Interference Impact on Two of LTE's Control Channels

The society is becoming more and more dependent on Long Term Evolution (LTE)-services in a large variety of applications and the standard is proposed in several safety applications. Like any wireless technology, LTE is vulnerable to radiated electromagnetic interference. In this paper, we show how the levels from equipment fulfilling the standard EN 55022 can affect the performance of LTE. The impact is investigated on two control channels, the primary synchronization sequence in the downlink and a control channel for the physical layer in the uplink. Results show that the uplink control channel is more sensitive to interference and can be affected by equipment within hundreds of meters from the base station. The synchronization channel is more robust, but can be affected by equipment close to the mobile and then prevent the mobile from entering the network.