Measurement Comparison of RF Receivers in UMTS 1900MHz

Abstract

In every day engineering practice, drive test systems are used to verify coverage, estimate quality of service and optimize RF network. To accomplish these tasks, drive tests need to be conducted in a systematic and cost efficient way. There are several commercial UMTS drive test systems and they can be classified as high dynamic range, multiband, and phone-based measurement tools. The data obtained from the measurement tools are then analyzed using statistical methods and inference. This thesis presents a detailed and comparative study of some of the physical layer measurements in UMTS 1900MHz frequency band. The collected measurements are compared against three major criteria: coverage analysis, pilot quality comparison, and active set agreement. The objective of this study is to establish a level of difference between actual measurement values obtained using different measurement tools. In practical applications, these differences need to be considered and extend their validity to a set of more general cases and applications.