Radio Channel Emulation for LTE User Equipment Testing

In any real-life mobile communications network there will be considerable degradation of the signal transmitted between the base station and the handset or other user equipment (UE). This is because there are an infinite number of paths that the signal can take, each with different values of attenuation and phase difference, and the received signal is the sum of all these multi-path signals. The varying, constructive and destructive combination of these multiple signals results in an effect known as fading, and the degradation in the signal path is characterized by the Rayleigh coefficient. This White Paper begins by explaining how fading occurs and describing traditional methods of radio channel emulation. It continues to describe the innovative, all-digital, approach used in the Aeroflex 7100 Series Radio Test Platform. It will be demonstrated that the Aeroflex platform allows realistic testing of LTE user equipment to be performed in a way that is impr&