Resilience of LTE-A/5G-NR links Against Transient Electromagnetic Interference

TL;DR

This study compares LTE-A and 5G-NR link resilience to transient electromagnetic interference in railway environments, revealing significant performance degradation due to interference at various frequencies.

Contribution

It introduces a SDR-based prototype for evaluating LTE-A and 5G-NR performance under transient EMI, providing comparative insights into their robustness.

Findings

Both LTE-A and 5G-NR links degrade significantly under transient EMI.

Performance degradation correlates with interference gain.

Different center frequencies affect link performance differently.

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of long-term evolution advanced (LTE-A) and fifth-generation new radio (5G-NR), focusing on the effects of Transient Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) caused by catenary-pantograph contact in a railway environment. We developed a software-defined radio (SDR)-based prototype for the performance evaluation of LTE-A and 5G-NR links in the presence of transient interference. The results show that both links experience considerable degradation due to interference at different center frequencies. Performance degradation is proportional to the gain of interference. The measurement results show that both links experience considerable performance degradation in the presence of transient EM interference.