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Final WLTE Full Notes

Wireless Communication and 4G LTE Networks (ವಿಶ್ವೇಶ್ವರಯ್ಯ ತಾಂತ್ರಿಕ

ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾಲಯ)

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MODULE 1

Key Enablers for LTE features :

 OFDM-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, Single carrier FDMA and Single carrier FDE,
 Channel Dependent Multiuser Resource Scheduling

Multiantenna Techniques

IP based Flat network Architecture

LTE Network Architecture

Wireless Fundamentals:
 Cellular Concepts
 Analysis of cellular systems
 Sectoring

The Broadband Wireless Channel(BWC) :

 Path loss and shadowing

The Broadband Wireless Channel(BWC) : Fading

 Delay Spread and Coherence Bandwidth
 Doppler Spread and Coherence Time
 Angular Spread and Coherence Distance

Modeling BWC -Statistical models

 Statistical Correlation of the received Signal

Modelling BWC – Empirical models

Mitigation of Narrowband fading

 The effects of unmitigated Fading
 Spatial diversity
 Coding and interleaving
 Automatic Repeat Request(ARQ)
 Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC)
Combining Narrowband Diversity Techniques

Mitigation of Broadband fading

 Spread Spectrum and RAKE Receivers
 Equalisation
 Multicarrier Modulation: OFDM

Single Carrier Modulation with Frequency Domain Equalisation

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KEY ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES AND FEATURES OF LTE

ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLEXING (OFDM)

 LTE uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as the modulation technology.
 Widely deployed 3G systems such as UMTS and CDMA2000 are based on Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) technology.
 CDMA works by spreading a narrow band signal over a wider bandwidth and performs remarkably
well for low data rate communications such as voice and a large number of users can be multiplexed
to achieve high system capacity.
 Disadvantages: For high-speed applications, CDMA is not suitable as bandwidth required will be
more.
 OFDM is the technology used for achieving high data rates.
 It is the core technology used by a variety of systems including Wi-Fi and WiMAX.

ADVANTAGES OF OFDM:

• It provides solution to multipath interference

• Reduced computational complexity

• Graceful degradation of performance under excess delay

• Exploitation of frequency diversity

• Enables efficient multi-access scheme

• Robust against narrowband interference

• Suitable for coherent demodulation

• Facilitates use of MIMO

• Efficient support of broadcast services

PROVIDES SOLUTION TO MULTIPATH INTERFERENCE:

 The critical challenge to high bit-rate transmissions in a wireless channel is intersymbol

interference caused by multipath.
 In a multipath environment, because of time delay due to the various signal paths a transmitted
symbol may arrive at the receiver during the next symbol and cause intersymbol interference (ISI).

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 At high data rates, the symbol time is shorter,hence, it only takes a small delay to cause ISI, making
it a bigger challenge for broadband wireless.
 OFDM is a multicarrier modulation technique that overcomes this challenge .
 In multicarrier modulation a given high-bit-rate data stream is divided into several parallel lower
bit-rate streams and each stream is modulated on separate carriers, called as subcarriers, or tones.
 Splitting the data stream into many parallel streams increases the symbol duration of each stream
such that the multipath delay spread is only a small fraction of the symbol duration. Hence it avoids
ISI.
 In OFDM the subcarriers are selected such that they are all orthogonal to one another over the
symbol duration, thereby avoiding the need to have non-overlapping subcarrier channels to
eliminate inter-carrier interference.
 In OFDM, any residual intersymbol interference can also be eliminated by using guard intervals
between OFDM symbols that are larger than the expected multipath delay.
 By making the guard interval larger than the expected multipath delay spread, ISI can be
completely eliminated.
 Disadvantage: Adding a guard interval results in power wastage and a decrease in bandwidth
efficiency.

REDUCED COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY:

 OFDM can be easily implemented using Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT/IFFT), which will reduce
the computational complexity.
 The computational complexity of OFDM can be shown to be O (BlogBTm) where B is the
bandwidth and Tm is the delay spread.
 The computational complexity of traditional time domain equalizer based system is O (B2Tm).
 Hence computational complexity is reduced in OFDM.
 Advantages: This is useful in downlink as it simplifies receiver processing and thus reduces mobile
device cost and power consumption.
 This is especially important in LTE as it requires wide transmission bandwidths and uses multi
stream transmissions.

GRACEFUL DEGRADATION OF PERFORMANCE UNDER EXCESS DELAY:

 The performance of an OFDM system degrades gracefully as the delay spread exceeds the value
designed for in contrasts with the abrupt degradation in single-carrier systems .

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 OFDM is well suited for adaptive modulation and coding, which allows the system to make the
best of the available channel conditions.

EXPLOITATION OF FREQUENCY DIVERSITY:

 OFDM facilitates provides robustness against burst errors caused by portions of the transmitted
spectrum undergoing deep fades.
 OFDM allows for the channel bandwidth to be scalable without impacting the hardware design of
the base station and the mobile station.
 This allows LTE to be deployed in a variety of spectrum allocations and different channel
bandwidths.

ENABLES EFFICIENT MULTI-ACCESS SCHEME:

 OFDM can be used as a multi-access scheme by partitioning different subcarriers among multiple
users. This scheme is referred to as OFDMA and is exploited in LTE.

ROBUST AGAINST NARROWBAND INTERFERENCE:

 OFDM is relatively robust against narrowband interference, since such interference affects only a
fraction of the subcarriers.

SUITABLE FOR COHERENT DEMODULATION:

 It is relatively easy to do pilot-based channel estimation in OFDM systems, which makes them suitable
for coherent demodulation schemes that are more power efficient.

FACILITATES USE OF MIMO:

 MIMO stands for multiple input multiple output and refers to a collection of signal processing
techniques that use multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve system
performance.
 For MIMO techniques to be effective inter symbol interference should be less, the channel has to be a
flat fading channel and not a frequency selective one.
 The ability to effectively use MIMO techniques to improve system capacity gives OFDM a significant
advantage over other techniques and is one of the key reasons for its choice.
 MIMO and OFDM have already been combined effectively in Wi-Fi and WiMAX systems.

EFFICIENT SUPPORT OF BROADCAST SERVICES:

 By synchronizing base stations to timing errors well within the OFDM guard interval, it is possible to
operate an OFDM network as a single frequency network (SFN).
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 This allows broadcast signals from different cells to combine over the air to significantly enhance the
received signal power, thereby enabling higher data rate broadcast transmissions for a given transmit
power.
 LTE design leverages this OFDM capability to improve efficient broadcast services.
 Because of these advantages 3GPP adopted OFDM as their modulation choice.

DISADVANTAGES OF OFDM

 OFDM signals having high peak-to-average ratio (PAR), which increases the cost of the transmitter
and is wasteful of power.
 While the increased amplifier costs and power inefficiency of OFDM is tolerated in the downlink as
part of the design, for the uplink LTE selected a variation of OFDM that has a lower peak-to-average
ratio. The modulation of choice for the uplink is called Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
Access (SC-FDMA).

SC-FDE and SC-FDMA

 To keep the cost down and the battery life up, LTE incorporated a power efficient transmission scheme
for the uplink called Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE)
 SC-FDE is similar to OFDM but instead of transmitting the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) of
the actual data symbols, the data symbols are sent as a sequence of QAM symbols with a cyclic prefix
added; the IFFT is added at the end of the receiver.
 SC-FDE retains all the advantages of OFDM such as multipath resistance and low complexity, while
having a low peak-to-average ratio of 4-5dB. The uplink of LTE implements a multi-user version of
SC-FDE, called SC-FDMA, which allows multiple users to use parts of the frequency spectrum.
 SC-FDMA also preserves the PAR properties of SC-FDE but increases the complexity of the
transmitter and the receiver.

CHANNEL DEPENDENT MULTI-USER RESOURCE SCHEDULING

 The OFDMA scheme used in LTE provides enormous flexibility in how channel resources are
allocated. OFDMA allows for allocation in both time and frequency and it is possible to design
algorithms to allocate resources in a flexible and dynamic manner to achieve required throughput,
delay, and other requirements.
 The standard supports dynamic, channel-dependent scheduling to enhance overall system capacity.
 In OFDMA, frequency selective scheduling can be combined with multi-user time domain scheduling,
which calls for scheduling users during the crests of their individual fading channels. Capacity gains

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are also obtained by adapting the modulation and coding to the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio
conditions for each user subcarrier.
 For high-mobility users, OFDMA can be used to achieve frequency diversity.
 The signal can be made more robust against frequency selective fading or burst errors. Frequency
diverse scheduling is best suited for control signaling and delay sensitive services.

MULTIANTENNA TECHNIQUES

The LTE standard provides extensive support for implementing advanced multi antenna solutions to
improve link robustness, system capacity, and spectral efficiency. The methods are

 Transmit diversity
 Beamforming
 Spatial Multiplexing
 Multi user - MIMO

TRANSMIT DIVERSITY:

 This is a technique to avoid multipath fading in the wireless channel.

 Transmit diversity increases system capacity and cell range.
 The idea here is to send copies of the same signal, coded differently, over multiple transmit antennas.
 LTE transmit diversity is based on space-frequency block coding (SFBC) techniques and frequency shift
time diversity (FSTD) when four transmit antenna are used.
 Transmit diversity is used for common downlink channels that cannot make use of channel-dependent
scheduling.

BEAMFORMING:

 Multiple antennas in LTE are used to transmit the same signal through each antenna such that the
transmitted beam is focused in the direction of the receiver and away from interference, thereby
improving the received signal-to-interference ratio.
 Beamforming can provide significant improvements in coverage range, capacity, reliability, and
battery life.
 It can also be useful in providing angular information for user tracking.
 LTE supports beamforming in the downlink.

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SPATIAL MULTIPLEXING:

 In spatial multiplexing the multiple independent streams can be transmitted in parallel over multiple
antennas and can be separated at the receiver using multiple receive chains through appropriate signal
processing.
 In theory, spatial multiplexing provides data rate and capacity gains proportional to the number of
antennas used.
 It works well under good SNR and light load conditions.
 LTE standard supports spatial multiplexing with up to four transmit antennas and four receiver
antennas.
MULTI-USER MIMO:

 Spatial multiplexing requires multiple transmit chains, it is currently not supported in the uplink due
to complexity and cost considerations.
 Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), which allows multiple users in the uplink, each with a single antenna,
to transmit using the same frequency and time resource, is supported.
 The signals from the different MU-MIMO users are separated at the base station receiver using
accurate channel state information of each user .

IP-BASED FLAT NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

 The radical aspect of LTE is air-interface flat radio and core network architecture .
 The air interface is the radio-based communication link between the mobile station and the active base
station.
 “Flat” here means fewer nodes and a less hierarchical structure for the network.

Advantages of flat architecture:

 The lower cost and lower latency are the advantages of a flat architecture .
 Since the number of nodes is less infrastructure cost is also less.
 The interoperability testing is reduced
 Development and deployment cost is also reduced due to fewer interfaces and protocol-related
processing.
 Fewer nodes also allow better optimization of radio interface, merging of some control plane protocols,
and short session start-up time.

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LTE will have only two network elements in the data path:

 The enhanced Node-B or eNode-B

 A System Architecture Evolution Gateway (SAE-GW)

LTE merges the base station and radio network controller functionality into a single unit.

The control path includes a functional entity called the Mobility Management Entity (MME), which provides
control plane functions related to subscriber, mobility, and session management.

The MME and SAE-GW could be collocated in a single entity called the access gateway (a-GW).

Fig 1.1: 3GPP evolution toward a flat LTE SAE architecture

A key aspect of the LTE flat architecture is that all services, including voice, are supported on the IP packet
network using IP protocols.

LTE has only a single Evolved Packet-Switched core, the EPC, over which all services are supported,
which provides a huge operational and infrastructure cost savings.

LTE has been designed for IP services with a flat architecture, but due to backwards compatibility reasons
certain non-IP aspects of the 3GPP architecture such as the GPRS tunneling protocol and PDCP (packet
data convergence protocol) still exists within the LTE network architecture.

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LTE NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

The core network design presented in 3GPP Release 8 to support LTE is called the Evolved Packet Core
(EPC).

EPC is designed to provide a high-capacity, all IP, reduced latency, flat architecture .

It also dramatically reduces cost and supports advanced real-time and media-rich services with enhanced
quality of experience.

It is designed not only to support new radio access networks such as LTE, but also to provide interworking
with legacy 2G GERAN(GSM EDGE Radio Access Network) and 3G UTRAN (Universal Terrestrial
Radio Access Networks )networks connected via SGSN(Serving GPRS Service Node).

Functions provided by the EPC include

 Access control,
 Packet routing and transfer,
 Mobility management,
 Security,
 Radio resource management,
 Network management.

The EPC includes four new elements:

 Serving Gateway (SGW)

 Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW)
 Mobility Management Entity (MME)
 Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF)

Serving Gateway (SGW): It terminates the interface toward the 3GPP radio access networks.

Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW): It controls IP data services, does routing, allocates IP
addresses, enforces policy, and provides access for non-3GPP access networks.

Mobility Management Entity (MME): It supports user equipment context and identity ,authenticate
and authorize users.

Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF): It manages QoS aspects.

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EVOLVED PACKET CORE ARCHITECTURE:

Fig1.2:Figure shows the end-to-end architecture including how the EPC supports LTE as well as current and legacy radio access networks.

A brief description of each of the four new elements is provided here:

SERVING GATEWAY (SGW):

 The SGW acts as a separation point between the RAN and core network, and manages user plane
mobility.
 It serves as the mobility anchor when terminals move across areas served by different eNode-B
elements in E-UTRAN, and other 3GPP radio networks such as GERAN and UTRAN.
 SGW does downlink packet buffering and initiation of network-triggered service request procedures.
 Other functions include lawful interception, packet routing and forwarding, transport level packet
marking in the uplink and the downlink, accounting support for per user, and inter-operator charging.

PACKET DATA NETWORK GATEWAY (PGW):

 The PGW acts as the termination point of the EPC toward other Packet Data Networks (PDN) such as
the Internet, private IP network, or the IMS network providing end-user services.
 It serves as an anchor point for sessions toward external PDN and provides functions such as user IP
address allocation, policy enforcement, packet filtering, and charging support.

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 Policy enforcement includes operator-defined rules for resource allocation to control data rate, QoS,
and usage.
 Packet filtering functions include deep packet inspection for application detection.

MOBILITY MANAGEMENT ENTITY (MME):

 The MME performs the signaling and control functions to manage the user terminal access to network
connections, assignment of network resources, and mobility management function such as idle mode
location tracking, paging, roaming, and handovers.
 MME controls all control plane functions related to subscriber and session management.
 The MME provides security functions such as providing temporary identities for user terminals,
interacting with Home Subscriber Server (HSS) for authentication, and negotiation of ciphering and
integrity protection algorithms.
 It is also responsible for selecting the appropriate serving and PDN gateways, and selecting legacy
gateways for hand-overs to other GERAN or UTRAN networks.
 MME is the point at which lawful interception of signaling is made.
 It should be noted that an MME manages thousands of eNode-B elements, which is one of the key
differences from 2G or 3G platforms using RNC and SGSN platforms.

POLICY AND CHARGING RULES FUNCTION (PCRF):

 The Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) is a concatenation of Policy Decision Function (PDF)
and Charging Rules Function (CRF).
 The PCRF interfaces with the PDN gateway and supports service data flow detection, policy
enforcement, and flow-based charging.
 Release 8 further enhanced PCRF functionality to include support for non-3GPP access (e.g., Wi-Fi
or fixed line access) to the network.

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Chapter 2

WIRELESS FUNDAMENTALS

COMMUNICATION SYSTEM BUILDING BLOCKS

Fig: 2.1 Wireless digital communication system

THE BROADBAND WIRELESS CHANNEL: PATH LOSS AND

SHADOWING
The main goal is to explain the fundamental factors affecting the received signal in a wireless system,
and how they can be modelled using a handful of parameters.

Table 2.1 Key Wireless Channel Parameters

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The overall model used to describe the channel in discrete time is a simple tap-delay line (TDL):

The output of the channel can then be described as

where x[k] is an input sequence of data symbols with rate 1/T,

PATH LOSS

 The difference between wired and wireless channels is the amount of transmitted power that
actually reaches the receiver.
 The simplest channel is the free space line of sight channel with no objects between the
receiver and the transmitter or around the path between them.
 In this simple case, the transmitted signal attenuates since the energy is spread spherically
around the transmitting antenna. This is called Path Loss
 Assuming an isotropic antenna is used, the propagated signal energy expands over a spherical
wavefront.
 So the energy received at an antenna a distance d away is inversely proportional to the
sphere surface area, 4πd2.

The free-space path loss formula, or Friis formula, is given as

Figure 2.2 Free space propagation

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 where Pr and Pt are the received and transmitted powers
 λ is the wavelength.

In the context of the TDL model, Pr/Pt is the average value of the channel gain; that is, Pr/Pt= E||h||2,
where E[·] denotes the expected value, or mathematical mean.

If directional antennas are used at the transmitter or receiver, a gain of Gt and/or Gr is achieved, and
the received power is simply increased by the gain of these antennas.

An important observation from received power equation is that since c = fcλ λ = c/fc, the received
power decreases with the carrier frequency. In other words, for a given transmit power, the range is
decreased when higher frequency waves are used. This has important implications for high-data rate
systems, since most large bandwidths are available at higher frequencies.

RANGE VS. BANDWIDTH

From received power equation given above , Pr ∝ λ2, which means that .

Higher frequencies suffer greater power loss than lower frequencies. As a result, lower carrier
frequencies are generally more desirable, and hence very crowded.

COMPARING AN LTE SYSTEM AT 2100MHZ AND 700MHZ SPECTRUM

Comparing an LTE system at 2100MHz (the new PCS frequencies) and 700MHz spectrum,the
700MHz system will have nine times the received power.

The effective path loss exponent α also increases at higher frequencies, due to increased absorption
and attenuation of high frequency signals. Hence from a coverage point of view 700MHz systems is
more advantageous.

But bandwidth at higher carrier frequencies is more plentiful, available on a global basis, and always
less expensive.

Hence, a high-rate, low-cost system would generally prefer to operate at higher frequencies, if the
customer base is dense enough to overcome the coverage problems at those frequencies.

An ideal scenario from an operator standpoint would be to initially roll out LTE at low frequencies
(like 700MHz) in order to serve many customers with few base stations. Then, as the subscriber base
grows to a critical mass, shift to a shorter-range network operating at higher frequencies to support
higher density at lower cost.

TERRESTRIAL PROPAGATION

The terrestrial propagation environment is not free space. The reflections from the Earth or other
objects would actually increase the received power since more energy would reach the receiver.
However, because a reflected wave often experiences a 180-degree phase shift, at relatively large

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distances (usually over a kilometer) the reflection serves to create destructive interference, and the
common 2-ray approximation for path loss is:

which is significantly different from free-space path loss in several respects.

 First, the antenna heights now assume a very important role in the propagation, hence radio
transmitters are usually placed on the highest available object.
 Second, the wavelength and hence carrier frequency dependence has disappeared from the formula,
which is not typically observed in practice, however.
 Third, and crucially, the distance dependence has changed to d−4, implying that energy loss is more
severe with distance in a terrestrial system than in free space.

In order to more accurately describe different propagation environments, empirical models are
developed using experimental data.

One of the simplest and most common is the empirical path loss formula:

The above formula groups all the various effects into two parameters, the path loss exponent α and the
measured path loss Po at a reference distance of do, which is often chosen as 1 meter.

Although Po should be determined from measurements, it is often well approximated (within several
dB) as simply (λ/4π)2 when do = 1.

This simple empirical path loss formula is capable of reasonably representing most of the important
path loss trends with just these two parameters, at least over some range of interest.

SHADOWING:
Path loss models attempt to account for the distance-dependent relationship between transmitted and
received power.

Many other factors can have a large effect on the total received power.

For example, obstacles such as trees and buildings may be located between the transmitter and
receiver, and cause temporary degradation in received signal strength, while on the other hand
a temporary line-of-sight transmission path would result in abnormally high received power.

If there are any objects (such buildings or trees) along the path of the signal, some part of the
transmitted signal is lost through absorption, reflection, scattering, and diffraction. This effect is
called shadowing.

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Fig:2.3 Shadowing can cause large deviations from path loss predictions.

The standard method of accounting for these variations in signal strength is to introduce a random
effect called shadowing.

With shadowing, the empirical path loss formula becomes

where χ is a sample of the shadowing random process. Hence, the received power is now also modelled
as a random process.

Shadowing is caused by macroscopic objects, typically it has a correlation distance on the order of
meters or tens of meters. Hence, shadowing is often alternatively called “large-scale fading.”

The shadowing value χ is typically modelled as a lognormal random variable, that is

where is a Gaussian (normal) distribution with mean 0 and variance . With this
formulation, the standard deviation σs is expressed in dB.

Shadowing is an important effect in wireless networks because it causes the received SINR (Signal to
Interference Plus Noise Ratio) to vary dramatically over long time scales

WHY IS THE SHADOWING LOGNORMAL?

Neglecting the path loss for a moment, if a transmission experiences N random attenuations βi, i = 1,
2, ..., N between the transmitter and receiver, the received power can be modelled as

which can be expressed in dB as

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Then, using the Central Limit Theorem (CLT), it can be argued that the sum term will become
Gaussian as N becomes large (and often the CLT is accurate for fairly small N), and since the
expression is in dB, the shadowing is hence lognormal.

CELLULAR SYSTEMS

It is possible to reliably communicate over some limited distance, due to path loss ,shadowing and
given a maximum allowable transmit power,

Path loss allows for spatial isolation of different transmitters operating on the same frequency at the
same time. As a result, path loss and short-range transmissions increase the overall capacity of the
system by allowing more simultaneous transmissions to occur. This straightforward observation is the
theoretical basis for modern cellular communication systems.

Since LTE systems use cellular architecture, the concepts about cellular networks, sectoring and
frequency reuse is fundamental to understanding LTE system design and performance.

THE CELLULAR CONCEPT

Cellular concept was a major breakthrough in solving the problem of spectral congestion and
User capacity.

In this concept ,a single high power transmitter is replaced with many low power transmitters ,each
providing coverage to only small portion of the service area.

In cellular systems, the service area is subdivided into smaller geographic areas called cells that are
each served by their own base station.

In order to minimize interference between cells, the transmit power level of each base station is
regulated to be just enough to provide the required signal strength at the cell boundaries.

As path loss allows for spatial isolation of different cells operating on the same frequency channels at
the same time, same frequency channels can be reassigned to different cells, as long as those cells are
spatially isolated.

The rate at which frequencies can be reused should be determined such that the interference between
base stations is kept to an acceptable level.

The design process of selecting and allocating channel groups for all of the base stations within a
system is called frequency reuse or frequency planning.

Frequency planning is required to determine a proper frequency reuse factor and a geographic reuse
pattern.

The frequency reuse factor f is defined as f ≤ 1, where f = 1 means that all cells reuse all the frequencies.
Accordingly, f = 1/3 implies that a given frequency band is used by only 1 out of every 3 cells.

Figure shows an example of hexagonal cellular system model with frequency reuse factor f = 1/7, where
cells labelled with the same letter use the same frequency channels.
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In this model, a cluster is outlined in bold and consists of seven cells with different frequency channels.

The hexagonal cell shape is conceptual, it has been widely used in the analysis of a cellular system due
to its simplicity and analytical convenience.

Fig: 2.4 :Standard figure of a hexagonal cellular system with f = 1/7.

ADVANTAGES OF CELLULAR SYSTEM:

 Cellular systems allow the overall system capacity to increase by making the cells smaller and
turning down the power.

 Cellular systems have a very desirable scaling property—more capacity can be supplied by installing
more base stations. As the cell size decreases, the transmit power of each base station also decreases
correspondingly.

HAND OFF PROCESS:

 The seamless transfer of a connection from one base station to another is called as handoff process.
 Since cellular systems support user mobility, seamless call transfer from one cell to another should
be provided. Achieving smooth handoffs is a challenging aspect of cellular system design

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DISADVANTAGES

 Small cells give a large capacity advantage and reduce power consumption, but their primary
drawbacks are the need for more base stations (and their associated hardware costs), and the need for
frequent handoffs.
 Hence in wireless systems, an appropriate tradeoff between these competing factors needs to be
determined depending on the system requirements.

ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR SYSTEMS

Interference is the major limiting factor in the performance of cellular radio systems. Co-channel
interference (CCI) is caused from other users in the same cell or from other cells ..

The OCI can be avoided by two methods

 By increasing the carrier power of the transmitter

 By providing sufficient spatial isolation between them

In cellular systems, OCI is a decreasing function of the radius of the cell (R) and the distance to the
center of the neighboring co-channel cell and an increasing function of transmit power.

Increasing the carrier power of the transmitter leads to increased interference to neighboring channels,
hence second method can be used.

