LTE-A Virtual Drive Testing for Vehicular Environments

In this paper, a Virtual Drive Testing (VDT) methodology for a MIMO LTE Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) urban scenario is proposed and compared with actual road drive tests. We have developed a unique and generic radio performance analysis process based on 3D ray traced channel models, theoretic or measured antenna patterns, RF channel emulation and hardware-in-the-loop radio measurements. A 3D ray-tracing channel model is used to predict the spatial and temporal multipath ray components of the radio propagation channel between an LTE BS and the vehicle. Measured LTE vehicular antenna patterns were then applied using a spatial and polarimetric convolution process. The resulting channels were streamed into a Keysight PropSim F8 channel emulator, which was programmed to communicate with the multi-channel LTE BSs emulator and a Samsung S5 mobile client performing a handover procedure. The VDT emulation method proposed in this paper is shown to be reliable and repeatable and the accuracy of the emulated throughput agreed well with real measurements for MIMO operation.