MIMO Performance at 700MHz:
Field Trials of LTE with Handheld UE
Bo Hagerman, Karl Werner
[firstname.lastname@ericsson.com]
Ericsson Research, Sweden
Abstract— MIMO is one of the techniques used in LTE Release 8
to achieve very high data rates. A field trial was performed in a
pre-commercial LTE network. The objective is to investigate how
well MIMO works with realistically designed handhelds in band
13 (746-756 MHz in downlink). In total, three different handheld
designs were tested using antenna mockups. In addition to the
mockups, a reference antenna design with less stringent
restrictions on physical size and excellent properties for MIMO
was used. The trial comprised test drives in areas with different
characteristics and with different network load levels. The effects
of hands holding the devices and the effect of using the device
inside a test vehicle were also investigated. In general, it is very
clear from the trial that MIMO works very well and gives a
substantial performance improvement at the tested carrier
frequency if the antenna design of the hand-held is well made
with respect to MIMO. In fact, the best of the handhelds
performed similar to the reference antenna.
Keywords-LTE, MIMO, Field-measurements, UE antenna
design, band 13
I. INTRODUCTION
Multiple antennas for reception and transmission at the
radio base station (eNB) and the user equipment (UE) is a key
enabler for the high performance offered by the 3rd Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE)
standard [1]. The standard [3] supports multiple antenna
technologies that improve both link- and system- level
performance in a wide range of scenarios.
In LTE, the data streams (codewords) are mapped to layers.
The number of layers transmitted is denoted the (transmission-)
rank. In release 8 of the standard [3], up to four layers are
supported for downlink transmission. The layers are mapped to
antenna ports in a precoding step. Hence, it should be noted
that the use of multiple antennas at any end of the link may
improve performance also when one layer (rank=1) is
transmitted.
The various transmission modes defined in the standard may be
used with any antenna setup, and the codebooks used in the
closed-loop precoding modes are designed for a wide range of
antenna setups and scenarios. However, the design of the
antenna system is critical to performance. The best choice of
antenna setup depends on the target performance profile and
the propagation environment, including the carrier frequency as
well as on other factors. See [6], [7] for basic result from a field
trial on 2.6GHz carrier frequency evaluating antenna
Jin Yang
[Jin.Yang@VerizonWireless.com]
Verizon Communications Inc., USA
configurations for LTE with up to 4x4 MIMO schemes and [5]
for corresponding HSPA results for 2x2 MIMO.
MIMO (here used to denote multi-layer transmission) is one of
the techniques used in LTE Release 8 to achieve very high data
rates. It is well known that MIMO requires certain conditions
on the radio channel to be fulfilled in order to work well. One
of these conditions is that the radio channels experienced by
each of the multiple receive antenna branches are statistically
different from the others. The longer the wavelength at the
carrier frequency is compared to the size of the terminal, the
more challenging it is to fulfill this condition from a UE
antenna design perspective.
A trial was designed to investigate how MIMO works in
cellular systems on lower carrier frequencies, e.g. 700MHz.
Focus is on practical UE dimensions and on practical network
deployments. A secondary purpose of the campaign was to test
different possible dual-antenna UE designs in order to obtain
qualitative results on their relative performance. In the trial,
2x2 MIMO was tested, i.e. 2 receive branches at the UE and
two transmit branches at the eNB. This is the typical setup for
today’s deployed LTE networks. Focus of this work is on
downlink performance. The deployed eNB antenna systems are
dual-polarized antennas. The network used is a pre-commercial
LTE network.
The trial was to be performed in a radio environment as similar
as possible to what UEs will experience in a live LTE network.
In order to achieve this, different load conditions were created,
hand dummies were used, and areas with different town
architectures (urban and suburban) were used for the
measurements. Hence, results regarding the interaction of
hands holding the device and vehicle components surrounding
it were also obtained. The campaign is intended to investigate
how the radio environment interacts with the antenna design at
the used carrier frequency. It is not intended to benchmark any
particular vendor of UEs nor the network performance.
II. THE FIELD TRIAL CAMPAIGN
A. UE antennas
At the tested frequency band (746-756 MHz) the
wavelength is 0.4m. A typical smartphone is smaller than 0.2m
along its dominating dimension.

