Mobile network testing blog

Stories & insights

Mobile network testing

Author: Corbett Rowell

Stories by Corbett Rowell

Prof. Dr. Corbett Rowell holds a bachelor’s degree in physics (honors) from the University of California, a master’s degree in EEE from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a Ph.D. degree in EEE from Hong Kong University.

From 1996 to 2005, he worked extensively in the mobile antenna design industry, developing some of the first internal antennas for mobile phones working directly for antenna manufacturers and as CEO of the first internal antenna design companies in Asia. He served as a R&D director at the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute for almost a decade, where he focused on advanced RF systems.

In 2013, he joined China Mobile Research Institute as an R&D director responsible for the development of massive MIMO base-stations for 4.5G and 5G FR1. After China Mobile, he was an electrical engineering professor in Kazakhstan and an honorary adjunct professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for two years.

Since 2016, he has been working in Rohde & Schwarz (Germany) in different roles: as a project lead engineer developing 3GPP conformance over-the-air testing systems and as a R&D Director for the Mobile Network Testing hardware group, whose products include RF scanners, wideband down-convertors, and PC-based demodulation algorithms.

He has written over 40 papers in top journals and holds over 100 granted patents worldwide. His interests include a wide breadth of wireless technologies from massive MIMO, antenna design, phased arrays, cloud RAN, fiber backhaul, mobile network testing, and communications systems.

Professor Rowell was a recipient of the 2018 Fred Ellersick Award for best original paper in IEEE Communications Society for one of the papers proposing hybrid beamforming in millimeter wave base-stations (now part of 3GPP standards). He was awarded Inventor of the Year in Rohde & Schwarz in 2018.

5G mobile network testing using a passive network scanner (Part 4)

November 1, 2022 | by Corbett Rowell

Network Synchronization of 5G networks

The last blog post (Part 3) examined the first challenge of how you can measure and analyze 5G networks passively by analyzing synchronization and broadcast signals. In this article we address the challenge of timing alignment between 5G base stations as this has a large effect on inter-cell interference and consequently user experience.

Read more

5G mobile network testing using a passive network scanner (Part 3)

September 9, 2022 | by Corbett Rowell

How to measure 5G networks?

The last blog post (Part 2) explained the technical background and the setup of the measurements in FR1 and FR2. In this article we discuss how you can measure and analyze 5G networks passively by analyzing synchronization and broadcast signals.

Read more

5G mobile network testing using a passive network scanner (Part 2)

August 8, 2022 | by Corbett Rowell

Technical Background and Measurement Setup

In the previous introductory blog post: 5G mobile network testing using a passive network scanner (Part 1), we discussed why a dedicated scanner is necessary for accurate mobile network testing. This post explains the technical background and the setup of the measurements in FR1 and FR2.

Read more

5G mobile network testing using a passive network scanner (Part 1)

June 23, 2022 | by Corbett Rowell

Introduction

This new blog series emphasizes the importance of passive mobile network testing for the technology and deployment verification of 5G NR in the field and its future development. This introduction covers the main topics that will be detailed in later posts of this series.

Read more

Further authors

Stories by category

Benchmarking & optimization

More information

Field services & interference hunting

More information

Innovations in mobile network testing

More information

Testing from RF to QoE

More information

Subscribe MNT blog

Sign up for our newsletter

Stay up to date and get stories and insights with our frequent mobile network testing newsletter.

Further information

New e-book provides unparalleled insight into the 5G NR world

What's the status of 5G NR? What are the test and measurement requirements, and how do we approach them? Download our new e-book now and get unparalleled insight into the world of 5G NR.

More information

The world's first 5G NR network measurement solution

Rohde & Schwarz is pioneering 5G New Radio (5G NR) network measurements with the world's first commercially available 5G NR network measurement solution. This solution enables users in the 5G network ecosystem as well as regulators to measure the 5G NR network coverage accurately - one of the biggest challenges in the network planning.

More information

Pioneers in NB-IoT field measurements

We are paving the way to NB-IoT by provding the world's first accurate LTE/NB-IoT coverage measurement solution: via a software upgrade, the R&S ROMES drive test software now also supports NB-IoT coverage measurements with R&S TSMx scanners.

More information

Demander des informations

Vous avez des questions ou besoin d'informations supplémentaires ? Remplissez simplement ce formulaire et nous vous recontacterons rapidement.

Marketing de permission

Votre demande a bien été envoyée ! Nous vous contacterons dans les plus brefs délais.
An error is occurred, please try it again later.