Identifying Multipath Propagation in Vehicular Repeater Deployments by LTE Measurements

摘要

This paper introduces a simple measurement methodology that can identify extreme cases of multipath propagation for in-train repeater (ITR) deployments, which may cause performance impairments for users. Differential timing advance measurements allow to detect the relative power of multipath components in the range of -20. . . 20 dB, as we have verified through laboratory measurements. The experimental results for an existing ITR deployment inside an express passenger train show that this method can, in fact, be used to pinpoint the specific locations for which the interplay between the base station configuration and the ITR is still not optimal. Therefore, it is possible to use the proposed method to continuously collect measurement points, e.g., by crowdsourcing from standard handsets running on Android. This enables to continually improve deployments with active components such as ITRs.