Figure 1. Top left picture: SP1 UE antenna mockup. Top right picture: FP1
type of UE antenna mockups in the hands in van use mode. Bottom most
picture: roof of measurement van with reference antennas mounted on the
rear side, and mockups mounted on the front side as in free space on roof and
hands on roof use modes.
Three different dual antenna UE mockups were tested in the
trial: Smartphone 1 (SP1) and Smartphone 2 (SP2) were
designed with the size of a smartphone, 73mm x 150mm (~3x6
inches). Featurephone 1 (FB1) was designed with a smaller
form factor, 65mm x 115mm (~2,5x4,5 inches). The antenna
realization, such as radiating element type, orientation, and
positioning, are designed on purpose for high and low antenna
branch correlation in order to evaluate impact on performance
in the network. In particular SP2 has a very high antenna
branch correlation in order to serve as a “no MIMO” (i.e. no
multi layer transmission) reference case. In addition, a
reference antenna combination comprising two pole antennas
was also used. The reference was designed to have very good
correlation properties. In contrast to the mockups, the reference
was designed with no limitations on the form factor.
Figure 1 shows pictures of the mockups, the reference and their
mounting in and on top of the test vehicle.
Three use modes are included in the trial: hands on roof, hands
in van, and free space on roof. The hands on roof and hands in
van use modes include hand dummies designed to have the
same radio characteristics as a hand. The mockups were placed
in a two-hand grip: “browse mode”. In the hands in van use
mode, the mockups and hands were placed to the right of the
driver’s seat; in the hands on roof use mode they were placed
on the roof of the car. Note that the body style of the vehicle is
probably an important aspect when characterizing the in-
vehicle radio channel, hence results obtained may only be valid
for the type used in the trials: a panel truck with no windows
behind the mockup. In the free space on roof use mode, the
mockups were placed on a block of foam that has similar radio
characteristics to air. The blocks were then placed on the roof
of the car in the same way as in the hands on roof use mode.
Pictures exemplifying the use modes and UE mockups are
shown in Figure 1. The cables connecting the antenna mockups
to the receiver circuitry were the same independent of use
mode and type of antenna used.
B. Network configuration and field trial setup
Measurement drives were conducted with antennas
mounted according to use mode, see previous section. In each
measurement drive, multiple modem boards were used. One of
them was connected to the reference antenna (always mounted
on the van roof with no hand interaction) and the others were
connected to UE mockups. Either the two smartphones (SP1
and SP2) or the featurephone (FP1) were tested in each test
drive. The network implemented round robin scheduling and
data transmission was made using UDP with a bitrate selected
to ensure full buffers for all UEs at all times. Furthermore, the
drive routes were selected and the network was configured to
ensure that there were no handovers during the test drives.
Hence all UEs were in the same cell at all times.
The network implemented the possibility to transmit user plane
data in selected cells by scheduling DL transmission to non-
existing UEs. This feature was used in the trial to create
interference from neighboring cells in a reproducible way in
order to investigate the impact of network load on
performance. Two load settings were used: fully loaded and no
user plane load in neighboring cells. It should be noted that
some interference was present also in the latter case as
reference signals and control information was continuously
transmitted in all cells at all times.
Drives were performed on two measurement routes: urban and
suburban. The area used for the suburban measurement route is
characterized by one or two storied houses (residential and
business). It has a typical suburban character. The terrain is
generally quite flat but the measurement route has a leg back
and fourth up a rather steep hill-side towards strong interferers.
The duration of the suburban measurement route was about 16
minutes and the drive speed mostly kept below 20 mph
(~35kmph).
The urban measurement route is of a typical North American
urban character: The route is in an area dominated by high-rise
buildings in a regular grid of streets. The general interference
level is significantly higher than in the suburban drive route.
The urban measurement route took around 9 minutes. Traffic
had a much larger impact of the drives on this route due to the
much higher occurrence of traffic lights and congestion. Drive
speed was slightly higher but mostly under 30 mph (~45
kmph).
GPS information was logged, and post-processing was
performed with the purpose of removing some of the traffic
effects that disturb comparability. With such normalization,
repeatability was in general good.
On each measurement route and with each use mode, two test
drives were performed, with and without neighboring cell load.
Figure 2. Left plot: Average RSSI for mockup FP1 in tests drives. Right plot:
average SNR for FP1 in the same test drives.
Figure 3. CDFs of SNR for the suburban drive route and all mockups in hands
in van use mode. Left plot: CDFs for unloaded network. Right plot: CDFs for
loaded network.
In total [3 use modes] x [2 measurement routes] x [2 network
load settings] x [2 mockup arrangements (smartphone or
featurephone)] = 24 test drives are included in this paper.
Measurement results were logged out from the UE modems
and they are inevitably depending on vendor specific
algorithms. However, the same type of modem boards was
used in all tests. Hence absolute numbers are of limited
interest, and focus is on comparison between the use-modes
and mockups.

