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High-speed trains are nowadays a reality in most of the countries. Internet services and connectivity are required by the passengers on board using smartphones and laptops. Nevertheless, the higher the speed, the bigger the issues that operators have to face to implement mobility and to reduce the effect of fast fading signal and Doppler shift, which may cause throughput reduction and problems to access the network. In the past, operators tried to optimize the cellular access to universal mobile telecommunications system cells covering railways. Now that 4G networks have become mature and deployed, a similar approach needs to be optimized and implemented to long-term evolution cells covering the same targets. We present the results of a testing campaign replicating real “high-speed train” propagation scenarios, like a train running in open space or in tunnels with the help of a reverberation chamber. The chamber was partially filled by absorbing panels and equipped with rotating stirrers in order to approach the multipath propagation and to replicate the fading conditions that is typical of smartphones in a train coach. The effects of Doppler and its fast variations are presented, together with an analysis of the efficiency of different transmission solutions for tunnels (single-input single-output cells propagating inside them). The testing sessions were performed under a collaboration program between Telecom Italia (in the paper referred as “operator”), Nokia Networks, and Università Politecnica delle Marche. After the experiments in our laboratory, some features were introduced in the operator's live network, covering the high-speed railway between the two Italian cities of Piacenza and Bologna. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The uplink performance of a real fourth-generation long-term-evolution (LTE) frequency-division multiplexing base station was observed by adopting a reverberation chamber as propagating environment. In the downlink direction, the reception of the LTE signal is limited to mobile station receivers. On the other hand, different reception schemes could be implemented by the base station in the uplink direction. Interference rejection and coordinated multipoint reception criteria are based on spatial diversity and are analyzed in a rich multipath environment. These options could be susceptible to impairments due to the presence of Gaussian noise, also including the more realistic case of a discontinuous noise source. The testing session was carried out under a collaboration program between TIM S.p.A., Nokia, and Università Politecnica delle Marche, and it ended up by introducing envisioned reception solutions of the base station in a live customer's cellular network. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]