If all users (or base stations) increased or decreased their power at once, the SIR and hence the
performance is typically unchanged—it is known as an interference-limited system.

The SIR(Signal to interference ratio), determines the performance (capacity, reliability)of the system.

SIR is the amount of desired power to the amount of transmitted power.

The spatial isolation between co-channel cells can be measured by defining the parameter Z, called co-
channel reuse ratio.

It is measured as the ratio of the distance to the center of the nearest co-channel cell (D) to the radius
of the cell(R).

In a hexagonal cell structure, the co-channel reuse ratio is given by

=sqrt(3*N) where N=cluster size

where 1/f is the size of a cluster and the inverse of the frequency reuse factor.

A lower value of f reduces co-channel interference so that it improves the quality of the communication
link and capacity. However, the overall spectral efficiency decreases with the size of a cluster,
so f should be chosen just small enough to keep the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio
(SINR) above acceptable levels.

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Since the background noise power is negligible compared to the interference power in an interference-
limited environment, the received signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) can be used instead of SINR. If
the number of interfering cells is NI, the SIR for a mobile station can be given by

where S is the received power of the desired signal and Ii is the interference
power from the ith co-channel base station.

The received SIR depends on the location of each mobile station, and it should be kept above an
appropriate threshold for reliable communication.

SECTORING:
It is desirable to find techniques to improve SIR in cells without sacrificing so much bandwidth.

A popular technique is to sectorise the cells, which is effective if frequencies are reused in each cell.

Sectoring means subdividing each cell. It is done by using directional antennas instead of an omni-
directional antenna at the base station, the co-channel interference can be significantly reduced and
system capacity is increased.

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Fig 2.5 :3-sector (120-degree) and 6-sector (60-degree) cells.

ADVANTAGES

 The received SIR can be significantly improved.

 System capacity is increased.
 Co Channel interference is reduced.
 Frequency reuse can be done in each cell.

DRAWBACKS

 Sectoring increases the number of antennas at each base station

 Reduces trunking efficiency due to channel sectoring at the base station.
 Sectoring increases the overhead due to the increased number of intersector handoffs.
 In channels with heavy scattering, desired power can be lost into other sectors, which can cause
intersector interference as well as power loss.

NEW APPROACHES TO OTHER CELL INTERFERENCE

The effect of CCI is more important in LTE as it provides high data rate and spectral efficiency

LTE does not have built-in features to reduce the effects of this interference, unlike, CDMA.

The deployment of multiple antennas does not help, and in fact is likely to make the system even more
sensitive to other cell interference.

There can be two approaches

 A straightforward new approach to this problem is to use advanced signal processing techniques at
the receiver and/or transmitter as a means of reducing or cancelling the perceived interference. These
methods have important merits and are being actively researched but they have some important
shortcomings when viewed in a practical context of near-future cellular systems such as LTE.
 Network-level approaches such as cooperative scheduling or encoding across base stations ,multicell
power control and distributed antennas can be considered. These network-level approaches require
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relatively little channel knowledge (with the exception of cooperative encoding) and effectively reduce
other cell interference through macro-diversity and efficient sharing of the spectrum.

The simpler of these techniques are being actively considered for LTE and beyond.

THE BROADBAND WIRELESS CHANNEL: FADING

Fading is caused by the reception of multiple versions of the same signal. The multiple received
versions are caused by reflections that are referred to as multipath. The reflections may arrive at very
close to the same time, if there is local scattering around the receiver—or the reflections may arrive at
relatively longer intervals, due to multiple different paths between the transmitter and receiver.

Figure The channel may have a few major paths with quite different lengths, and then the receiver may see
a number of locally scattered versions of those paths.

Fig:2.6:Multipath Fading

When some of the reflections arrive at nearly the same time, the combined effect of those reflections can be
seen in figure given below .

Depending on the phase difference between the arriving signals, the interference can be either constructive
or destructive.

It causes a very large observed difference in the amplitude of the received signal even over very short
distances.

Moving the transmitter or receiver even a very short distance can have a dramatic effect on the received
amplitude, even though the path loss and shadowing effects may not have changed at all.

The difference between constructive interference (top) and destructive interference (bottom) at fc = 2.5GHz
is less than 0.1 nanoseconds in phase, which corresponds to about 3 cm.

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Fig.2.7:Constuctiive and Destructive fading

EXPLANATION:

Considering the time-varying tapped-delay line channel model. Either the transmitter or receiver move relative
to each other, the channel response h(t) will change. This channel has two dimensions: a delay dimension τ and
a time-dimension t, as shown below. Since the channel changes over distance (and hence time), the values
of h0,h1, ..., hν may be totally different at time t vs. time t + Δt. Because the channel is highly variant in both
the τ and t dimensions, to discuss the channel response statistical methods is used.

The delay τ corresponds to how long the channel impulse response lasts. The channel is time varying, so the
channel impulse response is also a function of time, i.e., h(τ, t), and can be quite different at time t + Δt than
it was at time t.

Fig.2.8:Channel response at two different times

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The fundamental function used to statistically describe broadband fading channels is the two-dimensional
autocorrelation function, A(Δτ, Δt). The autocorrelation function is defined as

Channels that can be described by the autocorrelation in are thus referred to as Wide Sense Stationary
Uncorrelated Scattering (WSSUS), which is the most popular model for wideband fading channels, and
relatively accurate in many practical scenarios.

The next three sections will explain how many of the key wireless channel parameters can be estimated from
the autocorrelation function A(Δτ, Δt), and how they are related

Table 2.1 Summary of Broadband Fading Parameters, with Rules of Thumb

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DELAY SPREAD AND COHERENCE BANDWIDTH

The delay spread is a very important property of a wireless channel, since it specifies the duration of
the channel impulse response h(τ, t).

The delay spread is the amount of time that elapses between the first arriving path and the last
arriving (non-negligible) path.

The delay spread can be found by inspecting ,that is, by setting Δt = 0 in the channel autocorrelation
function.

Aτ(Δτ) is often referred to as the Multipath Intensity Profile, or power delay profile.

If Aτ(Δτ) has non-negligible values from (0,τmax), the maximum delay spread is τmax. This is an
important definition because it specifies how many taps ν will be needed in the discrete
representation of the channel impulse response, since

where Ts is the sampling time.

τrms gives a measure of the “width” or “spread” of the channel response in time.

A large τrms implies a highly dispersive channel in time and a long channel impulse response (i.e.,
large ν), whereas a small τrms indicates that the channel is not very dispersive, and hence might require
just a few taps to accurately characterize.

A general rule of thumb is that τmax ≈5τrms.

The channel coherence bandwidth Bc is the frequency domain dual of the channel delay spread. The
coherence bandwidth gives a rough measure for the maximum separation between a frequency f1 and
a frequency f2 where the channel frequency response is correlated. That is:

|f1 − f2| ≤ Bc H(f1) ≈ H(f2)

|f1 − f2| > Bc H(f1) and H(f2) are uncorrelated

τmax describes the channel duration, Bc describes the range of frequencies over which the channel
stays constant. Given the channel delay spread, it can be shown that

The important feature is that Bc and τ are inversely related.

DOPPLER SPREAD AND COHERENCE TIME

The Doppler power spectrum gives the statistical power distribution of the channel where signal
transmitted at just one exact frequency.The power delay profile was caused by multipath between the
transmitter and receiver, the Doppler power spectrum is caused by motion between the transmitter and
receiver.
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The Doppler power spectrum is the Fourier transform of At(Δt), that is:

The Doppler spread is

where ν is the maximum speed between the transmitter and receiver, fc is the carrier frequency,
and c is the speed of light.

Dual of Doppler spread is channel coherence time Tc, it gives the period of time over which the
channel is significantly correlated. Mathematically:

|t1 − t2| ≤ Tc h(t1) ≈ h(t2)

|t1 − t2| > tc h(t1) and h(t2) are uncorrelated

The coherence time and Doppler spread are also inversely related,

If the transmitter and receiver are moving fast relative to each other and hence the Doppler is large,
the channel will change much more quickly than if the transmitter and receiver are stationary.

ANGULAR SPREAD AND COHERENCE DISTANCE

Till now we have focused on channel response wrt frequency and time. Channels also vary over
space.

The rms angular spread of a channel can be denoted as θrms, and refers to the statistical distribution of
the angle of the arriving energy.

A large θrms implies that channel energy is coming in from many directions, whereas a
small θrms implies that the received channel energy is more focused.

A large angular spread generally occurs when there is a lot of local scattering, and this results in more
statistical diversity in the channel, whereas more focused energy results in less statistical diversity.

The dual of angular spread is coherence distance, Dc. As the angular spread increases, the coherence
distance decreases, and vice versa. A coherence distance of d means that any physical positions
separated by d have an essentially uncorrelated received signal amplitude and phase.

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An important trend to note from the above relations is that the coherence distance increases with the
carrier wavelength λ, so higher-frequency systems have shorter coherence distances.

Angular spread and coherence distance are particularly important in multiple antenna systems. The
coherence distance gives a rule of thumb for how far antennas should be spaced apart, in order to be
statistically independent. If the coherence distance is very small, antenna arrays can be effectively
employed to provide rich diversity.

MODELLING BROADBAND FADING CHANNELS

In order to design wireless communication systems, it is important to develop channel
models that incorporate their variations in time, frequency, and space.

The two major classes of models are

 Statistical Models
 Empirical Models

Statistical models are simpler, and are useful for analysis and simulations.

The empirical models are more complicated but usually represent a specific type of channel
more accurately.

A METHOD FOR DEVELOPING STATISTICAL MODELS

The methods used for modelling wireless channels are broken into three steps:

 First consider just a single channel sample corresponding to a single principle path
between the transmitter and receiver, that is: h(τ, t) → h0δ(τ, t)
This step is done to know how is the value of |h0| statistically distributed.

 Next consider how this channel sample h0 evolves over time, that is: h(τ, t) → h0(t)δ(τ)
This step is done to find, How does the value |h0(t)| change over time. That is, how is h0(t)
correlated with some h0(t + Δt)

 Finally, h(τ, t) is represented as a general time varying function. One simple approach
would be to model h(τ, t) as a general multipath channel with ν + 1 tap values.

STATISTICAL CHANNEL MODELS

There are three Models
 Rayleigh fading Distribution
 Ricean Distribution
 Nakagami-m Fading Distribution
RAYLEIGH FADING
 In Mobile Radio channels, the Rayleigh distribution is commonly used to describe the
statistical time varying nature of the received envelope.
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 All the multipath components have approximately the same amplitude(Mobile station
is far from Base station).
 There is no dominant signal component i.e. no line of Sight (LOS)component.
 If the number of scatterers is large and the angles of arrival between them are
uncorrelated, from the Central Limit Theorem it can be shown that the in-phase
(cosine) and quadrature (sine) components of r(t), denoted as rI(t) and rQ(t), follow
two independent time-correlated Gaussian random processes.
 Sum of two quadrature Gaussian random signals obeys a Rayleigh fading Distribution.
 Consider a snapshot value of r(t) at time t = 0, and note that r(0) = rI(0) + rQ(0).
 Since the values rI(0) and rQ(0) are Gaussian random variables, it can be shown that

the distribution of the envelope amplitude is Rayleigh, and the received

power is exponentially distributed.

Formally, Amplitude Envelope

And Power

where Pr is the average received power due to shadowing and path loss

 The path loss and shadowing determine the mean received power, and the total received
power fluctuates around this mean due to the fading.
 The Gaussian random variables rI and rQ each have zero mean and variance σ2 = Pr/2.
 The phase of r(t) is defined as

Fig: 2.9 Rayleigh Fading

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LINE-OF-SIGHT CHANNELS—THE RICEAN DISTRIBUTION

 When there is a dominant LOS signal, the received envelope distribution will be
modelled by a Ricean distribution, which is given by

where μ2 is the power of the LOS component

I0 is the 0th order, modified Bessel function of the first kind.

 The Ricean distribution reduces to the Rayleigh distribution in the absence of a LOS
component.
 The factor K is quantified as

and is a natural description of how strong the LOS component is relative to the non-
LOS (NLOS) components.

For K = 0, again the Ricean distribution reduces to Rayleigh

For K → ∞, the physical meaning is that there is only a single LOS path and no other
scattering, the received power becomes increasingly deterministic.

 The average received power under Ricean fading is just the combination of the
scattering power and the LOS power, i.e., Pr = 2σ2 + μ2.

COMPARISION BETWEEN RAYLEIGH AND RICEAN

 Rayleigh distribution has no LOS dominant component

 Ricean Distribution has LOS as dominant component.
 Rayleigh distribution is more simple and easier analysis than the Ricean
distribution
 The Ricean distribution is more accurate depiction of wireless broadband
systems, which typically have one or more dominant components. This is true of
fixed wireless systems.

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Fig:2.10 Probability distributions f|r|(x) for Rayleigh, Ricean w/K = 1, and Nakagami with m = 2. All have average
received power Pr = 1.

A MORE GENERAL MODEL: NAKAGAMI-M FADING

 The Nakagami-m fading distribution is a more general form .

 The probability density function (PDF) of Nakagami fading is given as

 It is more general as m = (K + 1)2/(2K + 1) gives an approximate Ricean distribution

 m = 1 gives a Rayleigh.
 As m → ∞, the receive power tends to be a constant, Pr.

The power distribution for Nakagami fading is

STATISTICAL CORRELATION OF THE RECEIVED SIGNAL

 The statistical methods describes the way in which the samples of received signal are
statistically distributed.

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 These methods give the probability density functions (PDFs) that gives the likelihood of the
received signal envelope and power at a given time instant.

 Statistical Correlation of the Received Signal links those statistical models with the
channel autocorrelation function, Ac(Δτ, Δt).

 This will help us to understand how the envelope signal r(t) evolves over time, or changes
from one frequency or location to another.
 Rayleigh fading is used as an example distribution because of its simplicity and consistency.

TIME CORRELATION

 In the time domain, the channel h(τ = 0,t) can be thought of consisting of
approximately one new sample from a Rayleigh distribution every Tc seconds, with
the values in between interpolated.
 The autocorrelation function At(Δt) describes how the channel is correlated in time.
 Frequency domain Doppler power spectrum ρt(Δf) provides a band-limited
description of the same correlation since it is simply the Fourier transform
of At(Δt).
 The power spectral density of the channel h(τ = 0, t) should be ρt(Δf).

Figure 2.11 Autocorrelation of the signal envelope in time, Ac(Δt), which here is normalized by the Doppler fD.

For the specific case of uniform scattering the Doppler power spectrum becomes

The Inverse Fast Fourier Transform of this function ρt(Δf) predicts the time correlation
properties of narrowband fading signals.

 Complex Gaussian values in the frequency domain can be converted to a correlated

Rayleigh envelope in the time domain

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Figure 2.12.The spectral correlation due to Doppler, ρt(Δf) for uniform scattering.

FREQUENCY CORRELATION

 The channel in the frequency domain, H(f, t = 0), is assumed to be consisting of

approximately one new random sample every Bc Hz, with the values in between
interpolated.
 The Rayleigh fading model assumes that the received quadrature signals in time are
complex Gaussian.
 Complex Gaussian values in the time domain can be converted to a correlated Rayleigh
frequency envelope |H(f)|.

Figure 2.13.The shape of the Doppler power spectrum ρt(Δf) determines the correlation envelope of the channel in time (top).
Similarly, the shape of the Multipath Intensity Profile Aτ(Δτ) determines the correlation pattern of the channel frequency
response (bottom).

Multipath Intensity Profile:

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 The correlation function that maps from uncorrelated time domain (τ domain)
random variables to a correlated frequency response is the Multipath Intensity
Profile, Aτ(Δτ).

THE DISPERSION-SELECTIVITY DUALITY

There are two different effects from fading that are

selectivity and dispersion.

 By selectivity, it means that the signal’s received value is changed by the channel over
time or frequency.
 By dispersion, it means that the channel is dispersed, or spread out, over time or
frequency.
 Selectivity and dispersion are time-frequency duals of each other: selectivity in time
causes dispersion in frequency, and selectivity in frequency causes dispersion in time—
or vice versa.

Figure 2.14 The dispersion-selectivity duality: Dispersion in time causes frequency selectivity, while dispersion in
frequency causes time selectivity

Explaination:

 The Doppler effect causes dispersion in frequency, as described by the Doppler power
spectrum ρt(Δf).
 This dispersion can be interpreted as a time varying amplitude, or selectivity, in time.
 A dispersive multipath channel that causes the paths to be received over a period of
time τmax causes selectivity in the frequency domain, known as frequency-selective
fading.
 Time dispersion usually causes much more damaging interference than frequency
dispersion, called as inter symbol interference.

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MULTIDIMENSIONAL CORRELATION
Signals are correlated in all three domains time ,frequency and space.

A broadband wireless data system with mobility and multiple antennas is an example of a
system where all three types of fading will play a significant role.

EMPIRICAL CHANNEL MODELS

 The parametric statistical channel models do not take into account specific wireless
propagation environments.
 To exactly model a wireless channel it requires complete knowledge of the surrounding
scatterers (e.g., buildings, plants, etc.).
 Empirical and semi-empirical wireless channel models have been developed to accurately
estimate the path loss, shadowing, and small-scale fast fading.
 Empirical models are based on extensive measurement of various propagation environments,
and they specify the parameters and methods for modeling the propagation in different
wireless systems.
 The empirical channel models take into account realistic factors such as angle of arrival
(AoA), angle of departure (AoD), antenna array fashion, angle spread (AS), and antenna array
gain pattern.
 Different empirical channel models exist for different wireless scenarios, such as suburban
macro, urban macro, urban micro cells, and so on. These models are also applicable to the
multiple antenna systems

LTE CHANNEL MODELS FOR PATH LOSS

 These are the empirical LTE channel models, widely used in modelling the outdoor macro-
and micro-cell wireless environments. These are also referred to as “3GPP” channel models.
 First, we need to specify the environment where an empirical channel model is used, e.g.,
suburban macro, urban macro, or urban micro environment.
 The BS to BS distance is typically larger than 3 km for a macro-cell environment and less
than 1 km for an urban micro-cell environment.

The path loss can then be specified by empirical models for these different scenarios.

For the 3GPP macro-cell environment, the path loss is given by the so-called COST Hata model
formula,

 where hb is the BS antenna height in meters,

 fc is the carrier frequency in MHz,
 d is the distance between the BS and MS in kilometers,
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 a(hm) is a relatively negligible correction function for the mobile height defined as a(hm) =
(1.1log10(fc) − 0.7)hm − 1.56 log10(fc) − 0.8 where hm is the mobile antenna height in meters.

The COST Hata model is generally considered to be accurate when d is between 100 meters and 20
km and fc (1500, 2000)MHz.

 For LTE systems which operate below 1500MHz, for example at 700MHz, the empirical
channel model used is the Hata model.
 Several slightly different Hata models exist, depending on whether the environment is urban,
suburban, or for open areas.
 The Hata Model for Urban Areas is:

where C1 is a corrective factor that further varies depending on the size of the city, but for a
medium or small city is

C1 = 0.8 + (1.1log10(fc) − 0.7)hm − 1.56 log10(fc)

 The Hata Model for both Suburban and Open Areas derives from the Urban model.

The Suburban path loss is given as

while the Open Area Hata Model is

PLo[dB] = PLu − 4.78(log10 fc)2 + 18.33 log10(fc) − 40.94

LTE CHANNEL MODELS FOR MULTIPATH

 The 3GPP channel models also include considerations for multipath modelling and
scattering.
 The received signal at the mobile receiver consists of N time-delayed versions of the
transmitted signal. The N paths are characterized by powers and delays that are chosen
according to prescribed channel generation procedures, as follows.

 The number of paths N ranges from 1 to 20 and is dependent on the specific

channel models.
 The power distribution normally follows the exponential profile, but other power
profiles are also supported.
 Each multipath component further corresponds to a cluster of M subpaths, where
each subpath characterizes the incoming signal from a scatterer.

The M subpaths define a cluster of adjacent scatterers, and therefore have the same multipath delay.

For 3GPP, the phases are random variables uniformly distributed from 0 to 360 degrees.
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The Angle of Departure (AoD) is usually within a narrow range in outdoor applications due to the
lack of scatterers around the BS transmitter, and is assumed to be uniformly distributed in indoor
applications.

The Angle of Arrival (AoA) is assumed to be uniformly distributed due to the abundance of local
scattering around the mobile receiver.

The final channel is created by summing up the M subpath components.

In the 3GPP channel model, the nth multipath component from the uth transmit antenna to
the sth receive antenna, is given as

where the following are the key parameters, shown visually in Figure 2.15:

• Pn is the power of the nth path, following exponential distribution.

• σSF is the lognormal shadow fading.
• M is the number of subpaths per path.
• θn,m,AoD is the AoD for the mth subpath of the nth path.
• θn,m,AoA is the AoA for the mth subpath of the nth path.
• GBS (θn,m,AoD) is the BS antenna gain of each array element..
• GBS (θn,m,AoA) is the MS antenna gain of each array element.
• k is the wave number where λ is the carrier wavelength in meters.
• ds is the distance in meters from BS antenna element s from the reference (s = 1) antenna.
• du is the distance in meters from MS antenna element u from the reference (u = 1) antenna.
• Φn,m is the phase of the mth subpath of the nth path, uniformly distributed between 0 and 360
degrees.
• ||v|| is the magnitude of the MS velocity vector, which consists of the velocity of the MS array
elements.
• θv is the angle of the MS velocity vector.

Figure 2.15 3GPP channel model for MIMO simulations.

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LTE SEMI-EMPIRICAL CHANNEL MODELS

 The above empirical multipath model provides a very thorough description of a number of
propagation environments. Due to the large number of parameters involved, constructing a
fully empirical channel model is relatively time-consuming and computationally intensive.
 Semi-empirical channel models are therefore alternatives, which provide the accurate
inclusion of the practical parameters in a real wireless system, while maintaining the
simplicity of statistical channel models.
 Well-known examples of the simpler multipath channel models include the 3GPP2
Pedestrian A, Pedestrian B, Vehicular A, and Vehicular B models, suited for low-mobility
pedestrian mobile users and higher mobility vehicular mobile users.

MITIGATION OF NARROWBAND FADING

 There are many different techniques used to overcome narrowband fading in modern
communication systems, they are collectively referred to as diversity.
 Diversity means receiving multiple copies of same signal.
 Because the received signal power is random, if several (mostly) uncorrelated versions of
the signal can be received, chances are good that at least one of the versions has adequate
power.
 Without diversity, high data rate wireless communication is virtually impossible.

THE EFFECTS OF UNMITIGATED FADING

The probability of bit error (BER) is the principle metric of interest for the physical layer (PHY) of
a communication system.

For non fading systems,

 For a QAM-based modulation system, the BER is an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN,
no fading)and it be can accurately approximated by the following bound

 The probability of error decreases very rapidly (exponentially) with the SNR, so decreasing
the SNR linearly causes the BER to increase exponentially. Since the channel is constant, the
BER is constant over time.

For fading systems,

 In a fading channel, the BER become a random variable that depends on the instantaneous
channel strength.
 The instances when the channel is in a deep fade average BER will be maximum.
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 The average BER roughly follows the relationship

BER goes down very slowly with SNR, only inversely. The required SNR is over 30 dB higher in
fading.

Figure 2.16 Flat fading causes a loss of at least 20–30 dB at reasonable BER values.

 In LTE instead of BER ,the Packet Error Rate (PER), or Block Error Rate (BLER) or Frame
Error Rate (FER) is used .
 All these measures refer to the probability that at least one bit is in error in a block of L bits.
 The detection of a single bit error in a packet can be done by the Cyclic Redundancy Check
(CRC).
 If error is there the packet is either discarded by the receiver or retransmitted.

An expression for PER is

where Pb is the BER and L is the packet length.

 If the bit errors are correlated, then the PER actually improves.
 PER and BER are directly related, so reducing PER will reduce BER .
 Diversity is the key to improve PER and BER.
 The three most important types of diversity deployed in LTE systems.

SPATIAL DIVERSITY

 Spatial diversity is a powerful form of diversity.

 It is achieved by having two or more antennas at the receiver and/or the transmitter.

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 The simplest form of space diversity consists of two receive antennas, where the stronger
of the two signals is selected.
 As long as the antennas are spaced sufficiently, the two received signals will undergo
approximately uncorrelated fading. This type of diversity is called selection diversity.


Figure 2.17 Simple two-branch selection diversity eliminates most deep fades.

 Even though this simple technique completely discards “half” of the received signal, most of
the deep fades can be avoided and the average SNR is also increased.
 More sophisticated forms of spatial diversity include
o receive antenna arrays (two or more antennas) with maximal ratio combining,
transmit diversity using space-time codes, transmit precoding, and other
combinations of transmit and receive diversity.
 Spatial signaling techniques are very important to the ultimate success of LTE.

