Throughput-based performance evaluation of 5G-candidate waveforms in high speed scenarios

The radio access technology for railway communications is expected to migrate from GSM for Railways (GSM-R) to a more suitable generation of communication systems for the services offered nowadays, like the fourth generation (4G) or the fifth generation (5G). Recently, considerable attention has been devoted to high-speed trains since this particular environment poses challenging problems in terms of performance simulation and measurement. In order to considerably decrease the cost and complexity of high-speed measurement campaigns, we proposed in the past a technique to induce effects caused by highly-time varying channels on multicarrier signals while conducting measurements at low speeds. This technique has been proved to be accurate for Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals, as well as for the waveforms proposed for 5G systems, such as Filter Bank Multicarrier (FBMC). In this work, we employ the technique to estimate experimentally the throughput of modulation schemes proposed for 5G (Cyclic Prefix Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (CP-OFDM) and FBMC) at high speeds.