Test and Evaluation Environment for Mobile Communication Systems and Protocols

• Subject Area: Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
• Term: Funded in 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538292349

Mobile communication systems are not only an integral part of our everyday life, but also play an important role in value creation chains. With the development of the 5th generation standard for mobile communications, this development was taken into account by standardizing flexible radio access ("New Radio") and a scalable core network ("5G Core"). In 5G it is possible to adapt the physical layer of the radio access to the quality of service. The core network can also be flexibly integrated into cloud environments and can support a large number of application scenarios. Many protocols are required between the physical layer of the radio access and the core network, e.g. protocols of the medium access layer (MAC), link control (RLC) and for the adaptation and convergence of different services (PDCP, SDAP). Their essential design and functionality is similar to that of the 4th generation (LTE), i.e. while there were disruptive developments on the physical layer and in the core network, evolutionary improvements were implemented on the upper layers of the radio interface. The aim of the requested device is to evaluate different protocols of the radio interface, to implement new protocols and to quantify their performance. The focus is on flexible, self-learning protocols that do not follow predefined system procedures, but adapt to different scenarios, e.g. different input parameters and different processes of system routines (network function services). Within this project, mobility protocols as well as protocols for the detection and avoidance of "RF Jamming" are to be examined. Mobility protocols are of vital importance in a cellular system as they enable mobility between different cells and radio access technologies. "RF Jamming" is probably one of the biggest problems when using mobile radio in critical application scenarios or critical infrastructure, because successful "RF Jamming" can lead to an outage of entire systems. The requested equipment enables the analysis of existing systems, especially of different protocols and the influence of different parameter values. Furthermore, it enables the development and testing of new protocols, which are also relevant beyond the 5th generation of mobile communications. The use of standardized hardware (“Commercial off the Shelf”) and experimental hardware (“Software Defined Radio”) further permits an evaluation of the coexistence with conventional systems, which is essential for the successful introduction of new protocols. The use of a channel emulator allows very different scenarios to be tested reproducibly based on channel measurements or on the basis of channel models. The data obtained is stored and processed on dedicated storage servers and on suitable processing servers.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Test- und Evaluierungsumgebung für Mobilfunksysteme und -protokolle
• Instrumentation Group: 2730 Modulatoren, Frequenzhub- und -modulationsmeßgeräte
• Applicant Institution: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
• Leader: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Rost