CODING AND INTERLEAVING

 This is one more type of diversity technic.

 It is used in nearly all contemporary digital communication systems.
 Traditionally thought of as a form of time diversity, in a multicarrier system they also can
capture frequency diversity.
 Coding means the use of error correction codes (ECCs), which is also known as forward error
correction.
 ECCs efficiently introduces redundancy at the transmitter to allow the receiver to recover the
input signal even if the received signal is significantly degraded by attenuation, interference,
and noise.
 Coding techniques can be categorized by their coding rate r ≤ 1, which is the inverse of the
redundancy added.
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o For example, the output of a rate code has three times the original rate, two redundant
bits for every original information bit.

Encoder
Figure shows the convolutional encoder defined by LTE for use in the Broadcast Channel (BCH).

 It is a rate code there is one input bit (ck) and 3 outputs .

 The constraint length of this code is 7, there are 6 delay elements or 64 possible states.
 The generator polynomial G, which consists of the generators Gi for each of the three outputs
is denoted in octal notation.
o For example, G0 = 133 in binary form is 1 0 1 1 0 1 1, where a 0 means the output does
not include this tap and a 1 means it does.
 Therefore, includes modulo-2 summed contributions from the input and after delay
elements 2, 3, 5, and 6.
 All optimal convolutional codes will include in each output the first and last taps, for
maximum memory.

Figure 2.18 The rate convolutional encoder defined by LTE for use in the Broadcast Channel (BCH).

Decoder

 The decoder takes the degraded output symbols after demodulation, and produce an
estimate of the original information signal ck.
 If for a given packet , then the packet was successfully received; otherwise, it must
be retransmitted.
 The most common decoding technique for convolutional codes is the reduced-state sliding-
window maximum likelihood sequence estimator, popularly known as the Viterbi decoder

TURBO ENCODER

 Turbo codes are build upon convolutional codes to provide increased resilience to errors
through iterative decoding .

 A rate turbo code is also deployed by LTE as shown in Figure , including for the uplink and
downlink shared channels.

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 The encoder is a parallel concatenated convolutional code that comprises an 8-state rate
systematic encoder and an 8-state rate 1 systematic encoder that operates on an

interleaved input sequence, for a net coding rate of .

 By systematic, we mean that one output is generated by a linear modulo-2 sum of the current
encoder state that is a function of both the input bit(s) and the previous states (i.e., there is
feedback in the state machine), while the other outputs are simply passed through to the
output, like xk in Figure 2.19.

Figure 2.19. The rate parallel concatenated turbo encoder defined by LTE for use in the uplink and downlink shared
channels, among others.

 Codes in LTE can also be punctured, which means that some of the output coded bits are
simply dropped, in order to lower the transmission rate.

DECODER

At the decoder, a random or fixed coded bit is inserted in the decoding process, which of course
has a 50% chance of being incorrect.

The reason puncturing is used is one of simplicity and complexity: since encoders and decoders
must have a different structure depending on the coding polynomial, switching between many
different encoder structures places a large complexity burden particularly on the decoder. Simply
puncturing the same code to achieve different coding rates allows the decoder structure to remain
the same regardless of the code rate.

Interleaving provides robustness to burst errors that can be caused by either bursty noise and
interference, or a sustained fade in time or frequency

Interleaving spreads out coded bits so that the effects of a burst error, after deinterleaving, are
spread roughly evenly over a frame, or block.
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Specifically to LTE, interleaving is used in several capacities.

AUTOMATIC REPEAT REQUEST (ARQ)

Another technique that is often used in modern wireless communication systems including
LTE is ARQ (automatic repeat request) and Hybrid-ARQ.

ARQ

 ARQ simply is a MAC layer retransmission protocol that allows erroneous packets to be
quickly retransmitted.
 Such a protocol works with PHY layer ECCs and parity checks to ensure reliable links even in
hostile channels.
 Since a single bit error causes a packet error, with ARQ the entire packet must be
retransmitted even when nearly all of the bits already received were correct, which is clearly
inefficient.

HYBRID-ARQ

 Hybrid-ARQ combines the two concepts of ARQ and FEC to avoid such waste, by combining
received packets.
 In H-ARQ a channel encoder such as a convolution encoder or turbo encoder is used to
generate additional redundancy to the information bits.
 Instead of transmitting all the encoded bits (systematic bits + redundancy bits), only a
fraction of the encoded bits are transmitted.
 This is achieved by puncturing some of the encoded bits to create an effective code rate greater
than the native code rate of the encoder.
 After transmitting the encoded and punctured bits, the transmitter waits for an
acknowledgment from the receiver telling it whether the receiver was able to successfully
decode the information bits from the transmission.
 If the receiver was able to decode the information bits, then nothing else needs to be done.
 If the receiver was unable to decode the information bits, then the transmitter can resend
another copy of the encoded bits.

In type I H-ARQ—commonly referred to as chase combining—during a retransmission the

transmitter sends a copy of the encoded bits that is identical to the first transmission and the receiver
soft combines the received bits with the previous transmission.

 As the noise/interference is uncorrelated, the receiver can combine all the transmissions to
increase the effective SINR.
 Thus, with every subsequent transmission the error probability is reduced and this process
continues until the receiver is able to decode the information without error.

In type II H-ARQ—commonly referred to as incremental redundancy—the transmitter changes the

bits that are punctured during a retransmission. This way with every retransmission the effective
code rate at the receiver decreases, which reduces the error probability.

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ADAPTIVE MODULATION AND CODING (AMC)

 LTE systems employ adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) in order to take advantage of
fluctuations in the channel over time and frequency.
 The basic idea is quite simple: transmit as high a data rate as possible when and where the
channel is good, and transmit at a lower rate when and where the channel is poor in order to
avoid excessive dropped packets.
 Lower data rates are achieved by using a small constellation—such as QPSK—and low rate
error correcting codes such as rate turbo codes.
 The higher data rates are achieved with large constellations—such as 64QAM—and less
robust error correcting codes.
 To perform AMC, the transmitter must have some knowledge of the instantaneous channel
gain. Once it does, it can choose the modulation technique that will achieve the highest
possible data rate while still meeting a BER or packet error rate (PER) requirement.
 An alternative objective is to pick the modulation and/or coding combination that simply
maximizes the successful throughput.
 A block diagram of an AMC system is given in Figure 2.20

Figure 2.20 Adaptive modulation and coding block diagram.

MITIGATION OF BROADBAND FADING

 Frequency-selective fading causes dispersion in time, which causes adjacent symbols
to interfere with each other unless T τmax.
 Since the data rate R is proportional to 1/T, high data rate systems almost invariably
have a substantial multipath delay spread, i.e., T τmax, and experience very
serious intersymbol interference (ISI) as a result.
 Choosing a technique to effectively combat ISI is a central design decision for any high
data rate system.
o OFDM is the most popular choice for combatting ISI in a range of high rate
systems, including 802.11/WiFi, 802.16/WiMAX, and of course LTE.

TECHNIQUES FOR ISI MITIGATION:

 Spread spectrum and rake receivers

 Equalization
 Maximum likelihood sequence detection

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 Multicarrier modulation: OFDM
 Single-carrier modulation with frequency domain equalization

SPREAD SPECTRUM AND RAKE RECEIVERS

 Speeding up the transmission rate helps to minimize multipath fading, assuming

the data rate is kept the same.
 Speeding up the transmission rate for a narrowband data signal results in a wideband
transmission, this technique is called spread spectrum.
 Spread spectrum techniques are generally broken into two different categories:
o Direct sequence
o Frequency hopping

Direct sequence and frequency hopping

 Direct sequence spread spectrum, also known as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), is
used widely in cellular voice networks and is effective at multiplexing a large number of
variable rate users in a cellular environment.
 Frequency hopping is used in some low-rate wireless LANs like Bluetooth, and in GSM
cellular networks.
 For both types of spread spectrum, a large bandwidth is used to send a relatively small data
rate. This is a reasonable approach for low data rate communications, like voice, where a large
number of users can be statistically multiplexed to yield a high overall system capacity.
 For high rate data systems, it requires each user to employ several codes simultaneously,
which generally results in self-interference. Although this self-interference can be corrected
with an equalizer (see next section), this largely defeats the purpose of using spread spectrum
to help with intersymbol interference.

In short, spread spectrum is not a natural choice for wireless broadband networks.

Wireless LANs (802.11a and 802.11g) used OFDM for multipath suppression and achieved much
higher data rates in the same bandwidth.

EQUALIZATION:
 Equilization is the process of reversal of distortion incurred by a signal transmitted through
a channel.

 Equalizers are perhaps the most logical alternative for ISI-suppression to OFDM.
 They don’t require additional antennas or bandwidth, and have moderate complexity.
 Equalizers are implemented at the receiver, and their function is to reverse the distortion
introduced by the channel.

Equalizers are broken into two classes: linear and decision-directed (nonlinear).

Linear Equalizers

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 A linear equalizer simply runs the received signal through a filter that roughly models the
inverse of the channel.
 The problem with this approach is that it inverts not only the channel, but also the received
noise. This noise enhancement can severely degrade the receiver performance, especially in
a wireless channel with deep frequency fades.
 Linear receivers are relatively simple to implement, but achieve poor performance in a time-
varying and severe-ISI channel.

Nonlinear Equalizers

 A nonlinear equalizer uses previous symbol decisions made by the receiver to cancel out
their subsequent interference, and so is often called a decision feedback equalizers (DFE).
 Nonlinear equalizers are expensive as they provide improved performance relative to linear
receivers
 It has sophisticated training and increased computational complexity.

MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD SEQUENCE DETECTION

 Maximum Likelihood Sequence Detection (MLSD) is the optimum method of suppressing

ISI, but has complexity that scales like O(Mv), where as before M is the constellation size
and ν is the channel delay.
 Therefore, MLSD is generally impractical on channels with a relatively long delay spread or
high data rate, but it is often used in some low–data rate outdoor systems like GSM

MULTICARRIER MODULATION: OFDM

 A large number of subcarriers (L) are used in parallel, so that the symbol time for each goes
from T → LT.
 Rather than sending a single signal with data rate R and bandwidth B, L signals at the same
time, each having bandwidth B/L and data rate R/L are sent
 In this way, if B/L Bc, each of the signals will undergo approximately flat fading and the
time dispersion for each signal will be negligible.
 This elegant idea is the basic principle of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, or
OFDM.

SINGLE-CARRIER MODULATION WITH FREQUENCY DOMAIN

EQUALIZATION

 A primary drawback of the OFDM approach to ISI-suppression is that the transmit signal has
a high peak-to-average ratio (PAR) relative to a single carrier signal.
 The dynamic range of the transmit power is too large, which results in either significant
clipping and distortion, or in a requirement for highly linear power amps (which are
expensive and inefficient).
 Solution will be to effectively do OFDM without generating a high PAR .This can be achieved
by transmitting a single carrier signal with a cyclic prefix, which has a low PAR, and then do
all the processing at the receiver.

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 Processing consists of a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to move the signal into the frequency
domain, a 1-tap frequency equalizer (just like in OFDM), and then an Inverse FFT to convert
back to the time domain for decoding and detection.
 In LTE, however, because multiple uplink users share the frequency channel at the same time,
the mobile station still must perform FFT and IFFT operations. The resulting approach in
LTE is known as Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA).

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MODULE-2
Multicarrier Modulation : OFDM basics
 Block Transmission with guard intervals
 Circular Convolution and the DFT
 The cyclic Prefix
 Frequency Equalisation
An OFDM block diagram
OFDM in LTE, Timing an d Frequency Synchronization
The Peak to Average Ratio (PAR)
 The PAR Problem
 Quantifying the PAR
 Clipping and other PAR reduction techniques
 LTE’s Approach to PAR in the uplink
Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalisation(SC-FDE)
 SC-FDE System Description
 SC-FDE performance Vs. OFDM
 Design considerations for SC-FDE and OFDM

Frequency Domain Multiple Access: Multiple Access overview

 Multiple Access Vs. Random Access
 OFDM-FDMA,OFDM-TDMA,OFDM-CDMA
OFDMA: How it works ,Advantages and disadvantages.
SC-FDMA:
 How it works ,Advantages and disadvantages.

OFDMA and SC-FDMA in LTE

Multiple Antenna Transmission and Reception:
Spatial diversity overview
 Array and diversity gain
 Increasing the Data Rate with spatial diversity
 Increased coverage or reduced transmit power
Receive Diversity:
Selection and maximum ratio combining
Transmit Diversity: Open loop Transmit Diversity
Transmit vs. receive Diversity, closed loop transmit diversity

Interference Cancellation Suppression and Signal Enhancement

 DOA- Based Beam steering
 Linear interference suppression: Complete and statistical knowledge of interference channels
Spatial Multiplexing
 Introduction
 Open loop MIMO
 Closed Loop MIMO

How to Choose between Diversity, Interference Suppression and spatial Multiplexing.

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Chapter 1
MULTICARRIER MODULATION
INTRODUCTION

Multicarrier modulation is the main concept behind most of the successful modern wireless
data systems, including Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), Wireless LANs (802.11a/g/n), Digital
Video Broadcasting, and most recently, beyond 3G cellular technologies such as WiMAX and
LTE.

The common feature of multicarrier modulation techniques is the use of multiple parallel
subcarriers, generated by the (inverse) discrete Fourier transform.

The most common type of multicarrier modulation is Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing (OFDM), along with its close cousins Discrete Multitone (DMT) in DSL and
Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) in the LTE uplink.

THE MULTICARRIER CONCEPT

 The basic idea of multicarrier modulation is to achieve high data rates and intersymbol
interference (ISI) free channels.
 In order to have a channel that does not have ISI, the symbol time Ts has to be larger than the
channel delay spread τ.
 Digital communication systems simply cannot function if ISI is present, the bit error rate
becomes intolerable.
 For wideband channels that provide the high data rates needed by today’s applications, the
symbol time will be much smaller than the delay spread, so intersymbol interference is
severe.

SOLUTION:

 In order to overcome this, multicarrier modulation divides the high-rate transmit bitstream
into L lower-rate substreams, where L is chosen so that each of the subcarriers has effective
symbol time TsL >> τ, and is hence effectively ISI-free.

 These individual substreams can then be sent over L parallel subcarriers, maintaining the
total desired data rate.

 The subcarriers are orthogonal under ideal propagation conditions multicarrier modulation
is referred to as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).

 The data rate on each of the subcarriers is much less than the total data rate, and so the
corresponding subcarrier bandwidth is much less than the total system bandwidth.

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 The number of substreams is chosen to ensure that each subcarrier has a bandwidth less than
the coherence bandwidth of the channel, so the subcarriers experience relatively flat fading.

 Thus, the ISI on each subcarrier is small. Moreover, in the digital implementation of OFDM,
the ISI can be completely eliminated through the use of a cyclic prefix.

EXAMPLE A certain wideband wireless channel has a delay spread of 1 μsec.

In order to overcome ISI, assume a requirement that Ts ≥ 10τ.
1. What is the maximum bandwidth allowable in this system if the ISI constraint is to be met without
using multicarrier modulation?
2. If multicarrier modulation is used, and we desire a 10MHz bandwidth, what is the required
number of subcarriers?

For part (1), if it is assumed that Ts = 10τ in order to satisfy the ISI-free condition, the maximum
bandwidth would be 1/Ts = .1/τ = 100KHz, two orders of magnitude below the intended bandwidths
for LTE systems.In part (2), if multicarrier modulation is employed, the symbol time goes to T = LTs.
The delay spread criterion mandates that the new symbol time is still bounded to 10% of the delay
spread, that is, (LTs)−1 = 100KHz. But the 10MHz bandwidth requirement gives (Ts)−1 = 10MHz.
Hence, L ≥ 100, so a suitable3 choice of Lmight be 128 subcarriers to allow the full 10MHz bandwidth
to be used with negligible ISI.

AN ELEGANT APPROACH TO INTERSYMBOL INTERFERENCE

 Multicarrier modulation in its simplest form divides the wideband incoming data stream
into L narrowband substreams, each of which is then transmitted over a different orthogonal
frequency subcarrier.

 The number of substreams L is chosen to make the symbol time on each substream much
greater than the delay spread of the channel or substream bandwidth is made less than the
channel coherence bandwidth. This ensures that the substreams will not experience
significant ISI.

A simple illustration of a multicarrier transmitter and receiver is given in Figures 3.1 and 3.2.

Figure 3.1 A basic multicarrier transmitter: a high-rate stream of R bps is broken into L parallel streams each with
rate R/L and then multiplied by a different carrier frequency.

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 A high-rate data signal of rate R bps and with a passband bandwidth B is broken
into L parallel substreams each with rate R/L and passband bandwidth B/L.

 After passing through the channel H(f), the received signal would appear as shown in Figure
3.3, where we have assumed for simplicity that the pulse-shaping allows a perfect spectral
shaping so that there is no subcarrier overlap.

 The subcarrier bandwidth to be much less than the coherence bandwidth, that is, B/L Bc,
then it can be ensured that each subcarrier experiences approximately flat fading.

The mutually orthogonal signals can then be individually detected, as shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2 A basic multicarrier receiver: each subcarrier is decoded separately, requiring L independent receivers.

Figure 3.3 The transmitted multicarrier signal experiences approximately flat fading on each subcarrier since B/L Bc,
even though the overall channel experiences frequency selective fading, that is, B > Bc.

 Hence, the multicarrier technique has an interesting interpretation in both the time
and the frequency domains.

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 In the time domain, the symbol duration on each subcarrier has increased to T = LTs,
so by letting L grow larger, it can be assured that the symbol duration exceeds the
channel delay spread, that is, T τ, which is a requirement for ISI-free
communication.

 In the frequency domain, the subcarriers have bandwidth B/L Bc, which assures “flat
fading,” the frequency domain equivalent to ISI-free communication.

DRAWBACKS
This simple type of multicarrier modulation is easy to understand, it has several crucial
shortcomings.

 In a realistic implementation, a large bandwidth penalty will be inflicted since the subcarriers
can’t have perfectly rectangular pulse shapes and still be time-limited.

 Very high-quality (and hence, expensive), low-pass filters will be required to maintain the
orthogonality of the subcarriers at the receiver.

 This scheme requires L independent RF units and demodulation paths.

SOLUTION:OFDM: OFDM overcomes these shortcomings.

OFDM BASICS
In order to overcome the requirement for L RF radios in both the transmitter and receiver, OFDM
employs an efficient computational technique known as the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT),
which can be implememted by very efficient Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).

Block Transmission with Guard Intervals

 We begin by grouping L data symbols into a block known as an OFDM symbol.

 An OFDM symbol lasts for a duration of T seconds, where T = LTs.

 In order to keep each OFDM symbol independent of the others after going through a
wireless channel, it is necessary to introduce a guard time in between each OFDM symbol

 This way, after receiving a series of OFDM symbols, as long as the guard time Tg is larger
than the delay spread of the channel τ, each OFDM symbol will only interfere with itself.

 OFDM transmissions allow ISI within an OFDM symbol.

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 By including a sufficiently large guard band, it is possible to guarantee that there is no
interference between subsequent OFDM symbols.

CIRCULAR CONVOLUTION AND THE DFT

 This technic is used to remove the ISI within each OFDM symbol.

 When an input data stream x[n] is sent through a linear time-invariant FIR channel h[n], the
output is the linear convolution of the input and the channel, that is, y[n] = x[n] * h[n].

 However, let’s imagine for a moment that it was possible to compute y[n] in terms of
a circular convolution, that is

where

and the circular function x[n]L = x[nmodL] is a periodic version of x[n] with period L.

Each value of y[n] = h[n] x[n] is the sum of the product of L terms.

 In this case of circular convolution, it would then be possible to take the DFT of the channel
output y[n] to get:

which yields in the frequency domain

 Note that the duality between circular convolution in the time domain and simple
multiplication in the frequency domain is a property unique to the DFT.

 The L point DFT is defined as

while its inverse, the IDFT is defined as

 This formula describes an ISI-free channel in the frequency domain, where each input
symbol X[m] is simply scaled by a complex-value H[m].

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 So, given knowledge of the channel frequency response H[m] at the receiver, it is possible to
recover the input symbol by simply computing

 where the estimate [m] will generally be imperfect due to additive noise, co-channel
interference, imperfect channel estimation, and other imperfections,but,The ISI—which is
the most serious form of interference in a wideband channel—has been
mitigated.

 To get the circular convolution ,a specific type of redundancy called the cyclic prefix is added
onto the transmitted vector.

THE CYCLIC PREFIX

 The key to making OFDM realizable in practice is the utilization of the FFT algorithm for
computing the DFT and the IFFT algorithm for computing the IDFT, which reduces the
number of required multiplications and additions from O(L2) to O(L log L), which is very
significant.

 The IFFT operation at the transmitter allows all the subcarriers to be created in the digital
domain, and thus requires only a single radio to be used, rather than L radios.

 In order for the IFFT/FFT to create an ISI-free channel, the channel must appear to provide
a circular convolution.

 If a cyclic prefix is added to the transmitted signal, as shown in Figure 3.4, then this creates
a signal that appears to be x[n]L, and so y[n] = x[n] h[n].

Figure 3.4 The OFDM cyclic prefix.

 Let’s see how this works. If the maximum channel delay spread has a duration of ν + 1
samples, then by adding a guard band of at least ν samples between OFDM symbols, each
OFDM symbol is made independent of those coming before and after it, and so just a single
OFDM symbol can be considered.

 Representing such an OFDM symbol in the time domain as a length L vector gives

After applying a cyclic prefix of length ν, the actual transmitted signal is

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 The output of the channel is by definition ycp = h * xcp, where h is a length ν + 1 vector
describing the impulse response of the channel during the OFDM symbol.

The output ycp has L + 2ν samples. The first ν samples of ycp contain interference from the preceding
OFDM symbol, and so are discarded. The last ν samples disperse into the subsequent OFDM symbol,
and so also are discarded. This leaves exactly L samples for the desired output y, which is precisely
what is required to recover the L data symbols embedded in x.

These L samples of y will be equivalent to y = h x.

PROOF:

Consider for the moment just y0, that is, the first element in y. As shown in Figure 3.5, due to the
cyclic prefix, y0 depends on x0 and the circularly wrapped values xL−v ... xL−1. That is:

Figure 3.5 The OFDM cyclic prefix creates a circular convolution at the receiver (signal y) even though the actual channel
causes a linear convolution.

This is exactly the value of y0, y1, ..., yL−1 resulting from y = x h. Thus, by using a circular
convolution, a cyclic prefix that is as long as the channel duration allows the channel output y to be
decomposed into a simple multiplication of the channel frequency response

H = DFT{h} and the channel frequency domain input, X = DFT{x}.

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Advantages of Cyclic code: It is simple.

Disadvantage: It increases both bandwidth and power loss

Since ν redundant symbols are sent, the required bandwith for OFDM increases from B to .
Hence, the cyclic prefix carries a power penalty of in addition to the bandwidth
penalty.

In summary, the use of cyclic prefix entails data rate and power losses that are both

The effect of this power loss can be minimized by increasing the subcarriers,but there are many
other disadvantages in doing so.

FREQUENCY EQUALIZATION
In order for the received symbols to be estimated, the complex channel gains for each
subcarrier must be known, which corresponds to knowing the amplitude and phase of the
subcarrier.

After the FFT is performed, the data symbols are estimated using a one-tap frequency
domain equalizer, or FEQ, as

where Hl is the complex response of the channel at the frequency fc + (l − 1)Δf, and therefore
it both corrects the phase and equalizes the amplitude before the decision device.

AN OFDM BLOCK DIAGRAM

Key steps in an OFDM communication system.

TRANSMITTER

 The first step in OFDM is to break a wideband signal of bandwidth B into L narrowband
signals (subcarriers) each of bandwidth B/L.
 Overall symbol rate is maintained , but each subcarrier experiences flat fading, or ISI-free
communication, as long as a cyclic prefix that exceeds the delay spread is used.
 The L subcarriers for a given OFDM symbol are represented by a vector X, which contains
the L current symbols.
 In order to use a single wideband radio instead of L independent narrow band radios, the
subcarriers are created digitally using an IFFT operation.
 In order for the IFFT/FFT to decompose the ISI channel into orthogonal subcarriers, a
cyclic prefix of length ν must be appended after the IFFT operation. The resulting L + ν
symbols are then sent in serial through the wideband channel.

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RECEIVER

 At the receiver, the cyclic prefix is discarded, and the L received symbols are demodulated
using an FFT operation, which results in L data symbols, each of the form Yl = HlXl + Nl for
subcarrier l.
 Each subcarrier can then be equalized via an FEQ by simply dividing by the complex
channel gain H[i] for that subcarrier. This results in .

Figure 3.6 An OFDM system in vector notation. In OFDM, the encoding and decoding is done in the frequency domain,
where X, Y, and contain the L transmitted, received, and estimated data symbols.

