Challenges and Endeavors of Radiated Radio Frequency Tests for 5G Radios

Submission Deadline: 31 January 2021

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Challenges and Endeavors of Radiated Radio Frequency Tests for 5G Radios.

By now, we have entered the fifth generation (5G) era with intensive research and development (R&D) of various 5G applications from both industry and academia. The 5G systems promise higher spectral efficiency/energy efficiency, lower latency, and more reliable communications. These advantages are supported by millimeter wave (mmWave) and/or massive multiple-input multiple-output (M-MIMO) techniques.

Cable conducted testing has been the dominant testing method for sub-6 GHz conventional communication systems, where antenna ports are mostly accessible for conducted testing. In the conducted testing, antenna characteristics are omitted completely by testing from antenna ports.  However, for M-MIMO antenna systems with hundreds of antenna elements, conducted testing obviously becomes infeasible. Moreover, it is likely that mmWave systems will not have standard antenna ports, rendering over-the-air (OTA) the only testing solution. However, many challenges for OTA testing of 5G devices arise, e.g., the lack of antenna connectors especially at frequency region (FR) 2, the high number of antenna connectors at RF1 for base stations; the complicated and expensive system resource requirement for testing electrically large 5G devices; the time-consuming array diagnosis and calibration for M-MIMO and millimeter-wave systems; the large measurement range requirement in the test system to meet the far field assumption; the link budget issue at FR2, etc. Besides conventional antenna and radio frequency (RF) testing, it is necessary as well to test both mmWave and M-MIMO systems with appropriate channel models due to the fact that the use of beamforming and spatial filtering is sensitive to time-variant radio channel conditions.

In addition, the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) problems of 5G systems become very serious due to the existence of complicated circuits and numerous wireless components. In practice, the EMC test needs to not only evaluate the radiated/conducted emission/susceptibility, but also identify the key sources of EMC failures. Due to the complexity of 5G systems, the identification of EMC failure source is especially challenging. Therefore, new testing solutions and post-processing techniques are needed to address the challenges of 5G EMC tests, also accounting for coexistence with existing fixed and mobile installations.

The objective of this Special Section is to address the challenges in OTA/EMC tests for 5G Technologies. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Anechoic chamber based testing methods for 5G applications
  • Reverberation chambers based testing methods for 5G applications
  • M-MIMO antenna array diagnosis and calibration
  • Millimeter-wave antenna array diagnosis and calibration
  • Numerical modeling and simulation methods for M-MIMO systems and 5G applications
  • OTA testing of 5G base stations and terminals
  • EMC tests of 5G devices and coexisting issues
  • Virtual drive testing
  • Performance evaluation of communication systems in critical propagation scenarios
  • Progress in standardization of 5G metrology
  • Developments 5G channel model, radio channel emulator, and other testbeds for performance testing
  • OTA methods of fading emulation for demodulation and radio resource management (RRM) testing
  • OTA methods for RF performance testing
  • Uncertainty analyses for OTA/EMC tests

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Associate Editor:   Wei Fan, Aalborg University, Denmark
Huapeng Zhao, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China

 

Guest Editors:

    1. Xiaoming Chen, Xi’an Jiao tong University, China
    2. Su Yan, Howard University, USA
    3. Pekka Kyösti, Keysight technologies and Oulu University, Finland
    4. Jukka-Pekka Nuutinen, Spirent Technologies, USA
    5. Valter Mariani Primiani, Università Politecnica delle Marche – Ancona, Italy

 

Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:

  1. Antenna and Propagation for 5G and Beyond
  2. 5G and Beyond Mobile Wireless Communications Enabling Intelligent Mobility
  3. Millimeter-wave and Terahertz Propagation, Channel Modeling and Applications


IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief:
  Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide

Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: wfa@es.aau.dk.