Signal-Level Communication Control for LTE-NR Dual-Mode UE Using Software Defined Radios

The security of mobile communication is a common concern of researchers all over the world. The long term evolution (LTE) and the new radio (NR), as the fourth and fifth generation mobile communication technologies, will coexist for a long time. It is difficult to analyze the security of LTE and NR separately for user equipment (UE) that supports dual-mode operation. This paper presents a novel LTE/NR communication control method by transmitting the primary synchronization signals of LTE/NR periodically through the software defined radios. By turning on and off the airplane mode, the UE can be controlled to work in either LTE or NR mode. In particular, for LTE or NR networks with multi-frequency deployment, the proposed method can also make the dual-mode UE work at any of the operating frequencies. The experimental results show that the proposed method can build an effective environment for the independent research of LTE and NR in the indoor environment.