Note:the above is explanation is done neglecting a number of important practical issues and
assuming that the transmitter and receiver are perfectly synchronized, and that the receiver
perfectly knows the channel (in order to perform the FEQ).

OFDM IN LTE
 To gain an appreciation for the time and frequency domain interpretations of OFDM, LTE
systems can be used as an example. To understand the signal processing in LTE ,a passband
OFDM system, is considered.

TRANSMITTER:

Figure 3.7 A close-up of the OFDM baseband to passband transmitter.

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 The inputs to this figure are L independent QAM symbols (the vector X), and
these L symbols are treated as separate subcarriers.

 These L data-bearing symbols can be created from a bit stream by a symbol mapper and
serial-to-parallel convertor (S/P).

 The L-point IFFT then creates a time domain L-vector x that is cyclic extended to have
length L(1 + G), where G is the fractional overhead.

 In LTE G≈ 0.07 for the normal cyclic prefix and grows to G = 0.25 for the extended cyclic
prefix.

 This longer vector is then parallel-to-serial (P/S) converted into a wideband digital signal
that can be amplitude modulated with a single radio at a carrier frequency of fc = ωc/2π.

As an example, if 16QAM modulation was used (M = 16) with the normal cyclic prefix, the raw
(neglecting coding) data rate of this LTE system would be:

Table 3.1 Summary of Key OFDM Parameters in LTE and Example Values for 10MHz

TIMING AND FREQUENCY SYNCHRONIZATION

In order to demodulate an OFDM signal, there are two important synchronization tasks that
need to be performed by the receiver.

 Timing synchronization
 Frequency synchronization

Timing synchronization: Refers to determination of the timing offset of the symbol and the
optimal timing instants.

Frequency synchronization: The receiver must align its carrier frequency as closely as possible
with the transmitted carrier frequency.

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Representation of OFDM symbol

In Time Domain

 In the time domain, the IFFT effectively modulates each data symbol onto a unique
carrier frequency.
 In the Figure only two of the carriers are shown—the actual transmitted signal is the
superposition of all the individual carriers

In frequency Domain

 Since the time window is T = 1 μsec and a rectangular window is used, the frequency
response of each subcarrier becomes a “sinc” function with zero crossings every 1/T =
1MHz.
 This can be confirmed using the Fourier Transform F{·} since

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Figure 3.8OFDM synchronization in time (top) and frequency (bottom). Here, two subcarriers in the time domain and
eight subcarriers in the frequency domain are shown, where fc = 10MHz and the subcarrier spacing Δf = 1Hz.

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Why time and freqyency synchronization is necessary ?

If the timing window is slid to the left or right, a unique phase change will be introduced to
each of the subcarriers.

If the carrier frequency is misaligned by some amount δ, then some of the desired energy is
lost, and more significantly, inter-carrier interference is introduced.

Because of above reasons and to obtain non distorted signal at the receiver Synchronization
should be achieved.

TIMING SYNCHRONIZATION

 The effect of timing errors in symbol synchronization is somewhat relaxed in OFDM due to
the presence of a cyclic prefix.

 Only the L time domain samples after the cyclic prefix were utilized by the receiver, this
corresponds to “perfect” timing synchronization.

 In the case that perfect synchronization is not maintained, it is still possible to tolerate a
timing offset of τ seconds without any degradation in performance as long as 0 ≤ τ ≤ Tg − Tm,
where as usual Tg is the guard time (cyclic prefix duration) and Tm is the maximum channel
delay spread.

As long as τ remains constant, the channel estimator simply includes it as part of a fixed phase offset
and it can be corrected by the FEQ without any loss in performance.

This acceptable range of τ is referred to as the timing synchronization margin, and is shown in
figure 3.9

Figure3.9 Timing synchronization margin. OFDM is actually less sensitive to timing synchronization errors than single-
carrier modulation, assuming a bit of margin is allowed in the cyclic prefix length.

 On the other hand, if the timing offset τ is not within this window 0 ≤ τ ≤ Tm − Tg, inter-
symbol interference (ISI) occurs.

 The SNR loss can be approximated by

Important observations from this expression are that:

• SNR decreases quadratically with the timing offset.

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• Longer OFDM symbols are increasingly immune to timing offset, that is, more subcarriers
helps.
• Since in general τ LTs, timing synchronization errors are not that critical as long as the
induced phase change is corrected.

 In summary, to minimize SNR loss due to imperfect timing synchronization, the timing errors
should be kept small compared to the guard interval, and a small margin in the cyclic prefix
length is helpful.

For LTE, the primary and secondary synchronization channels (PHY layer channels) are used for
time and frequency synchronization.

FREQUENCY SYNCHRONIZATION
 In the frequency domain, if the carrier frequency synchronization is perfect, the receiver
samples at the peak of each subcarrier, where the desired subcarrier amplitude is maximized
and the inter-carrier interference (ICI) is zero.

 OFDM achieves a high degree of bandwidth efficiency compared to other wideband systems.
The subcarrier packing is extremely tight compared to conventional modulation techniques

 The price to be paid for this bandwidth efficiency is that the multicarrier signal is very
sensitive to frequency offsets due to the fact that the subcarriers overlap.

 Since the zero crossings of the frequency domain sinc pulses all line up as seen in Figure3.7
above , as long as the frequency offset δ = 0, there is no interference between the subcarriers.

 In practice, of course, the frequency offset is not always zero.

 The major causes for this are mismatched oscillators at the transmitter and receiver and
Doppler frequency shifts due to mobility.

 Since precise crystal oscillators are expensive, tolerating some degree of frequency offset is
essential in a consumer OFDM system like LTE.

The SNR loss induced by frequency offset is given by

where C0 is a constant that depends on various assumptions and εx is the average symbol energy

Important observations from the ICI expression are that:

• SNR decreases quadratically with the frequency offset.

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• SNR decreases quadratically with the number of subcarriers.

• The loss in SNR is also proportional to the SNR itself.

• In order to keep the loss negligible, say less than 0.1 dB, the relative frequency offset needs to be
about 1–2% of the subcarrier spacing, or even lower to preserve high SNRs.

• In order to further reduce the ICI for a given choice of L, non-rectangular windows can also be
used.

THE PEAK-TO-AVERAGE RATIO

 OFDM signals have a higher peak-to-average ratio (PAR)—often called a peak-to-average
power ratio (PAPR)—than do single-carrier signals.

 The reason for this is that in the time domain, a multicarrier signal is the sum of many
narrowband signals. At some times, this sum is large, at other times it is small, which means
that the peak value of the signal is substantially larger than the average value.

 This high PAR is one of the most important implementation challenges that face OFDM
because it reduces the efficiency and hence increases the cost of the RF power amplifier,
which is one of the most expensive components in the radio.

The PAR Problem

 When a high-peak signal is transmitted through a nonlinear device such as a high-power

amplifier (HPA) or digital-to-analog converter (DAC), it generates out-of-band energy
(spectral regrowth) and in-band distortion (constellation tilting and scattering).

 These degradations may affect the system performance severely.

 High PAR requires high resolution for both the transmitter’s digital-to-analog convertor
(DAC) and the receiver’s analog-to-digital convertor (ADC), this places an additional
complexity, cost, and power burden on the system.

 The nonlinear behavior of HPA can be characterized by amplitude modulation/amplitude

modulation (AM/AM) and amplitude modulation/phase modulation (AM/PM) responses.

Figure 3.10 shows a typical AM/AM response for an HPA, with the associated input and output
backoff regions: IBO and OBO, respectively.

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Figure 3.10 A typical power amplifier response. Operation in the linear region is required in order to avoid distortion, so
the peak value must be constrained to be in this region, which means that on average, the power amplifier is underutilized by
a “backoff” amount.

 To avoid the undesirable nonlinear effects , a waveform with high-peak power must be
transmitted in the linear region of the HPA by decreasing the average power of the input
signal. This is called input backoff (IBO) and results in a proportional output backoff (OBO).

 High backoff reduces the power efficiency of the HPA, and may limit the battery life for
mobile applications.

 In addition to inefficiency in terms of power, the coverage range is reduced and the cost of
the HPA is higher.

 The input backoff is defined as

where PinSat is the saturation power (above which is the nonlinear region) and is the
average input power.

 The average and peak values should be as close together as possible in order to maximize
the efficiency of the power amplifier.

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QUANTIFYING THE PAR

 Since multicarrier systems transmit data over a number of parallel frequency channels, the
resulting waveform is the superposition of L narrowband signals.

 Each of the Loutput samples will be complex Gaussian random variables with zero mean and
variance σ2 = εx/2.

 The amplitude of the output signal is x[n] and the envelope |x[n]| is Rayleigh distributed
with parameter σ2.

 The output power is therefore exponentially distributed with mean 2σ2.

 The output amplitude and hence power are random, so the PAR is not a deterministic
quantity either.

The PAR of the transmitted analog signal can be defined as

The PAR is considered for a single OFDM symbol, which consists of L + Ng samples, or a time
duration of T.

Similarly, the discrete-time PAR can be defined for the IFFT output as

 Although the average energy of IFFT outputs x[n] is the same as the average energy of the
inputs X[m] and equal to εx, the analog PAR is not exactly the same as the PAR of the IFFT
samples, due to the interpolation performed by the D/A convertor.

 Usually, the analog PAR is higher than the digital (Nyquist sampled) PAR.

 Since the PA is by definition analog, the analog PAR is what determines the PA
performance.

 Similarly, DSP techniques developed to reduce the digital PAR may not always have the
anticipated effect on the analog PAR.

 In order to bring the analog PAR expression and the digital PAR expression closer together,
oversampling can be considered for the digital signal.

 An oversampling factor of M can be used to interpolate the digital signal in order to better
approximate its analog PAR, that is, a given OFDM symbol is sampled LM times rather than
simply L.

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 The maximum possible value of the PAR is L or 10 log10 L dB, which would occur if all the
subcarriers add up constructively at a single point.

Since the theoretical maximum PAR value seldom (in practice, never) occurs and the PAR is a
random variable, statistical descriptions are used. The complementary cumulative distribution
function (CCDF = 1 − CDF) of the PAR is the most commonly used measure.

where εmax is the peak power level and β is a pseudo-approximation of the oversampling factor,
which is given empirically as β = 2.

CLIPPING AND OTHER PAR REDUCTION TECHNIQUES

 In order to avoid operating the PA in the nonlinear region, the input power can be reduced
up to an amount about equal to the PAR. This is very inefficient and will reduce the range
and/or SINR of the system by the same amount.

Two important facts related to IBO

 First, since the highest PAR values are uncommon, it might be possible to simply “clip” off
the highest peaks, at the cost of some minimal distortion of the signal.

 Second, it is possible that a given OFDM symbol will have a PAR that exceeds the IBO and
causes clipping.

Clipping, sometimes called “soft limiting,” truncates the amplitude of signals that exceed the
clipping level as

where x[n] is the original signal, is the output after

clipping, and A is the clipping level.

 Clipping reduces the PAR at the expense of distorting the desired signal.

The two primary drawbacks from clipping are

 Spectral regrowth (frequency domain leakage), which causes unacceptable interference to

users in neighboring RF channels.
 Distortion of the desired signal.

LTE’S APPROACH TO PAR IN THE UPLINK

LTE has taken a pioneering new approach to PAR.

 In the downlink, PAR is less important because the base stations are fewer in number and
generally higher in cost, and so are not especially sensitive to the exact PAR.
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 The high PAR is basically tolerated and sufficient input power backoff is undertaken in order
to keep the in-band distortion and spectral regrowth at an acceptable level.

 For the uplink, the mobiles are many in number and are very sensitive to cost. So, a technique
known as single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) is used. SC-FDMA
will be is a multiple access adaption of single-carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-
FDE)

SINGLE-CARRIER FREQUENCY DOMAIN EQUALIZATION (SC-

FDE)
 A primary drawback of the OFDM approach is that the transmit signal has a high peak-to-
average ratio (PAR) relative to a single carrier signal.
 The dynamic range of the transmit power is too large, which results in either significant
clipping and distortion, or in a requirement for highly linear power amps (which are
expensive and inefficient).
 Solution will be to effectively do OFDM without generating a high PAR .This can be achieved
by transmitting a single carrier signal with a cyclic prefix, which has a low PAR, and then do
all the processing at the receiver.

An alternative approach to OFDM is the less popular but conceptually similar single-carrier
frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) approach to ISI suppression.

SC-FDE maintains OFDM’s three most important benefits:

 Low complexity even for severe multipath channels

 Excellent BER performance, close to theoretical bounds

 Reduction in ISI which leads to better spatial interference, which is very useful when using
multiple antenna transmission.

ADVANTAGES OF SC-FDE

 By utilizing single-carrier transmission, the peak-to-average ratio is also reduced significantly

(by several dB) as there is no IFFT at the receiver.

 Frequency offset problem is not severe due to absence of multiple carriers.

 Resistant to narrowband interference.

 Transmitter complexity is reduced.

DISADVANTAGES

 Receiver complexity is increased

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SC-FDE SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

 Frequency domain equalization is used in both OFDM and SC-FDE systems primarily in
order to reduce the complexity inherent to time-domain equalization.

The block diagrams for OFDM and SC-FDE are compared in Figure 3.11 , in which we can see that
the only apparent difference between the two systems is that the IFFT is moved to the end of the
receive chain rather than operating at the transmitter, to create a multicarrier waveform as in
OFDM.

Figure 3.11Comparison between an OFDM system and an SC-FDE system. The principle difference is that the IFFT
formerly in the transmitter is in the SC-FDE receiver.

 An SC-FDE system still utilizes a cyclic prefix at least as long as the channel delay spread, but
now the transmitted signal is simply a sequence of QAM symbols, which have low PAR.

 The action, in an SC-FDE system, is at the receiver.

 As in an OFDM system, an FFT is applied, but in an SC-FDE system this operation moves the
received signal into the frequency domain.

 Because of the application of the cyclic prefix, the received signal appears to be circularly
convolved, that is, y[n] = x[n] h[n] + w[n], where w[n] is noise. Therefore,

FFT{y[n]} Y[m] = H[m]X[m] + W[m]

with the important distinction being that now the frequency domain version X[m] is not
precisely the data symbols, but rather the FFT of the data symbols x[n].

 Analogously, recall that in an OFDM system the transmitted time-domain signal x[n] was
not the actual data symbols, but rather the IFFT of the actual data symbols.

 After the FFT, a simple 1-tap FEQ can be applied that inverts each virtual subcarrier, so that

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 The resulting signal can then be converted back into the time domain using an IFFT
operation to give , which are estimates of the desired data symbols.

 In practice H[m] must be estimated at the receiver using pilot signals or other standard
methods.

SC-FDE Performance vs. OFDM

The primary difference in terms of performance between SC-FDE and OFDM comes from the way
they treat noise.

In both OFDM and SC-FDE receivers, the FEQ typically inverts each frequency, that is, the FEQ
consists of L complex taps each of value 1/Hl.

 In OFDM ,this does not result in damaging noise enhancement since the SNR of each data
symbol is unchanged by multiplying by a constant factor. High SNR symbols remain at high
SNR, and low SNR symbols remain at low SNR. In LTE, short-scale variations in SNR are
addressed by coding and interleaving, which would allow a considerable number of degraded
(low-SNR) symbols to be corrected.

 In SC-FDE, however, the FEQ does not operate on data symbols themselves but rather on the
frequency domain dual of the data symbols. Therefore, just as in OFDM’s FEQ, low SNR parts
of the spectrum have their power increased by a factor of |1/Hl|2 while the noise power is
increased by a factor of .

 Unlike in OFDM, in SC-FDE when the ensuing IFFT is applied to move the signal back into
the time domain for detection, the amplified noise is spread by the IFFT operation over all
the data symbols.

 Therefore, although the total noise amplification is the same in OFDM and SC-FDE, the noise
amplification is not isolated to a single symbol in SC-FDE, but instead affects all the symbols
prior to decoding and detection.

The performance difference is often insignificant between SC-FDE and OFDM. In some cases OFDM
slightly outperforms SC-FDE, while in others SC-FDE does a little better .

 The primary determinants of this are the strength of the coding and the size of the
constellation. OFDM does a bit better when the coding is strong and/or the constellation is
large, while the opposite is true for SC-FDE.

In most cases, the BER vs. SNR performance differences are negligible.

 The other factors like the reduced PA backoff of SC-FDE or the symmetric complexity of
OFDM become more important factors in selecting which approach to use.

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DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR SC-FDE AND OFDM

Since the performance difference between SC-FDE and OFDM is not that significant, other
considerations are more important in determining which is the appropriate method to use for a
given application.

 The main difference is that SC-FDE has a lower-complexity transmitter but a higher-
complexity receiver, compared to OFDM.
o Since the receiver was already more complex than the transmitter in a typical OFDM
system due to channel estimation, synchronization, and the error correction decoder,
the receiver in SC-FDE becomes even more complex.

o In a cellular system like LTE, this asymmetry is a favorable feature, since the uplink
could utilize SC-FDE and the downlink could utilize OFDM.

 In SC-FDE’s other benefits are reduced PAR and cost and power savings.

Therefore SC-FDE can be used in the uplink and OFDM can be used in downlink of a
wideband data system is favorable indeed.

Channel estimation and synchronization are a bit different in practice for an SC-FDE system vs. an
OFDM system.

 In a typical wireless OFDM system—including LTE, WiMAX, and 802.11a/g/n—channel

estimation and synchronization are done via a preamble of known data symbols, and then
pilot tones, which are inserted at known positions in all subsequent OFDM symbols.

 SC-FDE systems also include a preamble, but this preamble is in the time domain so it is not
as straightforward to estimate the frequency domain values Hl. Similarly, it is not possible to
insert pilot tones on a per-frame basis.

 SC-FDMA overcomes these potential problems for LTE by using both a DFT and an IFFT at
the transmitter.

Another commonly cited disadvantage of SC-FDE is that it has a nominally more dispersive
spectrum compared to OFDM.

 OFDM’s sharper spectrum results in less co-channel interference and/or less restrictive RF
roll-off requirements.

 On the other hand, because OFDM has a higher PAR, it is more subject to clipping that can
cause spectral dispersion.

 Finally, the combination of SC-FDE with MIMO is not as natural because detection cannot
be done in the frequency domain.

On the whole, OFDM continues to be much more popular than SC-FDE. LTE uses an uplink
transmission technique inspired by SC-FDE and downlink as OFDM.

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CHAPTER 2
FREQUENCY DOMAIN MULTIPLE ACCESS: OFDMA and SC-FDMA

Multiple Access is the main strategy for cellular communication system.

 1G- FDMA-AMPS

 2G- TDMA- GSM

CDMA-IS-95

 3G- CDMA-WCDMA

 4G- LTE-uses OFDMA for downlink and SC-FDMA for uplink

Conceptually both OFDMA and SC-FDMA are similar---both allocate each

subscriber some portion of the subcarriers(frequency channels) for some duration of
time.

As the traffic in LTE is very diverse , the multiple access method must be highly
flexible and efficient.

Traffic includes VoIP, Video streaming and broadband data sessions. Hence MA
method should support low data rate continuous voice streams as well as high data
rate broad band services.

MULTIPLE ACCESS FOR OFDM SYSTEMS

 OFDM is not a multiple-access strategy, but a technique for mitigating

frequency selectivity (inter-symbol interference).

 OFDM creates many parallel streams of data that can in principle be used by
different users.

 Most previous OFDM systems such as DSL, 802.11a/g, and earlier

802.16/WiMAX systems (prior to the 802.16e standard) have used “single-user
OFDM” ie all the subcarriers are used by a single user at a time.

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 “single-user OFDM” systems can be used for multiple users by simply time-
sharing the channel. But LTE uses a more sophisticated multiple-access
scheme.
MULTIPLE ACCESS OVERVIEW

 Multiple-access strategies try to provide orthogonal, that is, non-interfering,

communication channels for each active base station–subscriber link.

 The most common ways to divide the available dimensions among the multiple
users is through the use of frequency, time, or code division multiplexing.

 In Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), each user receives a unique

carrier frequency and bandwidth.

 In Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), each user is given a unique time slot,
either on demand or in a fixed rotation.

 Wireless TDMA systems almost invariably also use FDMA in some form.

 Orthogonal Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems allow each user to
share the bandwidth and time slots with many other users, and rely on
orthogonal or nearly orthogonal or non orthogonal binary codes to separate out
the users.

It can be easily proven that TDMA, FDMA, and orthogonal CDMA all have the same
theoretical capacity in an additive noise channel

Disadvatage:

 One reason is that orthogonality is not possible in dense wireless systems.

 The above techniques only guarantee orthogonality between users in

the same cell, whereas users in different, will likely be given the same time or
frequency slot.

 Different multiple access techniques have different delay characteristics and so

may be appropriate for different types of data
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 TDMA data would arrive in periodic short bursts with high rate, whereas FDMA
traffic would arrive continuously at a slower, smooth rate.

One of the principle merits of OFDMA is that by adjusting how subcarriers

are allocated in time and frequency, many of the desirable features of
both FDMA and TDMA can be achieved, while the negatives can be
mitigated.

RANDOM ACCESS VS. MULTIPLE ACCESS

 Random access technique is known as Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA).

 CSMA is commonly used in packet-based communication systems, ex Ethernet

and wireless LANs such as 802.11.

 In random access, users contend for the channel, rather than being allocated a
reserved time, frequency, or code resource.

 Well-known random access techniques include ALOHA and slotted ALOHA, as

well as CSMA.

 In ALOHA, users simply transmit packets at will without regard to

other users.
 If the packet is not acknowledged by the receiver after some period, it
is assumed lost and is retransmitted.
 This scheme becomes increasingly inefficient and delay prone as the
intensity of the traffic increases, as many transmissions result in
collisions and hence retransmissions.
 Slotted ALOHA improves on this by about a factor of two since users
transmit on specified time boundaries, and hence collisions are about
half as likely.
 CSMA improves upon ALOHA and slotted ALOHA through carrier
sensing, in which users “listen” to the channel before transmitting in
order to avoid collisions whenever possible.
 Numerous contention algorithms have been developed for CSMA
systems; the most well known includes the Distributed Coordination
Function (DCF) of 802.11 in which users wait for a random amount of
time after the channel is clear before transmitting in order to reduce
the probability of two stations transmitting immediately after the
channel becomes available.

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 The theoretical efficiency of CSMA is often around 60–70%, in wireless
LANs the efficiency is often empirically observed to be less than 50%,
even when there is only a single user .

The need for extremely high spectral efficiency and low delay in LTE CSMA cannot
be used .Random access technique cannot be used .

FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS (OFDM-FDMA)

 Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) can be readily implemented in

OFDM systems by assigning different users their own sets of subcarriers.

 There are a number of ways this allocation can be performed.

 Static allocation of subcarriers:
 It is the simplest method
 A set of Subcarriers are assigned to each user.
 For example, in a 64-subcarrier OFDM system, user 1 could take
subcarriers 1–16, with users 2, 3, and 4 using subcarriers 17–32, 33–48,
and 49–64, respectively.
 The allocations are done with a multiplexer for the various users before the
IFFT operation.

Such a system can be referred to as OFDM-FDMA or OFDMA since it

allows multiple users to share the OFDM subcarriers.

 There could also be uneven allocations of subcarriers with high data rate users
being allocated more subcarriers than lower rate users.

 An improvement upon static allocation made possible in LTE is dynamic

subcarrier allocation based upon channel state conditions.
 For example, due to frequency selective fading, user 1 may have relatively
good channels on subcarriers 33–48, while user 3 might have good
channels on subcarriers 1–16. Hence it would be mutually beneficial for
these users to swap the static allocations given above.

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Figure 4.1 FDMA (left) and a combination of FDMA with TDMA (right).

TIME DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS (OFDM-TDMA)

 In addition to or instead of FDMA, multiple users can also be accommodated

with TDMA.

 In reality, all wireless TDMA systems employ both FDMA and TDMA at some
level since the electromagnetic spectrum must be shared with many other
users and systems.

 In an OFDM cellular system, some degree of TDMA is essential since there

will be more users in the system and they cannot be simultaneously carried
on a single OFDM symbol.

 If users do not have data to send, then the subcarriers can be dynamically
allocated in order to avoid waste.

 Static TDMA methodology shown in Fig 4.1 is appropriate for constant data-
rate (i.e., circuit-switched) applications like voice and streaming video.

 In a packet-based system, static TDMA is often called round

robin scheduling: each user simply waits for their pre-determined turn and
then transmits.

 But a packet-based system like LTE employs more sophisticated scheduling

algorithms based on queue-lengths, channel conditions, and delay
constraints to achieve much better performance than static TDMA.

CODE DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS (OFDM-CDMA OR MC-CDMA)

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 CDMA is the dominant multiple access technique for 3G cellular systems, but
it is not particularly appropriate for high-speed data.

