Field Measurement for Antenna Configuration Comparison in Challenging NLOS Locations

This paper has two main objectives. First, it describes the practical challenges of field trials and proposes a developed test method. Second, the test method is used to compare the uplink (UL) performance with different antenna technologies when user equipment (UE) does not have a line of sight (LOS) to the evolved node B. Both passive and active antenna configurations were used in the performance evaluation. Modern cellular networks have high demands for capacity, reliability, and availability. The verification of a network's configuration and technological features is essential to guarantee network performance, and the performance of a network must be verified by the laboratory testing or field trials; such trials produce the experimental knowledge of technology features and configurations. Technological and environmental factors must also be considered before performing mobile network field testing. This paper showed that moving UE produces more reliable and repeatable results than measurements with stationary UE. Our antenna configuration comparison study revealed that in the UL direction, active antenna system beam control could significantly increase the UL capacity in non-LOS conditions.