Test and monitoring of LTE network: A step towards low cost solutions based on NetFPGA

The paper presents the lessons learned during the test activity of LTE network in Telecom Italia Lab. The issues mainly regard the lack of low cost and flexible monitoring and test platforms easy to reconfigure and adapt to the diverse network interfaces. The paper presents the design guideline for the development of FPGA-based devices able to overcome the presented issues. Exploiríng the NetFPGA platform and re-using the available open-source software, a preliminary prototype implementing some ideas is presented Furthermore, the paper shows the preliminary results obtained during the utilization of the NetFPGA prototype in the test activities.