 CDMA is based on the concept , that a bandwidth much larger than the data
rate is used to suppress the interference .

 In wireless broadband networks the data rates already are very large, so
spreading the spectrum further is not viable.

Figure 4.2 CDMA’s users share time and frequency slots but employ codes that allow the users to be
separated by the receiver.

 OFDM and CDMA are not fundamentally incompatible; they can be combined
to create a Multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) waveform.

 It is possible to use spread spectrum signalling and to separate users by codes

in OFDM by spreading in either the time or frequency domain.

 MC-CDMA is not part of the LTE standard, at least at present.

ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS
(OFDMA)

OFDMA systems allocate subscribers time-frequency slices consisting of M

subcarriers over some number of consecutive OFDM symbols in time (in LTE, most
commonly seven).

The M subcarriers can either be

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 Spread out over the band, called a “distributed,” “comb,” or “diversity”
allocation
 Bunched together in M contiguous subcarriers, called a “band AMC,”
“localized,” or “grouped” cluster.

The distributed allocation achieves frequency diversity over the entire band, uses
interleaving and coding to correct errors caused by poor subcarriers.

The band AMC mode uses subcarriers where the SINR is roughly equal and chooses
the best coding and modulation scheme for that SINR.

If accurate SINR information can be obtained at the receiver about each band’s SINR,
then band AMC outperforms distributed subcarrier allocation.

In a highly mobile system, distributed allocation is preferred in order to maximize

diversity.
Table 4.1 OFDMA Notation

OFDMA: HOW IT WORKS

DOWNLINK

The block diagram for a downlink OFDMA system is shown in Figures

4.3 and 4.4.

K users share the L subcarriers, with each user being allocated Mk subcarriers.

The method or rules for how users are mapped to subcarriers is not specified by
the LTE standard

and each subcarrier only has one user assigned to it.

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Figure 4.3 OFDMA downlink transmitter.

FEC: Forward Error Correction

Figure 4.4 OFDMA downlink receiver for user 1.

At each receiver, the user cares only about its own Mk subcarriers, but still has
to apply an L point FFT to the received digital waveform in order to extract the desired
subset of subcarriers.

The receiver has to know which time-frequency resources it has been allocated
in order to extract the correct subcarriers—the control signalling exists for this
operation.

An OFDMA downlink receiver must demodulate the entire waveform, which

wastes power.

Digital separation of users is simple at the receiver .

The amount of residual interuser interference is very low compared to either

CDMA or conventional FDMA where analog filters must be used to separate the users.

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UPLINK:

OFDMA is not usually used in the LTE uplink

OFDMA uplink block diagrams is shown in Figures 4.5 and 4.6 to highlight the
differences and numerous similarities between OFDMA and SC-FDMA.

TRANSMITTER

The transmitter modulates user k’s bits over just the Mk subcarriers of interest:

Mk = M for all users, and user 1 occupies subcarriers 1, 2, ···, M of the L total
subcarriers.

Figure 4.5 OFDMA uplink transmitter for user 1, where user 1 is allocated subcarriers 1, 2,
..., M of L total subcarriers.

RECEIVER

All the users’ signals collide at the receiver’s antenna, and are collectively
demodulated using the receiver’s FFT.

Assuming each subcarrier has only a single user on it, the demodulated
subcarriers can be de-mapped to the detectors for each of the K served users.

Figure 4.6 OFDMA uplink receiver

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Points regarding uplink and downlink

Uplink OFDMA is more challenging than downlink OFDMA since the uplink is
asynchronous. The users’ signals arrive at the receiver ,offset slightly in time (and
frequency) from each other. This is not the case in the downlink since the transmitter
is common for all users.

The time and frequency offsets caused in Uplink can result in considerable self-
interference if they become large. Particularly in the distributed subcarrier mode,
sufficiently large frequency offsets can severely degrade the orthogonality across all
subcarriers.

The timing offsets also must typically be small, within a fraction of a cyclic
prefix.

In LTE the uplink multiaccess scheme uses only the localized subcarrier mode
due to the SC-FDMA nature of the uplink.

The lack of perfect frequency and time synchronization between the multiple
users leads to some inter-carrier interference but this is limited only to the subcarriers
at the edge of the transmission band of each user.

Synchronization is achieved using synchronization Channels

A higher level view of OFDMA can be seen in Figure 4.7.

 Here, a base station is transmitting a band AMC-type OFDMA waveform to four

different devices simultaneously.

 The three arrows for each user indicate the signaling that must happen for the
band AMC-type OFDMA to work.

 First, the mobiles measure and feedback the quality of their channel, or channel
state information (CSI) to the base station. Usually, the CSI feed back will be a
measurement corresponding to SINR.

 The base station would then allocate subcarriers to the four users and send that
subcarrier allocation information to the four users in an overhead message.

 Finally, the actual data is transmitted over the subcarriers assigned to each user.

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Figure 4.7 In OFDMA, the base station allocates each user a fraction of the subcarriers, preferably, in
a range where they have a strong channel.

OFDMA ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

 The advantages of OFDMA are robust multipath suppression, relatively low

complexity, and the creation of frequency diversity.

 OFDMA is a flexible multiple access technique that can accommodate many

users with widely varying applications, data rates, and QoS requirements.

 Multiple access is performed in the digital domain (before the IFFT operation),
hence dynamic, flexible and efficient bandwidth allocation is possible.
Sophisticated time and frequency domain scheduling algorithms are integrated
to best serve the user population.

 Lower data rates (such as voice) and bursty data are handled much more
efficiently in OFDMA than in single-user OFDM (i.e., OFDM-TDMA) or with
CSMA.

 Take the first case, voice, as an example. If OFDMA was not used, each
downlink user would receive a very high rate signal for a very short period
of time—leading to bad latency and jitter properties, more frequency

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overhead signalling would be required, reducing the overall system
throughput.

 In the uplink, OFDM-TDMA the subscriber would have to transmit a

wideband signal at very high total power for a very short time, This would
put a large strain on the power amplifier.

 OFDMA does not suffer from these problems because the allocation of time-
frequency resources to users is extremely flexible and can be adapted
dynamically to meet arbitrary throughput, delay, and possibly other QoS
constraints.

SINGLE-CARRIER FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS (SC-

FDMA)

 Single-carrier FDMA, or SC-FDMA, is employed in the LTE uplink.

 This system evolves from the single-carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-
FDE) modulation approach.

 SC-FDMA more closely resembles OFDMA because it still requires an IFFT

operation at the transmitter in order to separate the users.

 Because SC-FDE is truly a single-carrier modulation technique, it is not

possible for an uplink user to use only part of the spectrum, or part of an
SC-FDE block. Therefore, the goal of SC-FDMA is to take the low peak-to-
average ratio (PAR) properties of SC-FDE and achieve them in an
OFDMA-type system that allows partial usage of the frequency band. SC-
FDMA can be called as “FFT (or DFT) precoded OFDMA” .

SC-FDMA: HOW IT WORKS

 An SC-FDMA uplink transmitter is shown in Figure 4.8.

 User’s Mk complex symbols are pre-processed with an FFT of size Mk.

 Let us refer to these time-domain complex symbols as x[n].

 In LTE, Mk is related to the number of resource blocks allocated to the

user k for its uplink transmission.

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 The FFT operation creates a frequency domain version of the signal X[m]
= FFT(x[n]) ,when the L point IFFT is applied at receiver later, the time-
domain outputs of the IFFT correspond to an oversampled and phase-
shifted version of the original time-domain signal x[n].

 x[n] is oversampled by a factor of L/M and experiences a phase shift

.Although L/M is not required to be an integer, it usually is.

Figure 4.8 SC-FDMA uplink transmitter for user 1, where user 1 is allocated subcarriers 1, 2,
..., M of L total subcarriers.

The SC-FDMA uplink receiver is shown in Figure 4.9.

 For each user’s Mk “subcarriers,” an additional small IFFT must be applied

prior to detection to bring the received data back into the time domain.

Just like in OFDMA, frequency domain equalization is applied to each user’s signal
independently after the FFT, and users’ signals are de-mapped based on the current
subcarrier allocation.

Figure 4.9 SC-FDMA uplink receiver. Much like the OFDMA receiver, here we explicitly assume that
each user occupies a fraction M/L of the spectrum.

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SC-FDMA ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

 The key advantage of OFDMA is preserved: only part of the frequency

spectrum is used by any one user at a time. This allows the band used to
be chosen adaptively to get higher throughput and total transmitted
power will be less.
 The PAR of SC-FDMA is significantly lower than OFDMA, and this is the
real justification. Because the transmitted SC-FDMA signal for each user
is simply an oversampled single-carrier signal, the PAR is about the same
as for the corresponding single-carrier signal.

 Reducing the PAR—and hence the power amplifier cost—is particularly

important in the uplink due to the cost and power constraints experienced
by mobile handsets.

COMPARISION BETWEEN SC-FDMA AND OFDMA

The tradeoffs between SC-FDMA and OFDMA are also closely related to the
trade-offs SC-FDE faces versus OFDM.

 SC-FDMA can experience more spectral leakage than OFDMA, and achieve
frequency diversity differently, leading to slight differences in performance.

 SC-FDE, is less complex for the uplink due to its simple transmitter, SC-FDMA
is more complex compared to OFDMA in both the transmitter and receiver as
an additional FFT of size Mk has to be performed for each user at the transmitter
and receiver.

OFDMA AND SC-FDMA IN LTE

LTE must specify several things in order for the system to work.

 It must specify the “quanta,” or units, of time-frequency resources that can be

assigned.
 It must specify messaging protocols that allow the mobile units to request
resources when necessary, and to know what resources they have been assigned,
both for transmission and reception.
 It must specify Ranging procedures so that simultaneous uplink transmissions
from several different mobile units can be reliably decoded at the base station.

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The LTE Time-Frequency Grid

In LTE, mobile units are allocated groups of subcarriers over time and frequency
which are known as a resource block.

The size of the resource block is chosen to balance a tradeoff between granularity and
overhead.

The subcarriers of a resource block can be allocated in one of two ways.

 Distributed subcarrier allocation:

 takes advantage of frequency diversity by spreading the resource block
hop across the entire channel bandwidth. This approach is typically used
in the downlink (OFDMA) when distributed subcarrier allocation is used.

 Frequency diversity can also be achieved by hopping a contiguous block

of subcarriers in time.This approach is used in the uplink, since SC-FDMA
transmitters in general operate on contiguous sets of subcarriers.

 Adjacent subcarrier allocation:

 This approach relies on a channel-aware allocation of resources, so that
each user can be allocated a resource block where they have a strong
channel.

 Frequency diversity is not achieved.

 This allocation is helpful as long as the scheduler is able to assign “good”

blocks to each user.

ALLOCATION NOTIFICATION AND UPLINK FEEDBACK

For each MS to know which subcarriers to use in downlink reception and uplink
transmission, the BS must broadcast this information to the pool of active users in its
cell. This is done using PDCCH (physical downlink control channel) .
It specifies the following:
• Downlink resource block allocation
• Uplink resource block allocation
• QAM constellation to use per resource block
• Type and rate of coding to use per resource block

 Once a user is able to decode the PDCCH, it knows precisely where to receive
(downlink) or to transmit (uplink), and how.

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 The PDCCH is sent over the first 2–3 OFDM symbols of each subframe across
all the subcarriers.

 To aid the base station in uplink scheduling, LTE units utilize buffer status
reporting (BSR), wherein each user can notify the BS about its queue length,
and channel quality information (CQI) feedback.

 Once the BS is well informed about the channels to/from the users and their
respective queue lengths, it can more appropriately determine the optimum
allocation among the various users.

 In the downlink, the BS has inherent knowledge of the amount of buffered data
for each user, while in the uplink it can estimate the channel from each user.
Hence, BSR feedback is only used for uplink scheduling while CQI feedback is
only used for downlink scheduling and AMC-mode selection.

 The CQI reporting can be either periodic or aperiodic, wideband or subband,

and multiple CQI feedback modes are defined for different scenarios.

POWER CONTROL

Although OFDMA (and SC-FDMA) systems are designed to have orthogonality within
a cell they still suffer from two forms of self-interference.

 Intercell interference, whereby neighboring cells allocate the same time-

frequency resource blocks and hence cause interference.

 This intercell interference can occur in either the uplink or the downlink,
but is more problematic for cell-edge users in the downlink since they are
approximately equidistant between two base stations and hence doubly
suffer from lower desired power and higher interference power.

 Power control is one part of the solution as well, since it can try
to equalize SINR values over the cell.

 Self-interference is related to imperfect time-frequency-power synchronization

between the different uplink users.
 This is not a problem in the downlink since each mobile station receives a
single waveform from the base station.

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 On the other hand, in the uplink, the received waveform is aggregated “in
the air” as the summation of the different transmit waveforms for each
user.

 Because these distributed transmitters are bound to be at least slightly

unsynchronized in time and frequency, the orthogonality of the
subcarriers will be degraded at the receiver.

 If power control is not used, the different signals may be received with
very different powers, which causes a dynamic range problem when the
signal is A/D converted.The strong users will dominate the A/D dynamic
range and the weak users will experience severe quantization noise,
making digital reconstruction of those signals difficult or impossible.

 In short, some uplink power control is needed in OFDMA (or SC-FDMA)

systems.

Uplink Power Control

In LTE, closed-loop power control is possible in the uplink where the BS can
explicitly indicate the maximum transmit power density (power per resource block)
that can be used by each user. This information is carried on the PDCCH when the
uplink allocation for each user is specified.

The uplink loop power control algorithm in LTE is flexible in terms of the
amount of channel inversion it performs. This results in the same received power for
all users regardless of their channel conditions.

Fractional power control is the open-loop power control scheme in LTE.

Downlink Power Control

In the downlink, no closed-loop power control is specified in the standard;

however, LTE systems can specify a relative power offset between different users. This
is done using a higher layer message and thus can only be performed at much longer
timescales compared to uplink power control.

By allocating different power offsets among the different users according to

their location, the system can try to improve the fairness in terms of the data rate of a
user who is at the cell edge relative to that of a user closer to the BS.

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Chapter 3

MULTIPLE ANTENNA TRANSMISSION AND RECEPTION

 The expanded and more advanced use of multiple antennas at both the
transmitter and receiver are among the LTE’s largest advantages

 Multicarrier modulation enables richer, more efficient use of multiple antennas

and receivers in wideband channels.

 Multiple antenna techniques can be grouped into roughly three different

categories: diversity, interference suppression, and spatial
multiplexing.
 Spatial diversity allows a number of different versions of the signal to
be transmitted and/or received, and provides considerable resilience
against fading.

 Interference suppression uses the spatial dimensions to reject

interference from other users, either through the physical antenna gain
pattern or through other forms of array processing such as linear
precoding, postcoding, or interference cancellation.

 Spatial multiplexing allows two or more independent streams of data

to be sent simultaneously in the same bandwidth, and hence is useful
primarily for increasing the data rate.

 LTE’s current options include techniques from each of the three categories.

All three of these different approaches are collectively referred to as

multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) communication, although this is
inaccurate unless there are at least two antennas at both the transmitter
and the receiver.

SPATIAL DIVERSITY OVERVIEW

 Diversity is indispensable for reliability in wireless systems.

 The primary advantage of spatial diversity with respect to time and frequency
diversity is that no additional bandwidth or power is needed in order to take
advantage of spatial diversity.

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 Spatial diversity is exploited through two or more antennas, which are separated
by enough distance so that the fading is approximately decorrelated between
them.

 The cost of and space consumed by each additional antenna, its RF transmit
and/or receive chain, and the associated signal processing required to modulate
or demodulate multiple spatial streams is not negligible. However, for a small
number of antennas, the gains are significant enough to warrant the space and
expense in most modern wireless systems.

When multiple antennas are used, there are two forms of gain available,

 Diversity gain

 Array gain

Diversity gain, results from the creation of multiple independent channels between
the transmitter and receiver, and is a product of the statistical richness of those
channels.

Array gain, does not rely on statistical diversity between the different channels.
Instead it achieves its performance enhancement by coherently combining the energy
of each of the antennas to gain an advantage versus the noise signal on each antenna,
which is uncorrelated and so does not add coherently.

ARRAY GAIN

Due to array gain, even if the channels are completely correlated (as might
happen in a line-of-sight system with closely spaced antennas) the received SNR
increases linearly with the number of receive antennas, Nr.

For a Nt × Nr system, the array gain is Nr, which can be seen for a 1 × Nr as
follows.

In correlated flat fading, each antenna i (1, Nr) receives a signal that can be
characterized as:

where hi = h for all the antennas since they are perfectly correlated.

Hence, the SNR on a single antenna is

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where the noise power is σ2 and we assume unit signal energy (εx = E|x|2 = 1).

If all the receive antenna paths are added, the resulting signal is

and the combined SNR, assuming that just the noise on each branch is uncorrelated,
is

Hence, the received SNR also increases linearly with the number of receive antennas
even if those antennas are correlated.

However, because the channels are all correlated in this case, there is no diversity gain.

DIVERSITY GAIN

The main objective of spatial diversity has been to improve the communication
reliability by decreasing the sensitivity to fading.

The physical layer reliability is typically measured by the outage probability or

average bit error rate.

In additive noise, the bit error probability (BEP) can be written for virtually any
modulation scheme as:

where c1 and c2 are constants that depend on the modulation type and γ is the received
SNR. Error probability is inversely exponentially varing with SNR.

In fading Channels, with fading the SNR becomes a random variable and so the
BEP is also a random variable. Without diversity, the average BEP decreases very
slowly in a fading channel, and can be written as:

This simple inverse relationship between SNR and BEP results in terrible
reliability for unmitigated fading channels.

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Solution

If Nt transmit antennas and Nr receive antennas that are sufficiently

spaced are added to the system. The diversity order is Nd = NrNt, since that is
the number of uncorrelated channel paths between the transmitter and receiver.
Since the probability of all the Nd uncorrelated channels having low SNR is very
small, the diversity order has a dramatic effect on the system reliability. With
diversity, the average BEP improves to:

which is an enormous improvement. For example, if the BEP without any

diversity was about 1 in 10,the BEP with two antennas at both the transmitter
and receiver would be closer to 1 in 10,000.

Diversity gain is very powerful!

Comparision between Array and Diversity Gain

Figure 5.1 Relative bit error probability (BEP) curves for Nt = 1, Nr = (1, 2, 4). The BEP (0 dB) is
normalized to 1 for each technique.

Statistical diversity ie diversity gain has a very large impact on BEP, whereas the array
gain only results in a fixed shift of the curve.

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INCREASING THE DATA RATE WITH SPATIAL DIVERSITY

 Diversity techniques are very effective at averaging out fades in the channel
and thus increasing the system reliability.

 Receive diversity techniques also increase the average received SNR at best
linearly due to the array gain.

 The Shannon capacity formula gives the maximum achievable data rate of a
single communication link in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) as:

 where C is the “capacity,” or maximum error-free data rate, B is the bandwidth
of the channel, and γ is again the SNR (or SINR).

 Due to advances in coding, and with sufficient diversity, it may be possible to

approach the Shannon limit in some wireless channels.

 In low SNR channels, diversity techniques increase the capacity about linearly,
but the overall throughput is generally still poor due to the low SNR.

 In order to get a more substantial data rate increase at higher SNRs, the
multiantenna channel can instead be used to send multiple independent
streams.

 Spatial multiplexing has the ability to achieve a linear increase in the data rate
with the number of antennas at moderate to high SINRs through the use of
sophisticated signal processing algorithms.
INCREASED COVERAGE OR REDUCED TRANSMIT POWER

 The benefits of diversity can also be used to increase the coverage area and to
reduce the required transmit power. Reliability and data rates can also be
increased.

 Increase in coverage area due to spatial diversity: If there are Nr receive

antennas and just one transmit antenna. Due to just the array gain, it can be
found that the increase in coverage range is , and so the coverage area

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improvement is , without even considering the diversity gain. Hence, the
system reliability also increases.

 Transmit power can be reduced by 10 log10 Nr dB while maintaining a diversity

gain of Nt × Nr.

RECEIVE DIVERSITY

 The most prevalent form of spatial diversity is receive diversity, often with just
two antennas.

 Nr = 2 is most common —on cellular base stations and wireless LAN access
points, and will be mandatory for LTE base stations and handsets.

 Receive diversity places no particular requirements on the transmitter, but

requires a receiver that processes the Nr received streams and combines them
in some fashion.

 Because receive diversity places no requirements on the transmitter, these

techniques are not specified in the LTE standard.

 Receive diversity will be used in nearly all LTE handsets and base stations.

 Two widely used combining algorithms,

 Selection combining (SC)
 Maximal ratio combining (MRC)

Receive diversity is highly effective in both flat fading and frequency selective fading
channels. The flat (narrowband) fading scenario where the signal received by each of
the Nr antennas is uncorrelated and has the same average power is considered.

Figure 5.2 Receive diversity: selection combining (left) and maximal ratio combining (right).
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SELECTION COMBINING

 Selection combining is the simplest type of “combiner,” in that it simply

estimates the instantaneous strengths of each of the Nr streams, and selects the
highest one.

 Since SC ignores the useful energy on the other streams, it is clearly suboptimal,
but its simplicity and reduced hardware and power requirements make it
attractive for narrowband channels.

In a wideband channel, it is usually better to use MRC.

MAXIMAL RATIO COMBINING

Maximal ratio combining (MRC) combines the information from all the received
branches in order to maximize the ratio of signal-to-noise power, which gives it its
name. MRC works by weighting each branch with a complex factor qi = |qi|ejϕ and then i

adding up the Nr branches, as shown in Figure 5.2. The received signal on each branch
can be written as x(t)hi, assuming the fading is flat with a complex value of hi =
|hi|ejθ on the ith branch.
i

The combined signal can then be written as:

Resulting SNR will be where εx is the transmit signal

energy

Maximizing this expression and branches with better signal energy are enhanced ,
whereas branches with lower SNRs given relatively less weight.

The resulting signal-to-noise ratio can be found to be:

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TRANSMIT DIVERSITY
 Spatial transmit diversity is a more recent development than spatial receive
diversity, and has become widely understood and implemented only in the early
2000s.

 Because the signals sent from different transmit antennas interfere with one
another at the receiver, additional signal processing is required at both the
transmitter and receiver in order to achieve diversity while removing or at least
attenuating the spatial interference.

 Transmit diversity is particularly useful in the downlink since the base station
can usually accommodate more antennas than the mobile station.

 Additionally, if multiple antennas are already present at the base station for
uplink receive diversity, the incremental cost of using them for transmit
diversity is small.

 Multiple antenna transmit schemes (both transmit diversity and MIMO) are
often categorized into two classes: open-loop and closed-loop.

Open-loop refers to systems that do not require knowledge of the channel at the
transmitter as shown in Figure 5.4.

Closed-loop systems require channel knowledge at the transmitter, thus necessitating

either channel reciprocity (same uplink and downlink channel, possible in TDD) or
more commonly a feedback channel from the receiver to the transmitter.

Figure 5.4 Open-loop transmit diversity (no feedback).

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Open-Loop Transmit Diversity: 2 × 1 Space-Frequency Block Coding

 The most popular open-loop transmit diversity scheme is space-time (in LTE,
space-frequency) coding, where a particular code known to the receiver is
applied at the transmitter.

 The receiver must know the channel to decode a space-time code, this is not a
large burden since the channel must be known for other decoding operations
anyway.

 Space-time coding was first suggested in the early 1990s . Although there are
many types of space-time codes, space-frequency block codes (SFBCs), which
are easy to implement and are supported in LTE are considered.

 Space-time block code (STBC) referred to as either the Alamouti code or the
orthogonal space-time block code (OSTBC) is explained.

 This simple code has become the most popular means of achieving transmit
diversity due to its ease of implementation (linear at both the transmitter and
receiver), and its optimality with regards to diversity order.

 STBCs can easily used in narrowband fading channels and adapted to a

wideband fading channel using OFDM.

 Mathematically and conceptually, there is no difference between SFBCs and the

more common STBCs: SFBCs uses adjacent subcarriers, STBCs use consecutive
symbols in time .

 SFBCs are preferred to STBCs because they experience less delay and are less
likely to suffer from channel variations.

 The simplest SFBC corresponds to two transmit antennas and a single receive
antenna.

 If two symbols to be transmitted are s1 and s2, the Alamouti code sends
the following over two subcarriers f1 and f2:

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 The 2 × 1 Alamouti SFBC is referred to as a rate 1 code, since the data rate is
neither increased nor decreased; two symbols are sent over two adjacent
subcarriers.

 Rather than directly increasing the data rate, the goal of space-frequency block
coding is to harness the spatial diversity of the channel.

Assuming a flat fading and constant channel on each subcarrier,

 h1(f1) is the complex channel gain from transmit antenna 1 to the receive
antenna
 h2(f2) is from transmit antenna 2.
 h1(f1) = h1(f2) = h1. if Bc B/L, which by choosing a large enough number of
subcarriers L can be true.

