5G UE Conformance Testing | 5G Mobile OTA Testing, Equipments

This page covers 5G UE Conformance Testing. It describes various 5G UE OTA (Over The Air) test cases performed by 5G UE conformance test equipments.

Introduction:
There are two main parts of 5G network viz. UE and BTS (i.e. gNB or Base Station). During the development life cycle of the 5G UE various tests are performed in order to ensure that 5G UE meets the 3GPP specifications.

5G mobile is referred as UE (User Equipment). The specifications are published and maintained by 3GPP. 3GPP conformance tests are categorized into RF, RRM (Radio Resource Management), demodulation and signaling. It is specified in 3GPP TS 38.101 Part-1 (Range 1 Standalone), Part-2 (Range 2 Standalone) and Part-3 (Range 1 and Range 2 Interworking operation with other radios). The specifications cover both the transmission and reception.

5G UE Conformance Testing

The table-1 mentions brief of 5G UE conformance tests. 5G UE Conformance testing covers all the layers of the 5G protocol stack which include PHY, MAC, RLC, PDCP and RRC. GCF and PTCRB are global device certification groups provide framework for 5G device certification testing.

The 5G UE operates in different mode variants viz. SC (Single Carrier), CA (Carrier Aggregation), DC (Dual connectivity), SUL (Supplement Uplink) and UL MIMO. As a result, it is tested under various frequency bands, channel bandwidths (5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz, 20MHz, 25MHz, 30MHz, 40MHz, 50MHz, 60MHz, 80MHz, 100MHz) and subcarrier spacing (15KHz, 30KHz, 60KHz) in these modes as per 3GPP document.

The other OTA measurements performed during R&D stage include 2D/3D beam patten measurements, cross polar isolation measurements, beamstreering or null steering performance.

Following are the 5G UE transmitter test cases defined in 3GPP TS 38.101 document.
➤UE maximum output power
➤UE maximum output power reduction (MPR)
➤UE additional maximum output power reduction
➤Configured transmitted power
➤Transmitter power for CA/DC/SUL
➤Output power dynamics (Minimum output power, Transmit OFF power etc.)
➤Transmit ON/OFF time mask (for general slot, mini-slot, PRACH, PUCCH, SRS, PUSCH etc.)
➤Power Control (absolute power tolerance, relative power tolerance, Aggregate power tolerance)
➤Transmit Signal Quality (Frequency Error, modulation quality, EVM (Error Vector Magnitude), carrier leakage, In band emissions, etc.)
➤Output RF spectrum emissions (Occupied bandwidth, Out of band emission, Spectrum emission mask, Adjacent channel leakage ratio etc.)
➤Spurious emissions (General, UE co-existence, Transmit intermodulation etc. )

Following are the 5G UE receiver test cases defined in 3GPP TS 38.101 document.
➤Diversity tests
➤Reference sensitivity power level (CA, DC, SUL modes)
➤Maximum input level
➤ACS (Adjacent channel selectivity)
➤Blocking tests (In-band blocking, Out-of-band blocking, Narrow band blocking)
➤Spurious emission tests
➤Intermodulation tests

5G UE OTA Test Equipments

Following companies are developing 5G OTA (Over-The-Air) test solutions and conformance test equipments.
• EMITE spain provides 5G OTA test solutions along with Reverberation Chambers, Anechoic Chambers and CATR Chambers.
• Anritsu is developing test solution for 5G mobile products.
• Keysight
• ETS Lindgren
• Rohde & Schwarz

References:
• TS 38.101 5G UE radio transmission and reception

Other wireless conformance testing

GSM conformance testing
WLAN device conformance testing
VSAT Testing
IoT Testing
5G BTS conformance testing