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.