The received signal r(f) can be written as:

where n(·) is a sample of white Gaussian noise.

The following diversity combining scheme can then be used, assuming the channel is
known at the receiver:

Hence, for example, it can be seen that:

similarly that:

Hence, this very simple decoder that just linearly combines the two received
samples r(f1) and r*(f2) is able to eliminate all the spatial interference.

The resulting SNR can be computed as:

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In summary, the 2 × 1 Alamouti code achieves the same diversity order and data rate
as a 1 × 2 receive diversity system with MRC, but with a 3-dB penalty due to the
redundant transmission that is required to remove the spatial interference at the
receiver.

OPEN-LOOP TRANSMIT DIVERSITY WITH MORE ANTENNAS

2 × 2 SFBC

The 2 × 2 SFBC uses the same transmit encoding scheme as for 2 × 1 transmit
diversity. Now, the channel description (still flat fading and constant over two
symbols) can be represented as a 2 × 2 matrix rather than a 2 × 1 vector.

The resulting signals at subcarriers f1 and f2 on antennas 1 and 2 can be represented

as:

Using the following combining scheme:

yields the following decision statistics:

y1 = (|h11|2 + |h12|2 + |h21|2 + |h22|2)s1 + 4 noise terms,

y2 = (|h11|2 + |h12|2 + |h21|2 + |h22|2)s2 + 4 noise terms,

and results in the following SNR:

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This is like MRC with four receive antennas, where again there is a 3-dB penalty due
to transmitting each symbol twice.

4 × 2 STACKED STBCS

 The 2 × 2 Alamouti code achieves full diversity gain.

 In LTE, it will be common to have four transmit antennas at the base station.

 In this case, two data streams can be sent using a double space-time transmit
diversity (DSTTD) scheme that essentially consists of operating two 2 × 1
Alamouti code systems in parallel DSTTD, also called “stacked STBCs,”
combines transmit diversity and maximum ratio combining techniques along
with a form of spatial multiplexing as shown in Figure 5.5.

 As in other space-time diversity techniques, the time dimension can be used

interchangeably with frequency to create stacked SFBCs.

Figure 5.5 4 × 2 stacked STBC transmitter.

The received signals at subcarriers f1 and f2 on antennas 1 and 2 can be represented

with the equivalent channel model as:

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Then, the equivalent matrix channel model of DSTTD can be represented as:

Each Hij channel matrix is the equivalent channel of the Alamouti code. Thus, DSTTD
can achieve a diversity order of Nd = 2Nr (ML detection) or Nd = 2 (ZF detection) due
to the 2 × 1 Alamouti code while also transmitting two data streams (spatial
multiplexing order of 2).

If the same linear combining scheme is used as in the 2 × 2 STBC case, then the
following decision statistics can be obtained:

where Ii is the interference from the ith transmit antenna due to transmitting two
simultaneous data streams. The detection process of DSTTD should attempt to
suppress the interference between the two STBC encoders

4 × 2 IN LTE

 In LTE, the rate 1, 2 stacked SFBC approach just discussed is not supported.
 Instead, when four transmit antennas are available, a combination of SFBC and
frequency switched transmit diversity (FSTD) is used.
 This combination of SFBC and FSTD is a rate 1 diversity scheme, i.e., four
modulation symbols are sent over four OFDM symbols using the following
space-frequency encoder, where the columns correspond to the subcarrier index
and the rows to the transmit antenna:

 The first and second symbols s1 and s2 are sent over antenna ports 0 and 2 on
the first two OFDM subcarriers in the block.
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 On the other two subcarriers, the third and fourth symbols are sent using
antenna port 1 and 3.
 To send two streams using four antennas, LTE uses an open-loop 4 × 2 spatial
multiplexing.

TRANSMIT DIVERSITY VS. RECEIVE DIVERSITY

The three example space-time block codes showed that transmit and receive diversity
are capable of providing an enhanced diversity that increases the robustness of
communication over wireless fading channels. The manner in which this
improvement is achieved is quite different.

RECEIVE DIVERSITY

 For maximal ratio combining with Nr antennas and only one transmit antenna,
the received SNR continuously grows as antennas are added, and the growth is
linear, that is:

The expected value or average combined SNR can thus be found as:

where is the average SNR on each branch.

 The SNR growth is linear with the number of receive antennas.

 From Shannon’s capacity formula, C = B log(1 + SNR), the throughput growth
due to receive diversity is logarithmic with the number of receive antennas,
since receive diversity serves to increase the SNR.

TRANSMIT DIVERSITY

 Due to the transmit power penalty inherent to transmit diversity techniques, the
received SNR does not always grow as transmit antennas are added.
 If there is a single receive antenna, the received combined SNR in an orthogonal
STBC scheme is generally of the form:

As the number of transmit antennas grows large, this expression becomes

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by the law of large numbers.

 Thus, open-loop transmit diversity causes the received SNR to “harden”

to the average SNR.
 It eliminates the effects of fading but does not actually increase the
average amount of useful received signal-to-noise ratio.

CLOSED-LOOP TRANSMIT DIVERSITY

 If feedback is added to the system, then the transmitter may be able to have
knowledge of the channel between it and the receiver.
 Because the channel changes quickly in a highly mobile scenario, closed-loop
transmission schemes tend to be feasible primarily in fixed or low-mobility
scenarios.
 There is a substantial gain in many cases from possessing channel state
information (CSI) at the transmitter, particularly in the spatial multiplexing.

TWO METHODS

 Transmit Selection Diversity

 Linear Diversity Precoding

Figure 5.7 Closed-loop transmit diversity.

TRANSMIT SELECTION DIVERSITY

 Transmit selection diversity (TSD) is the simplest form of transmit diversity.

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 In transmit selection diversity only a subset N* < Nt of the available Nt antennas
is used at a given time.

 The selected subset typically corresponds to the best channels between the
transmitter and receiver.

 Some advantages of transmit antenna selection are

 Hardware cost and complexity are reduced,

 Spatial interference is reduced since fewer transmit signals are sent
 The diversity order is still Nt Nr even though only N* of the Nt antennas are
used.
 Despite its optimal diversity order, transmit selection diversity is not optimal in
terms of diversity gain.
 Transmit selection can also be used in conjunction with spatial multiplexing
 The main drawback of antenna selection is that wideband channels have
multiple coherence bands so the gain from selecting the best antenna averaged
over all the coherence bands is likely to be small.
 Transmit selection diversity does not incur the power penalty relative to receive
selection diversity that we observed in the case of SFBCs vs. MRC.

LINEAR DIVERSITY PRECODING

Linear precoding is a general technique for improving the data rate or the link
reliability by exploiting the CSI(channel State Information) at the transmitter.

Diversity precoding is a special case of linear precoding where the data rate is
unchanged, and the linear precoder at the transmitter and a linear postcoder at the
receiver are applied only to improve the link reliability.

 To employ linear diversity precoding in practice, CSI is required at the

transmitter.
 This could be acquired (or at least accurately approximated) in a TDD system
by channel reciprocity, since the uplink and downlink channels are in theory
equivalent.
 In an FDD system, feedback from the receiver to the transmitter is required.
 For a multiantenna channel, accurate feedback of the entire channel matrix H
would require a very large amount of overhead, particularly in mobile channels.
Therefore, sophisticated quantization and compression techniques have been
developed, and play a role in LTE.
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INTERFERENCE CANCELLATION SUPPRESSION AND SIGNAL
ENHANCEMENT

The available antenna elements at either the transmitter or receiver can be used to
suppress undesired signals and/or enhance the power of the desired signal.

In a multi-antenna system, the channel is multidimensional and so the dimensions of

the channel can be applied to null interference in a certain direction, while amplifying
signals in another direction.

Rather than increasing the statistical diversity of the total signal as in the preceding
section, the energy can instead be steered.

The energy can be steered physically, resulting in actual electromagnetic wave

patterns with certain properties.

METHOD:

 DOA(Direction of Arrival)-Based Beamsteering

The dimensions can be used to create linear transmitters and receivers that project
desired signals into strong dimensions while attenuating the dimensions that
interference appear in.

METHOD:

 Linear Interference Suppression: Complete Knowledge of Interference

Channels
 Linear Interference Suppression: Statistical Knowledge of Interference
Channels
DOA(DIRECTION OF ARRIVAL)-BASED BEAMSTEERING

 Electromagnetic waves can be physically steered to create beam patterns at

either the transmitter or the receiver.
 At the transmitter, this causes energy to be sent predominantly in a desired
direction, while only a small amount of residual energy is leaked in other
directions.
 The more antennas are used, the more control over the beam pattern. The most
common and simple form of this is static pattern-gain beamsteering, which is
known as “sectoring” .

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 The DOA-based beamformer is only viable in LOS environments or in

environments with limited local scattering around the transmitter.

LINEAR INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION: COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE OF

INTERFERENCE CHANNELS

It is a more general form of interference suppression. Unlike the preceding DOA-

based approach, this technique is more easily expressed mathematically although its
physical interpretation is not as straightforward.

Figure 5.9 Simple two-user interference cancellation

Linear Interference Suppression: Statistical Knowledge of Interference Channels

We now consider the case where we again wish to suppress multiple interferers, but
have only statistical knowledge of the interference.

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SPATIAL MULTIPLEXING

 Spatial multiplexing refers to breaking the incoming high rate data stream
into M parallel data streams, as shown in Figure 5.11 for M = Nt and Nt ≤ Nr.
 Assuming that the streams can be successfully decoded, the spectral efficiency
is increased by a factor of M.
 Adding antenna elements will greatly increase the data rate without any
increase in bandwidth.
 Spatial multiplexing has proven challenging in practice, largely because this
data rate increase comes at the expense of the diversity and/or interference
suppression capabilities.

Figure 5.11 A spatial multiplexing MIMO system transmits multiple substreams to increase the data
rate.

An Introduction to Spatial Multiplexing

The standard mathematical model for spatial multiplexing is

where the size of the received vector y is Nr × 1, the channel matrix H is Nr × Nt, the
transmit vector x is Nt × 1, and the noise n is Nr × 1.

Typically, the transmit vector is normalized by Nt so that each symbol in x has average
energy εx/Nt. This keeps the total transmit energy constant with the SISO case for
comparison. The channel matrix in particular is of the form:

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It is usually assumed that the entries in the channel matrix and the noise vector are
complex Gaussian and i. i. d. (identical independent) with zero mean and diagonal
covariance matrices.

The spatial channels all experience uncorrelated Rayleigh fading and Gaussian noise.
This is reasonable if there is significant scattering, sufficient antenna spacing, and no
dominant interferers, but all assumptions may not be true in LTE system.

Under this model, using basic linear algebra arguments it is straightforward to

confirm that decoding Nt streams is theoretically possible .

This model enables a rich framework for mathematical analysis for MIMO systems
based on random matrix theory, information theory, and linear algebra.

The key points we would like to summarize regarding this single-user MIMO system
model are

• The capacity, or maximum data rate, grows as min(Nt, Nr) log(1 + SNR) when the
SNR is large . When the SNR is high, spatial multiplexing is optimal.
• When the SNR is low, the capacity-maximizing strategy is to send a single stream of
data using diversity precoding. Capacity grows approximately linearly with min(Nt,
Nr) since capacity is linear with SNR in the low-SNR regime.
• Both of these cases are superior in terms of capacity to space-time coding, where the
data rate grows at best logarithmically with Nr.
• The average SNR of all Nt streams can be maintained without increasing the total
transmit power relative to a SISO system.

OPEN-LOOP MIMO: SPATIAL MULTIPLEXING WITHOUT CHANNEL

FEEDBACK

As with multiantenna diversity techniques, spatial multiplexing can be performed

with or without channel knowledge at the transmitter.

Open-loop techniques: That the channel is known at the receiver, through pilot
symbols or other channel estimation techniques.

The open-loop techniques for spatial multiplexing attempt to suppress the

interference that results from all Nt streams being received by each of the Nr antennas.

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Figure 5.12 The similarity of interference suppression techniques for different applications.
Complexity is decreasing from left to right.

OPTIMUM DECODING: MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD DETECTION

If the channel is unknown at the transmitter, the optimum decoder is the maximum-
likelihood decoder, which finds the most likely input vector via a minimum
distance criterion:

But it is complex because to compute the distance an exhaustive search must be

done over all MN possible input vectors, where M is the order of the modulation
t

(e.g., M = 4 for QPSK).

LINEAR DETECTORS

In situations where complex maximum likelihood detector will be complex , linear

detectors that are capable of recovering the transmitted vector x can be considered.

A block diagram is shown in Figure 5.13.

The detector is the zero-forcing detector that sets the receiver equal to the inverse of
the channel Gzf = H−1 when Nt = Nr,

Figure 5.13 Spatial multiplexing with a linear receiver.

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As the name implies, the zero-forcing detector completely removes the spatial
interference from the transmitted signal, giving an estimated received vector:

Because Gzf inverts the eigenvalues of H, the bad spatial subchannels can severely
amplify the noise in n. This is particularly problematic in interference-limited MIMO
systems, and will result in extremely poor performance. The zero-forcing detector is
therefore not practical for LTE.

A logical alternative to the zero-forcing receiver is the MMSE (Minimum Mean Square
Error)receiver, which attempts to strike a balance between spatial interference
suppression and noise enhancement by simply minimizing the distortion.

BLAST

The earliest known spatial multiplexing receiver was invented and prototyped in Bell
Labs and is called Bell labs LAyered Space-Time (BLAST) .

BLAST consists of parallel “layers” supporting multiple simultaneous data streams.

The layers (substreams) in BLAST are separated by interference cancellation
techniques that decouple the overlapping data streams.

The two most important techniques are the original diagonal BLAST (D-BLAST) and
its subsequent version, vertical BLAST (V-BLAST) .

D-BLAST groups the transmitted symbols into “layers,” which are then coded in time
independently of the other layers.

These layers are then cycled to the different transmit antennas in a cyclical manner,
resulting in each layer being transmitted in a diagonal of space and time.

In this way, each symbol stream achieves diversity in time via coding, and in space
since it rotates among all the different antennas.

Therefore, the Nt transmitted streams will equally share the good and bad spatial
channels, as well as their priority in the decoding process.

The key to the BLAST techniques lies in the detection of the overlapping and mutually
interfering spatial streams. The diagonal layered structure of D-BLAST can be
detected by decoding one layer at a time.

The decoding process for the second of four layers is shown in the left side of Figure
5.14.

Each layer is detected by nulling the layers that have not yet been detected,
and cancelling the layers that have already been detected.

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In Figure 5.14, the layer to the left of the layer-2 block has already been detected and
hence subtracted (cancelled) from the received signal while those to the right remain
as interference but can be nulled using knowledge of the channel.

The time-domain coding helps compensate for errors or imperfections in the

cancellation and nulling process.

Two drawbacks of D-BLAST are that the decoding process is iterative and somewhat
complex, and the diagonal layering structure wastes space-time slots at the beginning
and end of a D-BLAST block.

Figure 5.14 (Left) D-BLAST detection of layer 2 of 4. (Right) V-BLAST encoding. Detection is done
dynamically; the layer (symbol stream) with the highest SNR is detected first and then cancelled.

V-BLAST

 V-BLAST was introduced to reduce the inefficiency and complexity of D-

BLAST.
 V-BLAST is simpler than D-BLAST. In V-BLAST, each antenna simply transmits
an independent symbol stream (for example, QAM symbols).
 A variety of techniques can be used at the receiver to separate the various symbol
streams from each other.
 These include linear receivers such as the ZF and MMSE.
 The essence of V-BLAST is to combine a linear receiver with ordered successive
interference cancellation.
 Instead of detecting all Nt streams in parallel, they are detected iteratively.
 First, the strongest symbol stream is detected (using a ZF or MMSE receiver, as
before). After these symbols are detected, they can be subtracted out from the
composite received signal.
 Then, the second strongest signal is detected, which now sees effectively Nt− 2
interfering streams.
 In general, the ith detected stream experiences interference from only Nt − i of
the transmit antennas, so that by the time the weakest symbol stream is
detected, the vast majority of spatial interference has been removed.
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DISADVANTAGES:

Despite demonstrating satisfactory performance in controlled laboratory

environments, the BLAST techniques have not proven themselves to be useful in
cellular systems at present. One challenge they face is their dependence on high SNR
for the joint decoding of the different streams, which is difficult to achieve in a
multicell environment. In both BLAST schemes, these imperfections can quickly lead
to catastrophic error propagation when the layers are detected incorrectly.

CLOSED-LOOP MIMO

The potential gain from transmitter channel knowledge is quite significant in spatial
multiplexing systems.

Singular value decomposition (SVD) that shows the potential gain of closed-loop
spatial multiplexing methods. It is a special case of linear diversity precoding .

SVD PRECODING AND POSTCODING

A relatively straightforward way to see the gain of transmitter channel knowledge is

by considering the singular value decomposition (SVD, or generalized eigenvalue
decomposition) of the channel matrix H, which can be written as:

where U and V are unitary and ∑ is a diagonal matrix of singular values.

As shown in Figure 5.15, with linear operations at the transmitter and receiver, i.e.,
multiplying by V and U*, respectively, the channel can be diagonalized.
Mathematically, this can be confirmed by considering a decision vector d that should
be close to the input symbol vector b. The decision vector can be written systematically
as

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Figure 5.15 A MIMO system that has been diagonalized through SVD precoding.

which has diagonalized the channel and removed all the spatial interference without
any matrix inversions or non-linear processing.

The singular value approach does not result in noise enhancement, as did the open-
loop linear techniques.

SVD-MIMO is not particularly practical since the complexity of finding the SVD of
an Nt × Nr matrix is on the order of if Nr ≥ Nt and requires a substantial amount
of feedback.

It shows the promise of closed-loop MIMO in achieving high performance at much

lower complexity than the ML detector in open-loop MIMO.

LINEAR PRECODING AND POSTCODING

More generally, the precoder and postcoder can be jointly designed based on a criteria
such as the information capacity , the error probability , the detection MSE , or the
received SNR .

The general precoding formulation is

where x and y are M × 1, the postcoder matrix G is M × Nr, the channel

matrix H is Nr × Nt, the precoder matrix F is Nt × M, and n is Nr × 1.

For the SVD example M = min(Nr, Nt), G = U*, and F = V.

The linear precoder and postcoder decompose the MIMO channel into a set of parallel
subchannels as illustrated in Figure 5.16.

Therefore, the received symbol for the ith subchannel can be expressed as:

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Figure 5.16 Spatial subchannels resulting from linear precoding and postcoding.

where xi and yi are the transmitted and received symbols, respectively,

with E|xi|2 = εx as usual, σi are the singular values of H, αi and βi are the precoder and
the postcoder weights, and ni is the noise per subchannel.

HOW TO CHOOSE BETWEEN DIVERSITY, INTERFERENCE

SUPPRESSION, AND SPATIAL MULTIPLEXING

Three different ways to use multiantennas in a system is discussed : diversity,

interference suppression, and spatial multiplexing.

There is a basic tradeoff between them, since they all require the finite degrees of
freedom in the system to be used.

Diversity provides robustness to fades and interference suppression provides

robustness to interference.

Both these methods increase the possible throughput by increasing the

SINR = S/(I + N).

Diversity increases and steadies S, while interference suppression (or nulling)

reduces I.

Spatial multiplexing creates more parallel streams but does not necessarily increase
the per-stream SINR.

Interference suppression and nulling is often considered impractical in a cellular

system, and of questionable utility. Therefore, most research has focused on diversity
and multiplexing.

When the transmitter has full CSI, the optimal precoder with link adaptation (i.e., per-
stream waterfilling) will naturally select the optimum number of streams and the
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power sent on each. So with accurate CSIT, there is an inherently optimal tradeoff
point between diversity and multiplexing.

When the transmitter does not have exact CSIT, but instead partial CSIT, for example,
knowledge of the average link SINR, the tradeoff is more subtle.

Essentially, the choice comes down to the following question: would you rather have
a thin, but very reliable pipe or a wide, but not very reliable pipe? Naturally, a
compromise on each would often seem to be the preference.

The Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff (DMT), stipulates that both diversity gain and
multiplexing gain can be achieved in a multiple antenna channel but that there is a
fundamental tradeoff between how much of each gain can be achieved.
Hence, diversity gain—the reliability exponent Nd —and multiplexing gain—in
essence, the number of streams sent—are obtained at the expense of each other.

In the context of LTE, a more relevant perspective on the DMT was recently developed
which results in several conclusions at odds with those of the traditional model.
Lozano and Jindal use a model that includes frequency-selective fading, ARQ, and
coding, and focuses on achieved rate at fixed error probability (instead of vanishing
error probability)—all of which are appropriate adjustments for LTE.

Conclusion is that all the spatial degrees of freedom should be used for multiplexing
and none for spatial diversity.

This is well-captured in Figure 5.17. On the left, with settings corresponding to the
simplistic DMT model (and Nt = Nr = 4), we see that for all but the highest SNR values,
transmit diversity indeed outperforms spatial multiplexing. In fact, spatial
multiplexing even does worse than no transmit diversity, because so many errors are
made on the weakest streams.

However, with the wideband channel model on the right of Figure 5.17 transmit
diversity is only very marginally better than the single-transmit antenna case while
spatial multiplexing is much better, even at low to moderate SNR.

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Figure 5.17 The Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff, for a narrowband system with no other forms of
diversity (left) and for a wideband system with ARQ (right)..

First, modern wireless systems (like LTE) have many forms of diversity, most notably
time and frequency diversity, which are exploited using coding, interleaving,
retransmissions (ARQ), OFDMA, and adaptive modulation. There is very little
diversity left in the channel to exploit with spatial diversity when these are considered.

Second, link adaptation (adaptive modulation, ARQ, power control) is used to

maintain a target block error probability, and there is very little benefit (but
considerable cost in power and possibly other resources) to beating this target.

In short, transmit diversity and the gains in reliability it brings are redundant to other
features of LTE. This points to aggressively using spatial multiplexing in LTE.

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MODULE—3
Overview and Channel Structure of LTE :
Introduction to LTE:
 Design principles
 Network Architecture
 Radio interface protocols
Channel Structure of LTE:
 Logical channels :What to transmit
 Transport Channels: Downlink and Uplink: How to transmit
 Physical Channels :Downlink and Uplink: Actual transmission
 Channel mapping

Downlink OFDMA Radio Resources:

 Frame Structure
 Physical resource blocks for OFDM
 Resource allocation
Supported MIMO modes
Uplink SC-FDMA Radio Resources:
 Frame Structure
 Physical resource blocks for OFDM
 Resource allocation
 Supported MIMO modes
Downlink Transport Channel Processing: Overview
 Channel coding processing
 Modulation processing
Downlink Shared Channels:
 Channel encoding and modulation
 Multiantenna Transmission
Downlink Control Channels:
 Downlink control information (DCI)formats
 Channel encoding and modulation
 Multiantenna Transmission
Broadcast Channels, Multicast Channels

Downlink Physical Signals:

 Downlink reference signals
 Synchronization signals
H-ARQ in the downlink

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OVERVIEW AND CHANNEL STRUCTURE OF LTE

 Till now the inherent challenges and associated technical solutions in designing
a broadband wireless network was discussed.
 From here onward, we describe the technical details of the LTE specifications.
 In this chapter we provide an overview of the LTE radio interface.
 The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) defines a separable network
structure,it divides the whole network into
 A radio access network (RAN)
 A core network (CN),
this makes it feasible to evolve each part independently.

The Long-Term Evolution (LTE) project in 3GPP focuses on enhancing the UMTS
Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA)—the 3G RAN developed within 3GPP, and on
optimizing 3GPP’s overall radio access architecture.

Another project in 3GPP is the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), which focuses on the CN
evolution with a flatter all-IP, packet-based architecture.

The complete packet system consisting of LTE and EPC is called the Evolved Packet
System (EPS).

LTE is also referred to as Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA), and the
RAN of LTE is also referred to as Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network
(E-UTRAN).

The radio interface of a wireless network is the interface between the mobile terminal
and the base station.

In the case of LTE it is located between the RAN–E-UTRAN and the user equipment
(UE, the name for the mobile terminal in 3GPP).

Compared to the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) for 3G systems,
which has two logical entities—the Node-B (the radio base station) and the radio
network controller (RNC)—the E-UTRAN network architecture is simpler and
flatter. It is composed of only one logical node—the evolved Node-B
(eNode-B).

The RAN architectures of UTRAN and E-UTRAN are shown in Figure 6.1.

Compared to the traditional Node-B, the eNode-B supports additional features, such
as radio resource control, admission control, and mobility management, which were
originally contained in the RNC.

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This simpler structure simplifies the network operation and allows for higher
throughput and lower latency over the radio interface.

