4G/LTE - BL/CE

 

 

 

 

Testing

 

As of now (Sep 2016), 3GPP Conformance Test Case (36.521-1,36.521-3,36.523) for LTE-M1 has not been defined yet. Even thought several chipset makers has announced/claimed that their product has been supporting LTE-M1 for almost over an year, I have been seeing real/practical verification activity only recently. So I guess (I think), most of the chipset maker/product is at some point of protocol stack integration. So I decided to write down some general approach to early integration test. This is just beginning.. and I will keep updating this.

 

 

Downlink Physical Channel/Scheduling Test

 

 

< PBCH Decoding >

 

Basically this is to test MIB decoding capability. Since almost all of the parameters to implementing PBCH is predefined by 3GPP standard, there is almost nothing to be configured in eNB simulator and UE modem. But to verify if UE properly decode PBCH is important because LTE-M1 MIB is transmitted in different subframe from legacy LTE and Resource Element Mapping is pretty much different from legacy LTE due to repetitive transmission of PBCH in LTE M1.

 

 

< BCH-DL SCH : PDSCH >

 

In this channel, you need to verify on two different cases. One is the case of SIB1-NB and the other case is for other SIBs (non SIB1). In terms of Baseband I/Q generation and Resource Element mapping, there is no fundamental difference between these two case, but there are some differences in terms of scheduling and resource allocation. So, if you want to do test on this channel purely on physical layer perspective, you may test this as a single category, but if you want to test including MAC scheduling aspect as well, I would divide this into two categories.

 

Case 1 : PDSCH for SIB1-NB

Test Parameter

Description

Value

Number of PDSCH Repetitions

See MIB : schedulingInfoSIB1-BR-r13

 

 

 

Case 2 : PDSCH for non-SIB1-NB

Test Parameter

Description

Value

startSymbolBR

See SIB1 : startSymbolBR

 

si-RepetitionPattern

See SIB1 : si-RepetitionPattern

 

fdd-DownlinkOrTddSubframeBitmapBR

See SIB1 : fdd-DownlinkOrTddSubframeBitmapBR

 

si-Narrowband

See SIB1 : si-Narrowband

 

si-TBS

See SIB1 : si-TBS

 

 

 

< CCCH/DCCH/DTCH : PDSCH >

 

The parameter setting for PDSCH for User Data is relatively straightforward (Physical Layer's point of view, most of C plane data(e.g, CCCH/DCCH) can be regarded as user data)

Test Parameter

Description

Value

pdsch-Start

The first OFDM Symbol from which the PDSCH is assigned

: {1, 2, 3, 4}

 
Number of RB    
Narrowband Index Narrowband Index at which the PDSCH is transmitted  

PDSCH repetition levels

See PDSCH Subframe Assignment  
MCS

See MCS/TBS Determination

 

p_a

See 36.331  

dmrs-ConfigPDSCH

See 36.331  

tbsIndexAlt-r12

See 36.331  

 

 

< MPDCCH >

 

In most test equipment (especially protocol test equipment), MPDCCH related parameters are not directly configured by user. They are automatically calculated/configured by other parameter (mostly by PDSCH scheduling parameter). But if your DUT's blind decoding algorithm is not complete and you want to set any specific set of parameters, you would need to specify following tables and configure PDSCH scheduling parameters so that the test equipment would generate the specific MPDCCH parameters as you want.

 

Test Parameter

Description

Value

Duplex Type

FDD or TDD (This influence No of EREGs for ECCE )

 

CE Mode

CE Mode A or B (This influence No of EREGs for ECCE )

 

MPDCCH Format

See MPDCCH Format

 

DCI Format and the field values

Construct Parameter table for each DCI Type

:6-0A,6-0B,6-1A,6-1B,6-2

 

mpdcch-NumRepetition-r13

{r1, r2, r4, r8, r16, r32, r64, r128, r256}

 

mpdcch-Narrowband-r13

Narrowband Index at which the PDCCH is transmitted