Cost effective software defined radio approach to cross-platform LTE vector signal analysis

To measure and verify various LTE UE and eNodeB chips and modules, the LTE vector signal analyzer (VSA) is often needed to measure the physical layer for both the FDD and TDD modes. Without using those costly off-the-shelf VSAs, this paper presents a software-defined radio (SDR) approach to develop cross-platform LTE VSA. The VSA SDR platform is clearly divided into the signal acquisition (SA) hardware and the PC-based core software (CS). The CS embodies functions for SA control and LTE receiver signal processing. Hence, this SA-CS SDR approach has the merit of flexible operation using different SA hardware. Real-world experiments showed that the proposed VSA can achieve an EVM result comparable to that obtained by costly commercial LTE VSA.