Base Station RF Test Terms (3GPP TS 38.104)
3GPP TS 38.104 sets the radio requirements for 5G base stations, using a specialised vocabulary for how transmitters and receivers are measured.
What is Base Station RF Test Terms (3GPP TS 38.104)?
Base stations come in classes: wide area, medium range (MR) and local area (LA). Transmitter quality is measured by error vector magnitude (EVM, how far the signal deviates from ideal), time alignment error (TAE) between antennas, and operating band unwanted emissions (OBUE). Receiver tests include reference sensitivity (REFSENS), in-channel selectivity (ICS), and tests with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) or continuous wave (CW) interferers. Active antennas are tested at the transceiver array boundary (TAB) or, over the air, at the radiated interface boundary (RIB), using equivalent isotropic sensitivity (EIS) over a declared range of angles of arrival (RoAoA, from OSDD declarations). Frequencies are numbered by NR-ARFCN and synchronisation raster points by GSCN. Supplementary downlink (SDL) and uplink (SUL) are bands used in one direction only.