Measuring Data Throughput with the CMX500

Solutions and Tipps for NR FR1 in TDD Downlink Mode

5G New Radio (NR) is a radio technology specified by 3GPP and was first released in 3GPP release 15. It is designed to target three use cases, i.e. enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC). Among these three use cases, eMBB represents actually a further evolution of mobile broadband communication from LTE standard. According to the technical performance requirement defined by IMT-2020, by deploying 5G technology, peak data rates of eMBB application are expected to reach 20 Gbps in downlink (DL) and 10 Gbps in uplink (UL) direction, respectively. Typical use cases of eMBB are data hungry applications, such as high resolution 8K video streaming, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) etc.

Verification of a 5G capable user equipment (UE) with respect to its achievable maximum data throughput under controllable and deterministic test conditions is an essential process during the design phase of the product. Performance centric verification through identification of the data throughput bottleneck, product benchmarking against a golden device enhances tremendously the user experience in the end.

This document focuses on 5G NR frequency range 1 (FR1) with TDD duplex mode in E-UTRAN New-radio Dual Connectivity (ENDC) operating mode. As 5G NR physical layer offers a plethora of flexibility, the motivation here is to provide a kind of guideline of relevant parameter settings to stimulate device under test (DUT)'s max throughput capacity. The status quo of the R&S solutions at the time when the application note is created are described. Shown feature sets are constantly evolving, so the screenshots used and the parameters shown may change.