III. MEASUREMENT RESULTS

Figure 2 (left) shows measured average received signal Figure 4. CDFs of throughput for the suburban drive route and all mockups with
strength indicator (RSSI) values for mockup FP1 in all the hands in van use-mode. Throughput is normalized in the same way as in
measurement drives. Note that these values also include Figure 5 below. Left plot: CDFs for unloaded network. Right plot: CDFs for
loaded network.
attenuation due to cables and not only due to propagation
losses and antenna efficiency. The attenuation caused by the
hands holding the device in the hands on roof use mode as well
attenuation due to the hand. SP1 and SP2 on the other hand
as the attenuation cased by surrounding vehicle components in
show very similar SNR; this indicates similar antenna
the hands in van use mode is evident in these bars. The signal
efficiency. In the loaded case, where interference is limiting, all
strength loss due to use mode is consistent over the
mockups experience similar SNR.
measurement drives.
Figure 4 shows CDFs of normalized throughput for the same
Figure 2 (right) shows estimated SNR levels over the
measurement drives as in Figure 3. In the unloaded scenario,
measurement drives. It is clear that the distinct drops in signal
the reference outperforms the mockups. In the loaded scenario,
strength due to hand and van attenuation is not visible in the
mockups FP1 and SP1 perform similar to the reference: SNR is
SNR, the only exception being drives on the suburban
more interference limited and vehicle attenuation is less
measurement route in the unloaded case. Clearly, signal
important. The higher received power in the unloaded scenario
strength only determines SNR in scenarios with low
translates into an SNR difference and hence throughput is
interference. In loaded, interference limited, scenarios, antenna
better. While FP1 shows much higher SNR in the unloaded
efficiency is less important.
case than SP1 (Figure 3) it shows similar throughput (Figure
Figure 3 shows CDFs for SNR over two test drives on the 4). On the other hand, SP1 has similar SNR to SP2 but much
suburban measurement route with the hands in van use-mode. better throughput. Differences are smaller in the loaded case
The SNR varies in an interval between 2dB and 20dB in the but SP2 stands out in this case as well with much lower
loaded scenario, and between 5dB and 30dB in the unloaded throughput than the others. With the possibility of rank two
scenario. Comparing the right and left plots show how SNR is transmission (MIMO), UEs experiencing highest SNR do not
pushed down by the interference. SNR is interference limited necessarily enjoy the highest throughput; it is not possible to
in the loaded scenario; there are only small differences between map SNR directly to throughput, antenna correlation and
the in-car mounted mockup-antennas and the reference antenna channel properties are equally important.
mounted on the roof. Conversely, in the unloaded scenario, the
Figure 5 shows throughput plotted against SNR for an
reference antenna clearly has the highest SNR. This is expected
aggregation of all test-drives with the hands in van use mode.
given its placement on the roof of the van. Similarly, in the
The left plot shows throughput plotted against own SNR. The
unloaded case, the FP1 mockup gets higher SNR than the two
right plot shows throughput plotted against reference antenna
smartphone mockups (SP1 and SP2). This is because the
SNR. The former way of plotting hides the effect of SNR
antennas of FP1 are placed so that they are subject to less
differences between UEs while the later includes it. It is clear
Figure 5. Throughput as a function of SNR for the hands in van use mode for all
tested mockups. Throughput is normalized to maximum throughput for the
reference antenna. Left plot: throughput as a function of SNR measured by same
antennas. Right plot: throughput as a function of SNR measured by the roof
mounted reference antenna (at same location on drive route).
from the right plot that the SNR drop associated with
placement inside the van causes performance to deteriorate for
both FP1 and SP1, and more so for SP1. However, the left plot
does not show such drop. This indicates that correlation
properties are not affected as much as SNR by placement
inside the van. This is particularly true for SP1, which on the
other hand has lower efficiency than FP1 when held by hands.
SP2 is clearly outperformed: the difference between SP2 on the
one hand and FP1 and SP1 on the other hand is larger than the
difference between the mockups and the reference.
Figure 6 shows mockup FP1 in all use modes. When plotted
against reference antenna SNR (right plot) there is as expected
a performance drop associated with both addition of hands
(compare free space on roof and hands on roof) and with
placement inside the van (compare hands on roof and hands in
van use modes). However, when plotted against own SNR (left
plot), difference is slim. This indicates that correlation
properties do not deteriorate as much as SNR when adding
hands and placing the mockup inside the van. Figure 6 also
shows SP2 in the free space on roof use-mode. Obviously, SP2
is outperformed (even by FP1 when placed inside van), in
particular at high SNR, and that this is mostly due to poor
correlation properties and to a smaller extent due to lower
antenna efficiency yielding lower SNR.
Figure 7. Rank two selection ratio as a function of SNR. Left plot: Free-space on
roof use-mode. Right plot: Hands in van use mode.
Figure 7 shows ratio of rank two selection as a function of SNR
(measured by each mockup). SP2 is practically never selecting
rank two while SP1 and FP1 selects multi stream transmission
almost as often as the reference. It is also interesting to note
that placement inside van and with hands does not change this
picture very much. Note that the way of plotting hides the
effect of SNR differences between mockups as well as between
mockups and reference.
IV. SUMMARIZING COMPARISON
Figure 9 shows mean normalized throughput
(normalization with reference in each drive) for all
measurement drives. As a complement, Figure 8 shows rank
two selection ratios for the same measurement drives. Mockup
SP1 and FP1 consistently outperforms mockup SP2. The UEs
connected to SP1 and FP1 are able to select multi stream
transmission to a large extent while the UE connected to SP2 in
practice never selects multi-stream transmission. In
measurement drives with large load, resulting in high
interference, SP1, FP1, and the reference perform similarly.
The reference is significantly better only when compared to
hands in van use mode in the least interference limited scenario
(suburban, no load).
[FSR] [urban] [L]
[HR] [suburban] [NL]
1
0.9 [FSR] [suburban] [L]
0.8
0.7
0.6
[HR][urban] [NL] 0.5 [FSR] [urban] [NL]
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
[HR] [suburban] [L] 0 [FSR] [suburban] [NL]

