LTE-Based Channel Measurements for High-Speed Railway Scenarios

Channel measurements are the precondition for the design of future high-speed railway (HSR) communication systems. Due to the measurement restriction and measurement efficiency issues of applying conventional channel sounders in HSR scenarios, railway network based channel sounding methods are becoming quite attractive. In this paper, we employ long term evolution (LTE) railway network to achieve HSR channel measurements. A novel LTE-based HSR channel sounding system is proposed to enable the collection of time-frequency-space channel data. Field measurements that consider both direct and relay coverage schemes are conducted on Beijing to Tianjin HSR in China. Measurement data are partitioned into single-link case in which the common channel parameters can be derived and multi-link case in which the correlation between different links can be characterized. Measurement results cover path loss (PL), Ricean K-factor, delay spread, single-link and multi-link spatial correlation, which not only confirm the utility of the proposed system but also provide preliminary channel information available for the study of next generation HSR communication systems.