Figure 6.1 Radio interface architectures of UTRAN and E-UTRAN.

The LTE radio interface aims for a long-term evolution, it is designed with a clean
slate approach as opposed to High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which was designed
as an add-on to UMTS in order to increase throughput of packet switched services.

HSPA is a collection of High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High-

Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA).

Advantages of Clean Slate approach:

The clean slate approach allows for a completely different air interface, which means
that advanced techniques, including Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) and multiantenna transmission and reception (MIMO), could be included
from the start of the standardization of LTE.

For multiple access, it uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access

(OFDMA) in the downlink and Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access
(SC-FDMA)in the uplink.

In this chapter ,

 Introduction to the LTE radio interfac

 Its hierarchical channel structure.
 Overview of the LTE standard is provided, including design principles, the
network architecture, and radio interface protocols.
 The purpose of each channel type defined in LTE and the mapping between
channels at various protocol layers.
 The downlink OFDMA and uplink SC-FDMA aspects of the air interface are
described, including frame structures, physical resource blocks, resource
allocation, and the supported MIMO modes.

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 This chapter serves as the foundation for understanding the physical layer
procedures and higher layer protocols of LTE that are described in the chapters
to follow.

INTRODUCTION TO LTE
 LTE is the next step in the evolution of mobile cellular systems and was
standardized as part of the 3GPP Release 8 specifications.
 LTE was designed primarily for high-speed data services, hence LTE is a packet-
switched network from end to end and has no support for circuit-switched
services.
 The low latency of LTE and its sophisticated quality of service (QoS) architecture
allow a network to support a circuit-switched connection on top of the packet-
switched framework of LTE.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES:
The basic design principles that were agreed upon and followed in 3GPP while
designing the LTE specifications include:

 Network architecture
 Data rate and latency
 Performance requirements
 MBMS service
 Radio resource management
 Deployment scenario and co-existence with 3G
 Flexibility of spectrum and deployment
 Interoperability with 3G and 2G networks

 NETWORK ARCHITECTURE:

 Unlike 3G networks, LTE was designed to support packet-switched traffic with

support for various QoS classes of services.

 LTE is a clean slate design and supports packet switching for high data rate
services from the start.

 The LTE radio access network, E-UTRAN, was designed to have the minimum
number of interfaces (i.e., the minimum number of network elements) while
still being able to provide efficient packet-switched transport for traffic

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belonging to all the QoS classes such as conversational, streaming, real-time,
non-real-time, and background classes.

 DATA RATE AND LATENCY:

 The design target for downlink and uplink peak data rates for LTE are 100 Mbps
and 50 Mbps, respectively, when operating at the 20MHz frequency division
duplex (FDD) channel size.

 The user-plane latency is defined in terms of the time it takes to transmit a small
IP packet from the UE to the edge node of the radio access network or vice versa
measured on the IP layer.

 The target for one-way latency in the user plane is 5 ms in an unloaded network,
that is, if only a single UE is present in the cell.

 For the control-plane latency, the transition time from a camped state to an
active state is less than 100 ms.

 The transition time between a dormant state and an active state should be less
than 50 ms.

 PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS
The target performance requirements for LTE are specified in terms of spectrum
efficiency, mobility, and coverage, and they are in general expressed relative to the
3GPP Release 6 HSPA.
 Spectrum Efficiency
 The average downlink user data rate and spectrum efficiency target is
three to four times that of the baseline HSDPA network.
 In the uplink the average user data rate and spectrum efficiency target is
two to three times that of the baseline HSUPA network.
 The cell edge throughput, measured as the 5th percentile throughput,
should be two to three times that of the baseline HSDPA and HSUPA.
 Mobility
 The mobility requirement for LTE is to support hand-off/mobility at
different terminal speeds.

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 Maximum performance is expected for the lower terminal speeds of 0 to
15 km/hr, with minor degradation in performance at higher mobile speeds
up to 120 km/hr,up to 350

 km/hr but with significant degradation in the system performance.

 Coverage
 For the cell coverage, the above performance targets should be met up to
5 km.

 For cell ranges up to 30 km, a slight degradation of the user throughput is

tolerated and a more significant degradation for spectrum efficiency is
acceptable, but the mobility requirements should be met.

 MBMS Service

 LTE should also provide enhanced support for the Multimedia Broadcast
and Multicast Service (MBMS) compared to UTRA operation.

 Radio Resource Management:

 The radio resource management requirements cover various aspects such
as enhanced support for end-to-end QoS.

 Efficient support for transmission of higher layers

 Support for load sharing/balancing and policy management/enforcement

across different radio access technologies.

 Deployment Scenario and Co-existence with 3G:

At a high level, LTE shall support the following two deployment scenarios:
 Standalone deployment scenario, where the operator deploys LTE either with
no previous network deployed in the area or with no requirement for
interworking with the existing UTRAN/GERAN (GSM EDGE radio access
network) networks.
 Integrating with existing UTRAN and/or GERAN deployment scenario, where
the operator already has either a UTRAN and/or a GERAN network deployed
with full or partial coverage in the same geographical area.

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 Flexibility of Spectrum and Deployment:

 In order to become a truly global standard, LTE was designed to be

operable under a wide variety of spectrum scenarios, including its
ability to coexist and share spectrum with existing 3G technologies.

 Service providers in different geographical regions often have different

spectrums in terms of the carrier frequency and total available bandwidth,
hence LTE was designed to have a scalable bandwidth from 1.4MHz
to 20MHz.

 In order to accommodate flexible duplexing options, LTE was designed to

operate in both frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex
(TDD) modes.
 Interoperability with 3G and 2G Networks:

 Multimode LTE terminals, which support UTRAN and/or GERAN operation,

should be able to support measurement of, and handover from and to, both
3GPP UTRAN and 3GPP GERAN systems with acceptable terminal complexity
and network performance.
Network Architecture
Figure 6.2 shows the end-to-end network architecture of LTE and the various
components of the network.

The entire network is composed of the radio access network (E-UTRAN) and the core
network (EPC), both of which have been defined as new components of the end-to-
end network in Release 8 of the 3GPP specifications.

The main components of the E-UTRAN and EPC are

• UE: The mobile terminal.

• eNode-B:
 The eNode-B (also called the base station) terminates the air interface protocol
and is the first point of contact for the UE.
 The eNode-B is the only logical node in the E-UTRAN, so it includes functions
previously defined in the RNC of the UTRAN, such as radio bearer management,
uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management and data packet
scheduling, and mobility management.

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• Mobility Management Entity (MME):
 MME is similar in function to the control plane of legacy Serving GPRS
Support Node (SGSN).
 It manages mobility aspects in 3GPP access such as gateway selection and
tracking area list management.
• Serving Gateway (Serving GW):
 The Serving GW terminates the interface toward E-UTRAN, and routes data
packets between E-UTRAN and EPC.
 It is the local mobility anchor point for inter-eNode-B handovers and also
provides an anchor for inter-3GPP mobility.
 Other responsibilities include lawful intercept, charging, and some policy
enforcement.
 The Serving GW and the MME may be implemented in one physical node or
separate physical nodes.
• Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN GW):
 The PDN GW terminates the SGi interface toward the Packet Data Network
(PDN).
 It routes data packets between the EPC and the external PDN
 It is the key node for policy enforcement and charging data collection.
 It also provides the anchor point for mobility with non-3GPP accesses.
 The PDN GW and the Serving GW may be implemented in one physical node or
separated physical nodes.
• S1 Interface:
 The S1 interface is the interface that separates the E-UTRAN and the EPC.
 It is split into two parts: the S1-U, which carries traffic data between the eNode-
B and the Serving GW, and the S1-MME, which is a signaling-only interface
between the eNode-B and the MME.

• X2 Interface:
 The X2 interface is the interface between eNode-Bs’
 It consists of two parts: the X2-C is the control plane interface between eNode-
Bs, while the X2-U is the user plane interface between eNode-Bs.
 It is assumed that there always exists an X2 interface between eNode-Bs that
need to communicate with each other, for example, for support of handover.

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Figure 6.2 LTE end-to-end network architecture.

The Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) is for policy and charging control

 The Home Subscriber Server (HSS) is responsible for the service authorization
and user authentication.
 Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) is for controlling packet sessions and
managing the mobility of the UE for GPRS networks.

Radio Interface Protocols The LTE radio interface is designed based on a

layered protocol stack, divided into
 Control plane Protocol stack
 User plane protocol stacks

Figure 6.3 The LTE radio interface protocol stack.

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The LTE radio interface protocol is composed of the following layers:

 Radio Resource Control (RRC): The RRC layer performs the control plane
functions
 Paging
 Maintenance and
 Release of an RRC connection
 Security handling
 Mobility management
 QOS management

• Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP): The main functions of the PDCP
sublayer
 IP packet header compression and decompression based on the
RObust Header Compression (ROHC) protocol
 Ciphering of data and signaling
 Integrity protection for signaling
There is only one PDCP entity at the eNode-B and the UE per bearer.

• Radio Link Control (RLC):

The main functions of the RLC sublayer are
 Segmentation and concatenation of data units
 Error correction through the automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol
 In-sequence delivery of packets to the higher layers
It operates in three modes:
 The Transparent Mode (TM): The TM mode is the simplest one, without
RLC header addition, data segmentation, or concatenation, and it is used for
specific purposes such as random access.
 The Unacknowledged Mode (UM): The UM mode allows the detection
of packet loss and provides packet reordering and reassembly, but does not
require retransmission of the missing protocol data units (PDUs).
 The Acknowledged Mode (AM): The AM mode is the most complex one,
and it is configured to request retransmission of the missing PDUs in
addition to the features supported by the UM mode.

There is only one RLC entity at the eNode-B and the UE per bearer.

• Medium Access Control (MAC): The main functions of the MAC sublayer
include
 Error correction through the Hybrid-ARQ (H-ARQ) mechanism
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 Mapping between logical channels and transport channels
 Multiplexing/demultiplexing of RLC PDUs on to transport blocks
 Priority handling between logical channels of one UE
 Priority handling between UEs by means of dynamic scheduling
 Transport format selection of scheduled UEs, which includes selection of
modulation format, code rate, MIMO rank, and power level.
There is only one MAC entity at the eNode-B and one MAC entity at the UE.

• Physical Layer (PHY):

 The main function of PHY is the actual transmission and reception of data in
forms of transport blocks.
 The PHY is also responsible for various control mechanisms such as signaling
of H-ARQ feedback, signaling of scheduled allocations, and channel
measurements.

Figure 6.4 The packet flow in the user plane.

HIERARCHICAL CHANNEL STRUCTURE OF LTE

To efficiently support various QoS classes of services, LTE adopts a hierarchical

channel structure.

There are three different channel types defined in LTE

 Logical channels
 Transport channels
 Physical channels

each associated with a service access point (SAP) between different layers. These
channels are used by the lower layers of the protocol stack to provide services to the
higher layers.
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 Logical channels provide services at the SAP between MAC and RLC layers.
 Transport channels provide services at the SAP between MAC and PHY layers.
 Physical channels are the actual implementation of transport channels over the
radio interface.

The radio interface protocol architecture and the SAPs between different layers
are shown in Figure 6.5.

Figure 6.5 The radio interface protocol architecture and the SAPs between different layers.

 In LTE, the transport and logical channel structures are much more simplified
and fewer in number compared to UTRA/HSPA.

 Unlike UTRA/HSPA, LTE is based entirely on shared and broadcast channels

and contains no dedicated channels carrying data to specific UEs.

 This improves the efficiency of the radio interface and can support dynamic
resource allocation between different UEs depending on their traffic/QoS
requirements and their respective channel conditions.

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LOGICAL CHANNELS: WHAT TO TRANSMIT
 Logical channels are used by the MAC to provide services to the RLC.
 Each logical channel is defined based on the type of information it carries.
 In LTE, there are two categories of logical channels depending on the service
they provide: logical control channels and logical traffic channels.
 Logical Control Channels
 Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH)
 Multicast Control Channel (MCCH)
 Paging Control Channel (PCCH)
 Common Control Channel (CCCH)
 Dedicated Control Channel (DCCH)

 Logical traffic Channel

 Dedicated Traffic Channel (DTCH)

 Multicast Traffic Channel (MTCH)

The logical control channels, which are used to transfer control plane information,
include the following types:

• Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH):

 A downlink common channel used to broadcast system control information to
the mobile terminals in the cell, including downlink system bandwidth, antenna
configuration, and reference signal power.

 Due to the large amount of information carried on the BCCH, it is mapped to

two different transport channels: the Broadcast Channel (BCH) and the
Downlink Shared Channel (DL-SCH).
• Multicast Control Channel (MCCH):
 A point-to-multipoint downlink channel used for transmitting control
information to UEs in the cell.
 It is only used by UEs that receive multicast/broadcast services.
• Paging Control Channel (PCCH):
 A downlink channel that transfers paging information to registered UEs in the
cell.
• Common Control Channel (CCCH):
 A bi-directional channel for transmitting control information between the
network and UEs when no RRC connection is available.
 Most commonly the CCCH is used during the random access procedure.
• Dedicated Control Channel (DCCH):
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 A point-to-point, bi-directional channel that transmits dedicated control
information between a UE and the network.
 This channel is used when the RRC connection is available, that is, the UE is
attached to the network.

The logical traffic channels, which are to transfer user plane information, include:

• Dedicated Traffic Channel (DTCH):

 A point-to-point, bi-directional channel used between a given UE and the
network. It can exist in both uplink and downlink.
• Multicast Traffic Channel (MTCH):
 A unidirectional, point-to-multipoint data channel that transmits traffic data
from the network to UEs. It is associated with the multicast/broadcast service.

TRANSPORT CHANNELS: HOW TO TRANSMIT

 The transport channels are used by the PHY to offer services to the MAC.
 A transport channel is basically characterized by how and with what
characteristics data is transferred over the radio interface ie the channel
coding scheme, the modulation scheme, and antenna mapping.
 Compared to UTRA/HSPA, the number of transport channels in LTE is
reduced since no dedicated channels are present.

LTE defines two MAC entities: one in the UE and one in the E-UTRAN, which
handle the following downlink/uplink transport channels.

Downlink transport channels:

 Downlink Shared Channel (DL-SCH)

 Broadcast Channel (BCH)
 Multicast Channel (MCH)
 Paging Channel (PCH)
Uplink transport channels:
 Uplink Shared Channel (UL-SCH)
 Random Access Channel (RACH)
DOWNLINK TRANSPORT CHANNELS
• Downlink Shared Channel (DL-SCH):
 Used for transmitting the downlink data, including both control and traffic
data, and thus it is associated with both logical control and logical traffic
channels.

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 It supports H-ARQ, dynamic link adaption, dynamic and semi-persistent
resource allocation, UE discontinuous reception, and multicast/broadcast
transmission.
 By sharing the radio resource among different UEs the DL-SCH is able to
maximize the throughput by allocating the resources to the optimum UEs.
• Broadcast Channel (BCH):
 A downlink channel associated with the BCCH logical channel and is used to
broadcast system information over the entire coverage area of the cell. It has a
fixed transport format .
• Multicast Channel (MCH):
 Associated with MCCH and MTCH logical channels for the multicast/broadcast
service. It supports Multicast/Broadcast Single Frequency Network (MBSFN)
transmission, which transmits the same information on the same radio resource
from multiple synchronized base stations to multiple UEs.
• Paging Channel (PCH):
 Associated with the PCCH logical channel.
 It is mapped to dynamically allocated physical resources, and is required for
broadcast over the entire cell coverage area.
 It is transmitted on the Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH), and
supports UE discontinuous reception.
UPLINK TRANSPORT CHANNELS
• Uplink Shared Channel (UL-SCH):
 The uplink counterpart of the DL-SCH.
 It can be associated to CCCH, DCCH, and DTCH logical channels.
 It supports H-ARQ, dynamic link adaption, and dynamic and semi-persistent
resource allocation.
• Random Access Channel (RACH):
 A specific transport channel that is not mapped to any logical channel.
 It transmits relatively small amounts of data for initial access or, in the case of
RRC, state changes.
 The data on each transport channel is organized into transport blocks, and the
transmission time of each transport block, also called Transmission Time
Interval (TTI), is 1 ms in LTE.
 Besides transport channels, there are different types of control information
defined in the MAC layer, which are important for various physical layer
procedures.

The defined control information includes

 Downlink Control Information (DCI):

 Control Format Indicator (CFI):
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 H-ARQ Indicator (HI):
 Uplink Control Information (UCI):

• Downlink Control Information (DCI):

It carries information related to downlink/uplink scheduling assignment, modulation
and coding scheme, and Transmit Power Control (TPC) command, and is sent over
the Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH). The DCI supports 10 different
formats. Format 1,1A,1B,1C,1D,2,2A,3,3A.
• Control Format Indicator (CFI): It indicates how many symbols the DCI spans
in that subframe. It takes values CFI = 1, 2, or 3, and is sent over the Physical Control
Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH).
• H-ARQ Indicator (HI): It carries H-ARQ acknowledgment in response to uplink
transmissions, and is sent over the Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH).
HI = 1 for a positive acknowledgment (ACK) and HI = 0 for a negative
acknowledgment (NAK).
• Uplink Control Information (UCI): It is for measurement indication on the
downlink transmission, scheduling request of uplink, and the H-ARQ
acknowledgment of downlink transmissions. The UCI can be transmitted either on
the Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) or the Physical Uplink Shared Channel
(PUSCH).
PHYSICAL CHANNELS: ACTUAL TRANSMISSION
 Each physical channel corresponds to a set of resource elements in the time-
frequency grid that carry information from higher layers.
 The basic entities that make a physical channel are resource elements and
resource blocks.
 A resource element is a single subcarrier over one OFDM symbol, and it carries
one (or two with spatial multiplexing) modulated symbol(s).
 A resource block is a collection of resource elements and in the frequency
domain this represents the smallest quanta of resources that can be allocated.
Downlink Physical Channels
 Downlink Control Information (DCI)
 Control Format Indicator (CFI)
 H-ARQ Indicator (HI)
 Uplink Control Information (UCI)

• Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH):

 It carries information about the transport format and resource allocation related
to the DL-SCH and PCH transport channels, and the H-ARQ information
related to the DL-SCH.
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 It also informs the UE about the transport format, resource allocation, and H-
ARQ information related to UL-SCH.
 It is mapped from the DCI transport channel.
• Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH):
 This channel carries user data and higher-layer signaling.
 It is associated to DL-SCH and PCH.
• Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH):
 It corresponds to the BCH transport channel and carries system information.
• Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH):
 It carriers multicast/broadcast information for the MBMS service.
• Physical Hybrid-ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH):
 This channel carries H-ARQ ACK/NAKs associated with uplink data
transmissions. It is mapped from the HI transport channel.
• Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH):
 It informs the UE about the number of OFDM symbols used for the PDCCH.
 It is mapped from the CFI transport channel.
UPLINK PHYSICAL CHANNELS
 Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH):
 Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH
 Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH

• Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH):

 It carries uplink control information including Channel Quality Indicators
(CQI), ACK/NAKs for H-ARQ in response to downlink transmission, and
uplink scheduling requests.
• Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH):
 It carries user data and higher-layer signaling.
 It corresponds to the UL-SCH transport channel.
• Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH):
 This channel carries the random access preamble sent by UEs.

Besides physical channels, there are signals embedded in the downlink and uplink
physical layer, which do not carry information from higher layers.

The physical signals defined in the LTE specifications are

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• Reference signal: It is defined in both downlink and uplink for channel estimation
that enables coherent demodulation and for channel quality measurement to assist
user scheduling.

There are three different reference signals in the downlink:

 Cell-specific reference signals, associated with non-MBSFN transmission
 MBSFN reference signals, associated with MBSFN transmission
 UE-specific reference signals
There are two types of uplink reference signals:
 Demodulation reference signal, associated with transmission of PUSCH
or PUCCH
 Sounding reference signal, to support uplink channel-dependent
scheduling
• Synchronization signal:
 It is split into a primary and a secondary synchronization signal, and is only
defined in the downlink to enable acquisition of symbol timing and the precise
frequency of the downlink signal.
CHANNEL MAPPING
There exists a good correlation based on the purpose and the content between
channels in different layers.

This requires a mapping between the logical channels and transport channels at the
MAC SAP and a mapping between transport channels and physical channels at the
PHY SAP.

It is possible for multiple channels mapped to a single channel, for example, different
logical control channels and logical traffic channels are mapped to the DL-SCH
transport channel.
Figure 6.6 Mapping between different channel types.

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Figure 6.7 Mapping of control information to physical channels.

DOWNLINK OFDMA RADIO RESOURCES

In LTE, the downlink and uplink use different transmission schemes due to different
considerations.

In the downlink, a scalable OFDM transmission/multiaccess technique is used that

allows for high spectrum efficiency by utilizing multiuser diversity in a frequency
selective channel.

In the uplink, a scalable SC-FDMA transmission/multiaccess technique is used ,since

it reduces the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal.

The downlink transmission is based on OFDM with a cyclic prefix (CP)

Some key advantages of OFDM that motivate using it in the LTE downlink:

• OFDM is efficient in combating the frequency-selective fading channel with a simple

frequency-domain equalizer, which makes it a suitable technique for wireless
broadband systems such as LTE.
• It is possible to exploit frequency-selective scheduling with OFDM-based multiple
access (OFDMA), while HSPA only schedules in the time domain. This can make a big
difference especially in slow time-varying channels.
• The transceiver structure of OFDM with FFT/IFFT enables scalable bandwidth
operation with a low complexity, which is one of the major objectives of LTE.
• As each subcarrier becomes a flat fading channel, compared to single-carrier
transmission OFDM makes it much easier to support multiantenna transmission,
which is a key technique to enhance the spectrum efficiency.

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• OFDM enables multicast/broadcast services on a synchronized single frequency
network, that is, MBSFN, as it treats signals from different base stations as
propagating through a multipath channel and can efficiently combine them.

The multiple access in the downlink is based on OFDMA.

 In each TTI(Transmission Time Interval), a scheduling decision is made where

each scheduled UE is assigned a certain amount of radio resources in the time
and frequency domain.

 The radio resources allocated to different UEs are orthogonal to each other,
which means there is no intra-cell interference.

FRAME STRUCTURE

The frame structure in the time domain, is a common element shared by both
downlink and uplink.

In LTE specifications, the size of elements in the time domain is expressed as a

number of time units Ts= 1/(15000 × 2048) seconds.

As the normal subcarrier spacing is defined to be Δf = 15kHz, Ts can be regarded as

the sampling time of an FFT-based OFDM transmitter/receiver implementation with
FFT size NFFT = 2048.

Different FFT sizes are supported depending on the transmission bandwidths.

A set of parameters for typical transmission bandwidths for LTE in the downlink is
shown in Table 6.2.
Table 6.2 Typical Parameters for Downlink Transmission

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In the time domain, the downlink and uplink multiple TTIs are organized into radio
frames with duration Tf = 307200 · Ts = 10 ms.

For flexibility, LTE supports both FDD and TDD modes.

LTE supports two kinds of frame structures:

 Frame structure type 1 for the FDD mode

 Frame structure type 2 for the TDD mode.

Frame Structure Type 1

 Frame structure type 1 is applicable to both full duplex and half duplex FDD.
 There are three different kinds of units specified for this frame structure.
 The smallest one is called a slot, which is of length Tslot = 15360 · Ts = 0.5 ms.

Two consecutive slots are defined as a subframe of length 1 ms, and 20 slots,
numbered from 0 to 19, constitute a radio frame of 10 ms.

Channel-dependent scheduling and link adaptation operate on a subframe level.

Therefore, the subframe duration corresponds to the minimum downlink TTI, which
is of 1 ms duration, compared to a 2 ms TTI for the HSPA and a minimum 10 ms TTI
for the UMTS.

A shorter TTI is for fast link adaptation and is able to reduce delay and better exploit
the time-varying channel through channel-dependent scheduling.

Figure 6.8 Frame structure type 1.

 Each slot consists of a number of OFDM symbols including CPs.

 CP is a kind of guard interval to combat inter-OFDM-symbol interference,
which should be larger than the channel delay spread.

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 Therefore, the length of CP depends on the environment where the network
operates, and it should not be too large as it brings a bandwidth and power
penalty.
 With a subcarrier spacing Δf = 15kHz, the OFDM symbol time is 1/Δf ≈ 66.7μs.

LTE defines two different CP lengths: a normal CP and an extended CP,

corresponding to seven and six OFDM symbols per slot, respectively.

The extended CP is for multicell multicast/broadcast and very-large-cell scenarios

with large delay spread at a price of bandwidth efficiency.

The normal CP is suitable for urban environment and high data rate applications.

