent by the base station to PXB or N5182B/72B is encoded in the data format of RS232C serial communication, and PXB or N5182B/72B decodes it according to the same coding rate and format to obtain the ACK/NACK value. The feedback signal consists of 8 bits, 1 start bit, 1 stop bit, and no parity bit. The specific data format is shown in Table 2.

3 Test Results

Build the test system and configure the software platform according to the test structure diagram, start the base station and PXB or N5182B/72B, and observe the test results on the oscilloscope and base station control terminal.

Figure 6 PXB or N5182B/72B real-time response diagram

Figure 6 shows the real-time response of PXB or N5182B/72B observed on the oscilloscope. Channels 1, 2, 3, and 4 are respectively the uplink signal frame header, ACK/NACK instruction sequence, uplink signal I/Q data, and the ACK/NACK response of PXB or N5182B/72B (high level is ACK, low level is NACK). As shown in the figure, the HARQ timing response is completely consistent with the standard protocol.

The base station performs diversity reception and demodulation on the uplink RF signal, then makes a judgment on the reception result through CRC check, and finally obtains the system throughput under a specific fading model.

According to 3GPP TS 36.141, PUSCH, 20MHz bandwidth signal is selected as the test case. Under 2 receiving antennas and Normal CP, the first 10 cases listed are tested in turn. The results are as follows:

4 Conclusion

The results show that the system fully meets the standard test requirements. The test process is transparent and visible, and the results are intuitive and reliable. At the same time, the test system can achieve 1×2, 2×2, 2×4 and 4×2 MIMO configurations through software configuration without adding any hardware configuration, thereby realizing base station HARQ, Timing Adjustment and PUCCH performance testing, which is an ideal platform for TD-LTE base station performance testing.

Recommended solution: Keysight Technologies baseband signal generator and channel emulator N5106A PXB with signal generator MXG and signal studio N7625B can provide a one-stop overall solution; if the test system already has a dedicated channel emulator, Keysight Technologies signal generator N5182B/72B and signal studio N7625B can be used to complete the final test