Experimental assessment of 5G-candidate modulation schemes at extreme speeds

Abstract

The radio access technology for railway communications is expected to migrate from GSM for Railways (GSM-R) to fourth generation (4G). Recently, considerable attention has been devoted to high-speed trains since this particular environment poses challenging problems in terms of performance simulation and measurement. In order to considerably decrease the cost and complexity of high-speed measurement campaigns, we have proposed a technique to induce effects caused by highly-time varying channels on multicarrier signals by conducting measurements at low speeds. This technique has been proved to be accurate for the cases of WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE) standardized waveforms. In this work, we evaluate experimentally the performance of this technique by employing modulation schemes proposed for fifth generation (5G) systems. More specifically, we compare the performance obtained by transmitting Filter Bank Multicarrier (FBMC) schemes with two different prototype filters at different velocities in a controlled measurement environment.