Evaluation of Vehicular 4G/5G-MIMO Antennas via Data-Rate Measurement in an Emulated Urban Test Drive

Abstract

For evaluation of vehicular MIMO antennas in LTE 4G/5G mobile communications a reproducible test method is introduced, which is based on a new investigation of throughput and channel capacity in a virtual test drive. For this 4G/5G MIMO driving test, real hardware and virtual reality are combined. The transmitting and receiving hardware-units are emulated in a measurement hardware-setup, while the air interface is simulated via ray tracing in an urban 3D city model. For evaluation of vehicular 4G/5G-MIMO-antennas, the characteristics of these antennas are measured on the vehicle, and the complete data is fed into the X3D ray tracing algorithm. Reproducibility of the drive is ensured by excluding temporary effects like traffic interferences. The outcome of the 4G/5G-system emulator is applicable in [0.6-6] GHz range and could be extended to higher frequency bands. The comparison between different antennas is accomplished through indicators like signal to interference plus noise ratio, received signal strength indication and data rate.