LTE and DVB-T2 networks in the first digital dividend band in Europe: A coexistence study

Study of possible coexistence scenarios between the Long Term Evolution (LTE) and the first/second generation digital video broadcasting terrestrial (DVB-T/T2) networks is still receiving a lot of attention. This is mainly caused by the first and second digital dividend bands (700 MHz and 800 MHz) in which a dominant part of UHF spectrum has been released for LTE mobile broadband communication. Studies in this field dominantly focus on the evaluation of the DVB-T2 system performance affected by LTE with different channel bandwidths. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to explore robustness of the LTE-Downlink (LTE-DL) system influenced by DVB-T2 system designed for fixed TV reception. In particular, different traffic loads, signal bandwidths, M-QAM modulations and possible in-phase/quadrature (IQ) errors are considered which have a direct impact on the robustness of the LTE-DL system. The results from laboratory measurements are evaluated by the error vector magnitude (EVM) and carrier-to-interference ratio (C/I) objective parameters. The main outputs of this research article enable to reveal performance of different LTE-DL system configurations in the 800 MHz band. Moreover, these outputs are exploitable for providers of mobile services to optimize network configurations in the future.