Research and development of mobile communications systems require a detailed analysis and evaluation of novel technologies to further enhance spectral efficiency, connectivity and reliability. Due to the exponentially increasing demand of mobile broadband data rates and challenging requirements for latency and reliability, mobile communications specifications become increasingly complex to support ever more sophisticated techniques. For this reason, analytic analysis as well as measurement based investigations of link level methods soon encounter feasibility limitations. Therefore, computer aided numeric simulation is an important tool for investigation of wireless communications standards and is indispensable for analysis and developing future technologies. In this contribution, we introduce the Vienna 5G Link Level Simulator, a Matlab-based link level simulation tool to facilitate research and development of 5G and beyond mobile communications. Our simulator enables standard compliant setups according to 4G Long Term Evolution, 5G new radio and even beyond, making it a very flexible simulation tool. Offered under an academic use license to fellow researchers it considerably enhances reproducibility in wireless communications research. We give a brief overview of our simulation platform and introduce unique features of our link level simulator in more detail to outline its versatile functionality.
The rapid evolution of nowadays wireless communication systems constitutes a challenge for the versatile and flexible evaluation of transmissions under different scenarios. In order to evaluate the current fourth generation (4G) and future fifth generation (5G) communication techniques, a modular link-level simulator was developed at the GTEC group of the University of A Coruna. In this paper, the structure of the simulator as well as how to use it are presented in detail. The simulator allows for performing link layer simulations both for Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Filter Bank Multicarrier (FBMC) signals. It includes fully-functional transmitter and receiver implementations, as well as different channel models and functions for processing the obtained results. Moreover, we show also that the simulator is fully integrated with the GTEC testbed, enabling not only for performing simulation-based evaluations, but also considering over-the-air measurements. Hence, the GTEC 5G Simulator constitutes a valuable tool for evaluating new communication systems in a versatile and flexible way. Some exemplary results obtained both by simulations and through measurements are included.