5G Over-the-Air Conformance Testing

Base station conformance testing Over-the-air has recently been adopted in 5G3GPP standardization. For an integrated Active antenna system, base band algorithms, radio and antenna parts are integrated into one enclosure, without access to physical antenna ports. Therefore the entire system needs to be tested Over-the-air. This approach comes with a set of challenges and changes in the requirements definitions compared to traditional conducted testing of a single transceiver branch. Relevant Over-the-air conformance parameters for Active antenna systems are discussed here as well as challenges, possibilities and agreed solutions of the corresponding measurements. Specifically, sparse sampling and near field measurements as well as Reverberation chambers are discussed. Moreover, the role of Measurement uncertainty in the standards is described.