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Hi I know this is an old post from roughly three (3) years ago but I thought I should weigh in anyhow. :) To capture LTE packets from a UE (mobile cell phone), you can use the Qualcomm tools like the previous person mentioned. You will need to make a direct USB connection to the mobile device from a PC or laptop and use the suite of Qualcomm tools If you are using a LTE modem, this will only be at the OSI lower layer 1 & any sublayers, primarily the physical layer (PHY). This is why you are not seeing the layer 2 protocol stack components (MAC, RLC, PDCP, RRC) for the radio communications between the UE and the eNodeB (base station controller or BBU). The LTE modem is just the connection between the transceiver of the UE and the transceiver of the eNodeB or gNodeB (RRH or RU). Again that is all layer 1. To capture from the MAC layer and higher (Ethernet layer to IP/UDP/GTP-U/IP layers) then you would need access to the S1-U interface (between the eNB and Serving Gateway (S-GW)) for the user plane traffic. For the control plane traffic on the S1-MME interface (between the eNB and Mobility Management Entity (MME)), you need access to the service provider's internal network. If you have access, then you can use Wireshark to read TCPdump captures or tap into the Ethernet traffic promiscuously and capture traffic within Wireshark. Also, be sure to have the latest 3GPP LTE decoder installed and enabled within Wireshark. I hope this clarifies why you LTE modem is not producing the information that you are interested in.
