Making Over-the-Air Sync Measurements

Much has been done to accurately measure the time error associated with network equipment, however, measuring the time error of a 5G NR or 4G LTE base station with no 1pps output is a challenging problem. One option is to make a measurement of the downlink radio signal.

This technology brief describes how to make such an over-the-air “time error” measurement by decoding and examining the synchronization signals and comparing them to an external time reference.