1. Measuring LTE sensitivity with a single resource block (RB) located in the middle of the channel can degrade sensitivity. This is because control channels like the primary synchronization signal (PSS), secondary synchronization signal (SSS) and physical broadcast channel (PBCH) are also located in the middle, making decoding more difficult.
2. With a single middle RB, the coding rate needs to be twice as high on subframe 0 compared to other subframes to achieve the same block error rate. This requires at least 3dB higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
3. Testing sensitivity with few RBs near the channel center can also degrade sensitivity slightly due to interference from the in-band