5G Drone Testing

Ericsson is performing a program of work in collaboration with GSMA Foundry to benefit the industry by undertaking a network performance monitoring and engineering (NPM&E) study associated with technical implications of commercialization of live commercial 5G NSA/SA and LTE mobile networks.

About the project

The scope of work provides an assessment of a variety network KPIs including signal strength, downlink, uplink, interference, and video performance with drone tests performed at 3 altitudes up to 400 ft.
Over sixty-five drone flights were conducted, covering over 16 hours of total flying time, over a two-week period during daytime in good weather conditions in residential, commercial, and suburban areas in both flat and hilly terrains. Two geographic areas were covered in two different states in the USA and each area spanned a radius of over half mile.

The Ericsson portfolio solutions used are Ericsson Connected Drone Testing and Ericsson Device Analytics (EDA). The project is led by Rajpal Deol, Director, Portfolio Management at Ericsson Business Area Cloud Software & Services.

Phase 1 provides a network baseline to support a possible phase 2 covering network adjustments.