Jeffery A. Wepman

Abstract: Technology field trials for six personal communications services (PCS) common air-interface technologies (whose standards were developed by the Joint Technical Committee on Wireless Access) were performed at the US West Boulder Industry Test Bed (BITB). The BITB provided a common environment for the field testing of all of the technologies. The same configuration (cell site layout, antenna type, and antenna orientation) was used for all of the systems tested as high-tier systems. Similarly, another configuration was used for all systems tested as low-tier systems. Field testing of the technologies typically consisted of four general types: area coverage testing, handoff testing, interference testing, and voice quality testing. Results from these field trials, and descriptions of the measurement and data analysis procedures, are presented in this report.

Keywords: bit error rate (BER); co-channel interference; PCS; personal communications services (PCS); adjacent channel interference; area coverage; expert listener; frame error rate; handoff; Joint Technical Committee on Wireless Access; JTC; mean opinion score; MOS; received signal strength; Telecommunications Industry Association; TIA; voice quality; word error rate

Disclaimer: Certain commercial equipment, components, and software may be identified in this report to specify adequately the technical aspects of the reported results. In no case does such identification imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, nor does it imply that the equipment or software identified is necessarily the best available for the particular application or uses.

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