[HR] [urban] [L] [HV] [urban] [L]

Ref
SP1
[HV] [suburban] [NL] [HV] [suburban] [L] SP2
FP1
[HV] [urban] [NL]

Figure 6. Throughput as a function of SNR for all use-modes with the FP1
mockup and (for extra reference) SP2 mockup in the free-space on roof use-
mode. Throughput is normalized to maximum throughput for the reference
antenna. Left and right plots show SNR reference similar to Figure 5.
Figure 8. Average rank two (MIMO) selection ratio for free space on roof
(FSR), hands in van (HV), hands on roof (HR) use modes in combination with
loaded (L) and unloaded (NL) network settings. Measurements using
reference and all mockups are included.
 less attenuation due to hands which yields better SNR at low
[FSR] [urban] [L] network load levels.
1.4
[HR] [suburban] [NL] 1.2 [FSR] [suburban] [L] The most prominent effect of placement of the UE inside the
1
test vehicle was loss of signal strength. The effect on
0.8
[HR] [suburban] [L] 0.6 [FSR] [urban] [NL]
correlation was small. Signal strength loss may be very
0.4 significant in a power limited scenario; the same applies to
0.2 antenna efficiency. Hence, most on the tested cases were not
0 mainly power limited, and hence the effect on performance of
[HR] [urban] [L] [FSR] [suburban] [NL]
the in-van placement was relatively small.

[HV] [suburban] [NL] [HV] [urban] [L] SP1

VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SP2
The authors wish to thank the Ericsson FOA testing team
FP1
[HV] [urban] [NL] [HV] [suburban] [L] headed by Brendan O’Connor, Can Hatipoglu, Anders Otto,
Lars Näslund, Henrik Asplund for all help during the
Figure 9. Throughput normalized to reference antenna throughput (on same campaign. Further, the SonyEricsson team Thomas Bolin,
drive). Measurements for free space on roof (FSR), hands in van (HV), hands Vanja Plicanic Samuelsson, Zhinong Ying and Peter Karlsson,
on roof (HR) use modes in combination with loaded (L) and unloaded (NL) for providing mockups, and Anders Derneryd, Ericsson. The
network settings are included. Measurements using reference and all mockups support from Lee Tjio, Verizon Corporate Technology, Gunnar
are included. The measurement data for [HR][urban][NL] was corrupt due to
backhaul issues.
Borg, Ericsson, and Hiep Pham, Ericsson, is also
acknowledged.

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give an indication that 2x2 MIMO works equally well at
2.6GHz and 700MHz.
If the antenna system is not designed targeting low correlation
properties, then MIMO performance will be very poor.
Mockup SP2 had much lower performance than the other
mockups and the reference due to the design of SP2 giving
intentionally high correlation. This is manifested in both its low
ability to select rank two transmission (MIMO) and in the
actual throughput figures.
The trial also showed that the effect of hands holding the
device on MIMO performance was relatively large with certain
antenna designs, even if the MIMO gains were still significant.
This further emphasizes the importance of a careful antenna
design, especially at lower carrier frequencies. Mockup FP1
had a smaller performance loss than mockup SP1: It showed