Rolland Zhang Business Development Engineer 21 August, 2001

CDMA Base Station Measurements

Module Objectives
At the end of this module you will be able to: Understand why maintenance testing is important Be familiar with key CDMA transmitter measurements Be able to relate the measurements to solving network problems Be familiar with Agilent Technologies CDMA Base Station Test Solution Understand the differences in IS-95 and IS-2000 Base Station measurements

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Why Do Maintenance Test?

System performance is a big competitive issue Periodic maintenance helps prevent shutdown Equipment problems may only show up as reduced capacity Monitoring for interference finds problems unrelated to network equipment Systems will be stressed as loading increases Defective components may be hidden by CDMAs soft handoff, power control, and error correction

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Base Station Parametric Measurements

Total Power (Average Power & Channel Power) Waveform Quality (Rho) Carrier Feedthrough Frequency Tolerance (Frequency Error) Pilot Time Tolerance (Time Offset) Code Domain Power Power and Noise Complex Power Fast Power Code Domain Fast Power

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Transmitter Test Setup

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Why is Forward Link Power Management Important?

Power management is critical to maximizing the systems capacity Network operators sometimes attempt to set power higher to extend coverage to reduce infrastructure cost; result can be pilot pollution problems Initial settings for the sites must be accurate to match settings specified by the RF engineering department More power is not necessarily better but can lead to interference and dropped calls Too little power for the site may result in dead spots between sites.

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Why is Accurate TX Power Measurements Important?

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Other Factors in Power Management

Cable losses Antenna gain Antenna downtilt Environmental effects

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Making Power Measurements

Calibration Average power measurement using the Agilent Technologies E6380A versus a conventional power meter

What the Average Power measures

Active cell site versus configured cell site Specifications

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Non-Linearity in the Frequency Domain

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What is Rho?

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Why is Rho Important?

Key measure of modulation quality Analogous to FM accuracy/distortion (AMPS) and EVM (TDMA systems) Rho performance affects site/sector coverage area and capacity in the site/sector

Rho failures can indicate problems in:

Compression in linear amplifiers Magnitude and phase errors in the IQ modulator Phase non-linearity (group delay)Spurious signals in the transmission path Carrier feedthrough

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What is a Pilot?

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Time Offset
Measure of Short Code sequence timing versus System Time

Checks the start of PN offset as compared to the even second clock signal

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What is Pilot Time Tolerance?

Time offsets outside of specifications can affect handoffs between cells - the island effect Time offset is one of the parameters that will lead to errors in position location with the introduction of E911 and network operator services

Potential causes for failures of pilot time tolerance:

GPS receiver and timing distribution failures Cells with a propagation delay greater than the PN Offset time period The timing delay adjustment (used to compensate for time delays through the sites cabling) may be off

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Frequency Tolerance
This measurement cannot be made with any frequency counter

Frequency tolerance (Frequency Error) specifications: 0.05 ppm PCS (99 Hz @ 1980 MHz)
0.05 ppm Cellular (40 Hz @ 850 MHz)

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Why is Frequency Error Important?

GPS drift or out-of-lock condition can create the island cell effect Frequency drift can lead to site timing errors which will lead to errors in position location with the introduction of E911 and network operator services Failures point to problems in GPS receiver and timing distribution (to perform this test requires

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Code Domain Power

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Code Domain Power

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Non-Linearity in Walsh Code Channels

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Code Domain Power and Noise

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Code Domain Measurement Results

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Carrier Feedthrough
Carrier feedthrough (origin offset) Should be < -25 dBc Carrier feedthrough in I/Q Domain and Frequency Domain

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CW Interference in the Code Domain

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Noise in the Code Domain

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AWGN in the Code Domain

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Code Domain Timing and Phase

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Error Vector Magnitude

EVM = RMS magnitude value of the error vector (in percentage)

Magnitude Error Phase Error

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IQ Plots

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Return Loss Test

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Summary
Why we test Why Power is a Critical Base Station Parameter What Tests are Performed on a Base Station What the Test Results mean

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Format Charts Quickly and Consistently by Setting User-defined Preferences for Each Chart Type. are application specific and will always be These preferences
available once you set the preferences on your computer.
Double click on a formatted chart (samples on next two pages). The Chart Menu Bar will become active. From the menu bar, select Chart >Chart Type (Alt+C+T) to open the dialog box shown.
1. Select the Custom Types tab. 2. Choose User-defined. 3. Click Add. Another window opens with fields to enter a name and description. 4. Click Set as default chart. (Repeat steps 1-4 for each chart.)
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