Measurement setup for evaluation the coexistence between LTE downlink and WLAN networks

Measuring the performance of wireless communication systems, especially on the physical layer level, is essential for their development and usage in the real world. With the upcoming 5G technology, various wireless technologies will be used at the same place and at the same time. Consequently, measuring and evaluating their influence on each other is important. In this paper, we present a simple measurement setup to monitor and evaluate the coexistence between LTE (downlink) and WLAN (IEEE 802.11). The setup allows to measure the performance of LTE physical downlink control channels (PDCCH), influenced by IEEE 802.11n, as the dependence of raw bit error ratio (BER) on the carrier-to-interference-and-noise ratio (CINR). The proposed solution is universal because it allows to measure the coexistence of WLAN (uses different technologies) and LTE in the same or adjacent radio frequency (RF) band. The comparison of the results from simulations and measurements validates the correctness of the proposed measurement setup.