A Real-Time Software Defined Radio Platform for LTE-Advanced Heterogeneous Networks

—This paper presents the design and implementation of a LTE-Advanced system platform based on software defined radio. The platform has flexible implementation; commom construction; strong ability of modular, expansibility and portability; easy to improve and extend; suitable for testing and verifying evolving LTE-Advanced system. With the platform, we conduct real-time experiments for investigating LTEAdvanced Heterogeneous Networks and the interference management schemes in real wireless environments. The results of real-time experiments truly reflected the influence of channel environment and interference to heterogeneous networks. In the situation without interference management, the Bit Error Rate of user equipments in heterogeneous networks is as high as 3040% due to the interference. Therefore, user equipments cannot communicate properly. When the interference management scheme is used, user BER drops significantly. At the same time, the throughput of users decreases slightly from that without interference management. The throughput of the users decline slightly and the BER decreases obviously, in return.