EE1 5G Modem RF Logging

This is one of the sample experiments for Ericsson 5G network.  

Note to the Experimenters: 

Ericsson experiments are Non-Canonical experiments, meaning they don't follow the Canonical experiments model with Development or Emulation mode, so the experimenters are required to follow the procedure as described in Section 2.10 for Ericsson experiments.

1) Sample Experiment

Experiment Objective: The main goal of this experiment is to log the 5G RF and Physical layer parameters along a preplanned vehicle trajectory when the UE modem is in a RRC-Connected mode.  For this experiment a portable node with a 5G UE modem mounted on an UAV shall be used to collect the radio logs along the preprogrammed vehicle trajectory. To establish a RRC-Connected state at the UE modem, this experiment runs a Ping application at the Portable node. At the end of the experiment, RF and PHY parameters of the Serving cell logs be collected and provided.  

HW Resources:  This experiment shall use the following resources:

Traffic type:  Ping

Vehicle plan file: Default plan file PF6  

Expected output log files:

Radio log files: Serving Cell RF logs, Serving Cell PHY logs


Note: This is a sample for the type of information an Experimenter is expected to provide in the AERPAW Experiment Information Request Form.

2) Test Description

Ericsson 5G Testbed comprises of a Portable node with Quectel 5G modem connected to the Ericsson 5G base station. The experiment sets up an RF link between the eNB/gNB on the Ericsson 5G network and an UE on the Portable node. On powering on the portable node, the UE attaches to the 5G network. but then at the start of an experiment the SPN starts collecting and recording various Radio and PHY layer parameters.  At the end of the experiment, the recorded data shall be available in the Results folder.

The network is already preconfigured and the portable node is pre-programmed to capture default parameters, so the user is not required to do anything. 

Preconfigured 5G network configuration:

The 5G network radios supports band n78 for NR carrier operating in 3.3 - 3.5 GHz frequency band and band 66 for LTE carrier operating in 1.7/2.1 GHz frequency band. The 5G NSA network is pre-configured as in Section 4.1.6.

Preprogrammed Radio logging configuration:

The radio parameter logging at the Portable node is pre-programmed to collect the parameters as outlined in Section 4.1.6.

Preparing Vehicle plan file 

This experiment uses a plan file PF6 given in Section 3.1.2.2. as shown here with the following parameters - 

30m altitude, 5 m/s speed, 1278 m distance, zigzag flight path.

There are more sample vehicle mission plan files available here to choose from. In that case, the experimenter specifies the mission plan file that they would like to use in the AERPAW Experiment Information Request Form.

Alternatively,  the experimenter can create their own mission plan file by following the procedure given in Section 3.1.2, and submit it by sending it to AERPAW Ops email id aerpaw-operations@ncsu.edu.

Preparing Traffic file

To transition UE from the RRC-Idle to RRC-Connected state, the experiment needs to run a traffic application, so this sample experiment uses a ping traffic as default, i.e., a Traffic script in the Portable node pings the CC1 AFN.  However, the experimenter can choose to define a different traffic type and provide a traffic script.

3) Preparing and Running an Experiment on the Testbed:


As a preparation to run the experiment on the testbed, the radio script for Quectel modem, traffic script for Ping and the vehicle plan files are copied to appropriate folder files in the portable node E-VM. 


At the start of the experiment, the quectel modem gets connected to the Ericsson 5G network, and the AT&T modem is connected to AT&T network.  Like a regular UE, the modem in the SPN does a cell search to find a suitable cell, and initiates the registration procedure to attach to the Ericsson 5G network. After attaching to the 5G network, the SPN (UE) camps on the serving cell. Once the SPN is ready, the experiment is started that starts collecting and logging data - radio and traffic - into their files. The experiment continues with the UAV flight as planned in the vehicle plan file, and the logging of the data continues till the end flight. In the end, the experiment is stopped, that stops logging of the data. 

4) Results:


The experiment generates timestamped measurement logs under the /root/Results folder. There are three different data are logged: Radio log and the vehicle flight log. For radio log the serving cell RF and PHY parameters are logged into a separate log files.  

The Results folder will have these log files:

Sample log file output

Serving cell RF parameters (from Quectel_log_xxx.log file)

Serving cell PHY Parameters (from Quectel_log_xxx.log file)