Drive Testing in 5G

Cellular system propagation models are tailored for specific areas or terrains, but their effectiveness diminishes when applied to different environments. As a result, this reduced efficiency impacts the coverage, capacity, and quality of service in cellular networks. To evaluate the quality of service for 5G, drive testing is conducted, which involves measuring and assessing mobile network performance. Despite the increasing availability of performance data in mobile radio systems, there remains a necessity to assess network performance in real-world conditions. These assessments serve various purposes, such as deploying new network sites to meet coverage, capacity, and quality demands, optimizing the network, benchmarking performance, troubleshooting issues, and verifying performance after upgrades or reconfigurations. Drive tests and RF surveys are commonly used for these measurements, playing a crucial role in both the planning and optimization phases of network development. The primary focus of this paper is to explore the drive test process and RF planning in 5G mobile communications