A black box approach to physical layer validation for 3G/4G base stations

A base station is a very complex equipment, containing several hardware and software parts that can be built by different providers, e.g. software code for service protocol layers, operating systems, network processors, digital signal processors, hardware accelerators, memory parts etc. The challenge is to have each party being able to test its own solution, without interaction from other sources. This paper focuses on presenting a generic framework solution for testing the physical layer (Layer 1) of this system and ensuring it operates in conformance to the standard specifications.