Experimental Investigation of 5G Base Station Functionalities in Reverberation Chamber at Millimeter-Wave

The performance and functionalities of a commercial fifth generation base station are evaluated inside the reverberation chamber at the mmWave frequency range. The base station capability to operates in different propagation environment conditions reproduced by the reverberation chamber is investigated. Throughput, modulation code scheme and beamforming are analyzed for different real life scenarios both in uplink and downlink. Experimental results inform network operators in their evaluation of the base station operation: i) in many scenarios within a laboratory; ii) in the assessment of whether expected benefit justifies the additional costs in an operating actual network.