Comparison of Interference Impacts from Synthetic and Real Mobile Phone Signals on COTS Communication Devices

Published

July 22, 2025

Author(s)

Michelle Pirrone, Adam Wunderlich

Abstract

This work provides recommendations for best practices that enable simplified, cost-effective interference testing that incorporates relevant aspects of realistic cellular emissions. Experimental impacts from three broad classes of interference waveforms are compared: 1) synthetic 4G frequency division duplexing (FDD) uplink long term evolution (LTE) signals 2) recordings of real 4G FDD uplink LTE emissions from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and 3) artificial pulse modulated noise (PMN). Two COTS communication systems are used as victim links, an IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi link and a point-to-point (PTP) microwave link, and tests are performed with interference targeting either side of the link. We find that synthetic 4G FDD LTE signals generated using three different commercial products produce similar interference outcomes when the noise floor and channel power are consistent. Further, we observe that the interference effects of synthetic LTE signals, recorded LTE signals from COTS hardware, and artificial PMN signals result in similar impacts on each victim system. We conclude that synthetic 4G LTE and PMN signals are both valid strategies to produce realistic interference on a victim system that avoid the complexity of using real-world recordings for test waveforms. In particular, these findings provide further support for the utility of PMN as a class of interference test signals that is easy to generate and has only two test parameters (period and duty cycle). Data for this report are available at https://doi.org/10.18434/mds2-3888.

Citation

Technical Note (NIST TN) - 2343

Report Number

2343

NIST Pub Series

Technical Note (NIST TN)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2343

Local Download

Citation

Pirrone, M. and Wunderlich, A. (2025), Comparison of Interference Impacts from Synthetic and Real Mobile Phone Signals on COTS Communication Devices, Technical Note (NIST TN), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2343, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=959427 (Accessed July 25, 2025)