 For FDD, uplink and downlink transmissions are separated in the frequency
domain, each with 10 subframes.
 In half-duplex FDD operation, the UE cannot transmit and receive at the same
time while there are no such restrictions in full-duplex FDD.
 Full-duplex FDD terminals need high quality and expensive RF duplex-filters to
separate uplink and downlink channels.
 Half-duplex FDD allows hardware sharing between the uplink and downlink,
which offers a cost saving at the expense of reducing data rates by half.
 Half-duplex FDD UEs are also considered a good solution if the duplex
separation between the uplink and downlink transmissions is relatively small.
 In such cases, the half-duplex FDD is the preferable approach to mitigate the
cross-interference between the transmit and receive chains.

Frame Structure Type 2

 Frame structure type 2 is applicable to the TDD mode.

 It is designed for coexistence with legacy systems such as the 3GPP TD-SCDMA-
based standard.
 Each radio frame of frame structure type 2 is of length Tf = 30720 · Ts = 10 ms,
which consists of two half-frames of length 5 ms each.
 Each half-frame is divided into five subframes with 1 ms duration.
 There are special subframes, which consist of three fields: Downlink Pilot
TimeSlot (DwPTS), Guard Period (GP), and Uplink Pilot TimeSlot (UpPTS).
 These fields are maintained in the LTE TDD mode to provide sufficiently large
guard periods for the equipment to switch between transmission and reception.

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Figure 6.9 Frame structure type 2.

• The DwPTS field: This is the downlink part of the special subframe, Its length can
be varied from three up to twelve OFDM symbols.
• The UpPTS field: This is the uplink part of the special subframe, and has a short
duration with one or two OFDM symbols. It can be used for transmission of uplink
sounding reference signals and random access preambles.
• The GP field: The remaining symbols in the special subframe that have not been
allocated to DwPTS or UpPTS are allocated to the GP field, which is used to provide
the guard period for the downlink-to-uplink and the uplink-to-downlink switch.

The total length of these three special fields has a constraint of 1 ms. With the DwPTS
and UpPTS durations mentioned above, LTE supports a guard period ranging from
two to ten OFDM symbols, sufficient for cell size up to and beyond 100 km.

 All other subframes are defined as two slots, each with length Tslot = 0.5 ms.

Figure 6.9 only shows the detail structure of the first half-frame. The second half-
frame has the similar structure, which depends on the uplink-downlink
configuration.

PHYSICAL RESOURCE BLOCKS FOR OFDMA

 The physical resource in the downlink in each slot is described by a time-

frequency grid, called a resource grid, as illustrated in Figure 6.10.
 Such a time-frequency plane representation is used in OFDM systems, for radio
resource allocation.
 Each column and each row of the resource grid correspond to one OFDM symbol
and one OFDM subcarrier, respectively.
 The duration of the resource grid in the time domain corresponds to one slot in
a radio frame.
 The smallest time-frequency unit in a resource grid is denoted as a resource
element.
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 Each resource grid consists of a number of resource blocks, which describe the
mapping of certain physical channels to resource elements.

The detail of these resource units is described as follows.

It consists of

 Resource grid
 Resource block
 Resource element
 Resource allocation

Resource Grid

The structure of each resource grid is characterized by the following three parameters:

 No. of downlink resource blocks

 No. of subcarriers in each resource block
 No. of OFDM symbols in each block

• The number of downlink resource blocks ( ):

 It depends on the transmission bandwidth and shall fulfill
 and are for the smallest and largest downlink channel
bandwidth, respectively
 The values of for several current specified bandwidths are listed in Table
6.2.

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Figure 6.10 The structure of the downlink resource grid.

• The number of subcarriers in each resource block ( ):

 It depends on the subcarrier spacing Δf, satisfying , that is,
each resource block is of 180kHz wide in the frequency domain.
 The values of for different subcarrier spacings are shown in Table 6.4.
 There are a total of subcarriers in each resource grid.

Table 6.4 Physical Resource Block Parameters for the Downlink

• The number of OFDM symbols in each block ( ):

 It depends on both the CP length and the subcarrier spacing.
 Resource elements

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 Therefore, each downlink resource grid has resource
elements.
 For example, with 10MHz bandwidth, Δf = 15kHz, and normal CP, we
get from Table 6.2, and from Table 6.4, so there
are 50 × 12 × 7 = 4200 resource elements in the downlink resource grid.

In case of multiantenna transmission, there is one resource grid defined per antenna
port. An antenna port is defined by its associated reference signal.

There are three different reference signals defined in the downlink, and the associated
antenna ports are as follows:

• Cell-specific reference signals support a configuration of 1, 2, or 4 antenna ports

• MBSFN reference signals are transmitted on antenna port p = 4.
• UE-specific reference signals are transmitted on antenna port p = 5.

Each resource element in the resource grid is uniquely identified by the index pair (k,
l) in a slot, where k = 0, 1, ..., and l = 0, 1, ..., are indices in the
frequency and time domains, respectively.

The size of each resource element depends on the subcarrier spacing Δf and the CP
length.

Resource Block

 The resource block is the basic element for radio resource allocation.
 The minimum size of radio resource that can be allocated is the minimum TTI
in the time domain, that is, one subframe of 1 ms, corresponding to two
resource blocks.
 The size of each resource block is the same for all bandwidths, which is 180kHz
in the frequency domain.
 There are two kinds of resource blocks defined for LTE: physical and virtual
resource blocks.

Resource Allocation

 Resource allocation’s role is to dynamically assign available time-frequency

resource blocks to different UEs in an efficient way to provide good system
performance.
 In LTE, channel-dependent scheduling is supported, and transmission is based
on the shared channel structure where the radio resource is shared among
different UEs.

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 Resource allocation in LTE is able to exploit the channel variations in both the
time and frequency domain, which provides higher multiuser diversity gain
than HSPA that can only exploit the time-domain variation.
 With OFDMA, the downlink resource allocation is based on the fact that each
scheduled UE occupies a number of resource blocks while each resource block
is assigned exclusively to one UE at any time.
 Physical resource blocks (PRBs) and virtual resource blocks (VRBs) are defined
to support different kinds of resource allocation types.
 The VRB supports both block-wise transmission (localized) and transmission
on non-consecutive subcarriers (distributed) as a means to maximize frequency
diversity.

The LTE downlink supports three resource allocation types: type 0, 1, and 2 .

 The downlink scheduling is performed at the eNode-B based on the

Channel Quality Information (CQI) fed back from UEs, and then the
downlink resource assignment information is sent to UEs on the PDCCH
channel.
 A PRB is defined as consecutive OFDM symbols in the time domain
and consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain.
 Therefore, each PRB corresponds to one slot in the time domain (0.5 ms)
and 180kHz in the frequency domain.
 PRBs are numbered from 0 to in the frequency domain(k).
 The PRB number nPRB of a resource element (k, l) in a slot is given by:


 The PRB is to support resource allocations of type 0 and type 1, which
are defined for the DCI format 1, 2, and 2A.

• In type 0 resource allocations,

 Several consecutive PRBs constitute a resource block group (RBG), and the
resource allocation is done in units of RBGs.
 Therefore, a bitmap indicating the RBG is sufficient to carry the resource
assignment.
 The allocated RBGs to a certain UE do not need to be adjacent to each other,
which provides frequency diversity.
The RBG size P, that is, the number of PRBs in each RBG, depends on the bandwidth
and is specified in Table 6.5.
An example of type 0 resource allocation is shown in Figure 6.11, where P = 4 and
RBGs 0, 3, 4, ..., are allocated to a particular UE.

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Figure 6.11 Examples of resource allocation type 0 and type 1, where the RBG
size P = 4.

• In type 1 resource allocations, all the RBGs are grouped into a number of RBG
subsets, and certain PRBs inside a selected RBG subset are allocated to the UE.
There are a total of P RBG subsets, where P is the RBG size.
An RBG subset p, where 0 ≤ p < P, consists of every P-th RBG starting from RBG p.
Therefore, the resource assignment information consists of three fields:
 The first field indicates the selected rbg subset,
 The second field indicates whether an offset is applied,
 The third field contains the bitmap indicating prbs inside the selected rbg
subset.
This type of resource allocation is more flexible and is able to provide higher frequency
diversity, but it also requires a larger overhead.

In type 2 resource allocations that are defined for the DCI format 1A, 1B, 1C, and
1D, PRBs are not directly allocated. Instead, VRBs are allocated, which are then

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mapped onto PRBs. A VRB is of the same size as a PRB. There are two types of VRBs:
VRBs of the localized type and VRBs of the distributed type.

A one-bit flag indicates whether localized VRBs or distributed VRBs are assigned.

Supported MIMO Modes

 Multiantenna transmission and reception (MIMO) is a physical layer technique

that can improve both the reliability and throughput of the communications
over wireless channels.
 It is considered a key component of the LTE physical layer from the start.
 The baseline antenna configuration in LTE is two transmit antennas at the cell
site and two receive antennas at the UE.
 The higher-order downlink MIMO is also supported with up to four transmit
and four receive antennas.
 The downlink transmission supports both single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) and
multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO).
 For SU-MIMO, one or multiple data streams are transmitted to a single
UE through space-time processing.
 for MU-MIMO, modulation data streams are transmitted to different
UEs using the same time-frequency resource.

The supported SU-MIMO modes are listed as follows:

• Transmit diversity with space frequency block codes (SFBC)

• Open-loop spatial multiplexing supporting four data streams
• Closed-loop spatial multiplexing, with closed-loop precoding as a special case when
channel rank = 1
• Conventional direction of arrival (DOA)-based beamforming

The supported MIMO mode is restricted by the UE capability.

The PDSCH physical channel supports all the MIMO modes, while other physical
channels support transmit diversity except PMCH, which only supports single-
antenna--port transmission.

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UPLINK SC-FDMA RADIO RESOURCES

 For the LTE uplink transmission, SC-FDMA with a CP is adopted.

 SC-FDMA possesses most of the merits of OFDM while enjoying a lower
PAPR.
 A lower PAPR is highly desirable in the uplink as less expensive power
amplifiers are needed at UEs and the coverage is improved.
 In LTE, the SC-FDMA signal is generated by the DFT-spread-OFDM.
 Compared to conventional OFDM, the SC-FDMA receiver has higher
complexity, which, however, is not considered to be an issue in the uplink given
the powerful computational capability at the base station.
 An SC-FDMA transceiver has a similar structure as OFDM, so the
parametrization of radio resource in the uplink enjoys similarities to that in the
downlink described in Section 6.3.
 The uplink transmission has its own properties.
 Different from the downlink, only localized resource allocation on
consecutive subcarriers is allowed in the uplink.
 In addition, only limited MIMO modes are supported in the uplink.

Frame Structure

 The uplink frame structure is similar to that for the downlink. The difference is
that now we talk about SC-FDMA symbols and SC-FDMA subcarriers.
 In frame structure type 1, an uplink radio frame consists of 20 slots of 0.5 ms
each, and one subframe consists of two slots, as in Figure 6.8.
 Frame structure type 2 consists of ten subframes, with one or two special
subframes including DwPTS, GP, and UpPTS fields, as shown in Figure 6.9.
 A CP is inserted prior to each SC-FDMA symbol. Each slot carries seven SC-
FDMA symbols in the case of normal CP, and six SC-FDMA symbols in the case
of extended CP.

Physical Resource Blocks for SC-FDMA

As SC-FDMA can be regarded as conventional OFDM with a DFT-based precoder,

the resource grid for the uplink is similar to the one for the downlink, illustrated
in Figure 6.12, that is, it comprises a number of resource blocks in the time-frequency
plane.

The number of resource blocks in each resource grid, , depends on the uplink
transmission bandwidth configured in the cell and should satisfy

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Figure 6.12 The structure of the uplink resource grid.

where and correspond to the smallest and largest uplink

bandwidth, respectively.

There are resource elements in each resource block. The values

of and for normal and extended CP are given in Table 6.6.

There is only one subcarrier spacing supported in the uplink, which is Δf = 15kHz.
Different from the downlink, the DC(Direct current) subcarrier is used in the uplink,

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as the DC interference is spread over the modulation symbols due to the DFT-based
precoding.

Table 6.6 Physical Resource Block Parameters for Uplink

 As for the downlink, each resource element in the resource grid is uniquely
defined by the index pair (k, l) in a slot, where k = 0, ..., and l = 0,
..., are the indices in the frequency and time domain, respectively.
 For the uplink, no antenna port is defined, as only single antenna transmission
is supported in the current specifications.
 A PRB in the uplink is defined as consecutive SC-FDMA symbols in the
time domain and consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain,
corresponding to one slot in the time domain and 180kHz in the frequency
domain.
 The relation between the PRB number nPRB in the frequency domain and
resource elements (k, l) in a slot is given by:


Resource Allocation

Similar to the downlink, shared-channel transmission and channel-dependent

scheduling are supported in the uplink.

Resource allocation in the uplink is also performed at the eNode-B.

Based on the channel quality measured on the uplink sounding reference signals and
the scheduling requests sent from UEs, the eNode-B assigns a unique time-frequency
resource to a scheduled UE, which achieves orthogonal intra-cell transmission.

Such intra-cell orthogonality in the uplink is preserved between UEs by using timing
advance such that the transport blocks of different UEs are received synchronously at
the eNode-B.

This provides significant coverage and capacity gain in the uplink over UMTS, which
employs non-orthogonal transmission in the uplink and the performance is limited by
inter-channel interference.

In general, SC-FDMA is able to support both localized and distributed resource

allocation.

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In the current specification, only localized resource allocation is supported in the
uplink, which preserves the single-carrier property and can better exploit the
multiuser diversity gain in the frequency domain.

Compared to distributed resource allocation, localized resource allocation is less

sensitive to frequency offset and also requires fewer reference symbols.

The resource assignment information for the uplink transmission is carried on the
PDCCH with DCI format 0, indicating a set of contiguously allocated resource blocks.
However, not all integer multiples of one resource block are allowed to be assigned to
a UE, which is to simplify the DFT design for the SC-FDMA transceiver. Only factors
2, 3, and 5 are allowed.

The frequency hopping is supported to provide frequency diversity, with which the
UEs can hop between frequencies within or between the allocated subframes.

Supported MIMO Modes

 For the MIMO modes supported in the uplink, the terminal complexity and cost
are among the major concerns.
 MU-MIMO is supported, which allocates the same time and frequency resource
to two UEs with each transmitting on a single antenna. This is also called Spatial
Division Multiple Access (SDMA).
 The advantage is that only one transmit antenna per UE is required.
 To separate streams for different UEs, channel state information is required at
the eNode-B, which is obtained through uplink reference signals that are
orthogonal between UEs.
 Uplink MU-MIMO also requires power control, as the near-far problem arises
when multiple UEs are multiplexed on the same radio resource.
 For UEs with two or more transmit antennas, closed-loop adaptive antenna
selection transmit diversity shall be supported.

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This chapter provided an overview of the LTE radio interface, emphasizing the
hierarchical channel structure and the radio resource in both downlink and uplink.
The material covered should be adequate for the reader to get the unique
characteristics of the LTE physical layer and understand the detailed physical layer
procedures in the following chapters.

• LTE is the next step in the evolution of mobile cellular systems, and is a packet-
switched network from end to end that is designed with a clean slate approach.
• LTE adopts the hierarchical channel structure from UTRA/HSPA. It simplifies the
channel structure and is based totally on the shared channel transmission, which
improves the efficiency of the air interface.
• LTE applies OFDMA in the downlink and SC-FDMA in the uplink, both of which
have similar radio resource structures in the time-frequency plane. The capability of
scheduling in both time and frequency domain provides a higher spectral efficiency in
LTE than what is achieved in HSPA. Both localized and distributed resource
allocations are supported in the downlink, while only localized resource allocation is
supported in the uplink.
• MIMO transmission is a key component of LTE. In current specifications, downlink
transmission supports a variety of MIMO modes, while uplink transmission has a
limited MIMO support considering cost and complexity.

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Chapter 2
Downlink Transport Channel Processing
 The PHY layer provides services to the MAC layer through transport channels
 Data and control streams coming from the MAC layer are organized in the form
of transport blocks.
 Each transport block is a group of resource blocks with a common modulation
and coding scheme.
 The physical layer processing mainly consists of coding and modulation, which
maps each transport block to specific physical time-frequency resources.

DOWNLINK TRANSPORT CHANNEL PROCESSING OVERVIEW

The downlink physical layer processing mainly consists of

 Channel coding
 Modulation

as shown in Figure 7.1.

Channel coding involves mapping the incoming transport blocks from the MAC layer
into different codewords.

Modulation generates complex-valued OFDM baseband signals for each antenna port,
which are then upconverted to the carrier frequency.
Figure 7.1 Overview of downlink transport channel processing.

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CHANNEL CODING PROCESSING

This section describes generic channel coding procedures that are used for various
data and control transport channels.

These are applicable to both downlink and uplink transmissions.

Channel coding for the downlink is a combination of

 Error detection (CRC)

 Error correction(FEC)
 Rate matching
 Interleaving, and
 Transport channel/control information mapping onto physical channels

An example of the downlink channel coding processing is shown in Figure 7.2.

Channel coding provides an error-control mechanism for data transmission using
forward error correction (FEC) code and error detection based on cyclic redundancy
check (CRC).

For some transport channels such as the shared channel, the error-control mechanism
is coupled with the retransmission mechanism using the Hybrid-ARQ (H-ARQ)
protocol.

This combined error-control and retransmission mechanism improves the link

reliability significantly in fading channels.

In LTE, the coding rate at the channel encoder is fixed, and different effective coding
rates for the whole transport block are achieved by repetition/puncturing during the
rate matching procedure.
Figure 7.2 Channel coding processing.

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CRC ADDITION

 The CRC is used to provide error detection on the transport block .

 It generates parity bits by cyclic generator polynomials that are specified, which
are then added at the end of the transport block.
 The number of parity bits can take the value of 8, 16, or 24.
 The 24-bit CRC is the baseline for the downlink shared channel.

CODE BLOCK SEGMENTATION

 Code block segmentation is performed when the number of bits in the sequence
after CRC attachment, B, is larger than the maximum code block size for the
turbo encoder, which is Z = 6144.
 It breaks the long sequence into C code blocks and adds an additional 24-bit
CRC sequence to each block, where C is given by:

 and L is the number of CRC parity bits.

 Each of these C code blocks is then encoded independently.
 This is to prevent excessive complexity and memory requirement for decoding
at the receiver.
 Filler bits are added to the beginning of the first block if needed. If B < 40, which
is the minimum code block size for the turbo encoder.

 CHANNEL CODING

In LTE, the channel encoders applied to transport channels include

 Tail-biting convolutional coding

 Convolutional turbo coding.

The usage of channel coding schemes and coding rates for different downlink
transport channels is specified in Table 7.1.
Table 7.1 Channel Coding Schemes and Coding Rates for Downlink Transport Channels

For control information, other channel coding schemes are supported, including block
coding and repetition coding, specified in Table 7.2.
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Table 7.2 Channel Coding Schemes and Coding Rates for Downlink Control Information

TAIL-BITING CONVOLUTIONAL CODING

 It is a rate code there is one input bit (ck) and 3 outputs .

 The constraint length of this code is 7, there are 6 delay elements or 64 possible
states.
 The generator polynomial G, which consists of the generators Gi for each of the
three outputs is denoted in octal notation.
 For example, G0 = 133 in binary form is 1 0 1 1 0 1 1, where a 0 means the output
does not include this tap and a 1 means it does.
 Since the transmitted code blocks are of finite length, trellis termination must
be performed at the end of each code block in order to restore the state of the
encoder to the initial state for the next code block.
 If the initial and the final states of the encoder are known, then a lower block
error rate can be achieved at the decoder while using a Viterbi algorithm.

Two of the most common approaches for trellis termination are padding and tail
biting.

 In the case of padding, the end of the code block is padded with zeros.
 This forces the encoder to state ‘0’ at the end of the code block, which
is the starting state for the next code block.
 One of the main drawbacks of this method is that additional
bandwidth is wasted due to the extra zeros that are added to the end
of each code block.
 We need to add six zeros in order to terminate the trellis.
 A more efficient method for trellis termination is tail biting, where the
information bits from the end of each code block are appended to the
beginning of the code block.
 Once these appended bits are passed through the encoder ,it ensures that
start and end state of encoder is same.
 With tail biting, there is no code-rate loss compared to zero padding,
but the decoding algorithm becomes more complicated.

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Figure 7.3 Rate 1/3 tail-biting convolutional encoder.

CONVOLUTION TURBO CODING

The turbo encoder in LTE is similar to the one used for HSPA .

 It is a Parallel Concatenated Convolutional Code (PCCC) with two eight-state

constituent encoders and one turbo code internal interleaver, with a coding rate
of 1/3.
 Unlike the convolutional codes, the encoder used for the turbo codes is
systematic and therefore recursive in nature.
 LTE employs a new contention-free internal interleaver based on Quadrature
Permutation Polynomial (QPP) .
 The QPP interleaver requires a small parameter storage and allows highly
flexible parallelization due to its maximum contention-free property , which
reduces the encoder-decoder complexity.
 The structure of the encoder is illustrated in Figure 7.4.
Figure 7.4 Structure of rate 1/3 turbo encoder (dotted lines apply for trellis termination only).

 The transfer function of the eight-state constituent code for the PCCC is
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where g0(D) = 1 + D2 + D3, g1(D) = 1 + D + D3.

 The initial values of the shift registers shall be all zeros when starting to
encode the input bits.

 The input bits to the turbo code QPP-based internal interleaver, c0, c1, ..., cK − 1,
are mapped to the output bits , , ..., , according to the following
relationship:

 where Π(i) is a quadratic permutation polynomial given as Π(i) =

(f1 · i + f2 · i2) mod K.
 The parameter K is the number of input bits, which takes a specific value
between 40 and 6,144 from a predefined set.
 The values of parameters f1 and f2 depend on K, which is specified.

Similar to the convolutional code, the turbo encoder needs to be terminated at the end
of each code block.

The trellis termination is used to re-initialize the state of the encoder to ‘0’ state.

Due to the recursive nature of the encoder, the termination is performed by taking the
recursive bit and performing a modulo 2 addition with itself as shown in Figure 7.4.

The actual coding rate is slightly lower than 1/3.

RATE MATCHING

The rate matching in LTE performs interleaving, as well as repetition or puncturing

This is done in order to generate a transport block that fits the payload size
determined by the modulation scheme and the number of resource blocks allocated
for the transport block.

Rate matching is defined per coded block and consists of the following stages:

 Interleaving
 Bit collection
 Bit selection
 Interleaving is performed in order to spread out the occurrence of bursty errors
across the code block, which improves the overall performance of the decoder.
 Interleaving is performed separately for the systematic and parity bits.
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 Hence a bit collection stage is required to place the systematic and parity bits in the
right order as needed by the decoder.
 Finally, the bit selection stage is needed in order to repeat or puncture some of the
parity bits to create the required payload.

Figure 7.5 Rate matching for coded transport channels.

SUB-BLOCK INTERLEAVING

 The interleaving is performed independently for each bit stream, done by a

block interleaver with inter-column permutations.

 The inter-column permutation patterns are different for turbo coding and
convolutional coding.

BIT COLLECTION

 A virtual circular buffer is formed by collecting bits from the interleaved

streams.
 The systematic bits are placed at the beginning, followed by bit-by-bit
interlacing of the two interleaved parity streams, as shown in Figure 7.5.
 The interlacing guarantees that an equal number of parity 1 and parity 2 bits are
transmitted.

BIT SELECTION

 To select the output bit sequence, the sequence length L should first be
determined, which depends on the number of allocated resource blocks, the
modulation scheme, and the MIMO mode.

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 Then L bits are read from the virtual circular buffer.

 The starting point of the bit selection depends on the redundancy version of the
current transmission, which is different for different retransmissions associated
with the H-ARQ process.

CODE BLOCK CONCATENATION

 The code block concatenation consists of sequentially concatenating the rate

matching outputs for different code blocks, forming the codeword input to the
modulation processing.

 It is needed only for turbo coding when the number of code blocks is larger than
one.

MODULATION PROCESSING

The generic modulation procedures applicable to more than one physical channel type
is described.

Modulation takes in one or two codewords, depending on whether spatial

multiplexing is used, and converts them to complex-valued OFDM baseband signals
for each antenna port.

As shown in Figure 7.1, the modulation processing consists of

 Scrambling.
 Modulation mapping
 MIMO-related multiantenna processing
 Layer mapping.
 Resource mapping .
 OFDM signal generation.

SCRAMBLING

 Scrambler is a process that transposes or inverts signals or otherwise encodes

a message at the sender's side to make the message unintelligible at a receiver,
which is not equipped with an appropriate descrambling process.

 Scrambling usually refers to operations carried out in the analog domain.

 Scrambling is accomplished by the addition of components to the original signal

or the changing of some important component of the original signal in order to
make extraction of the original signal difficult.

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Before modulation, the codeword generated through channel coding processing is
first scrambled by a bit-level scrambling sequence.

The block of bits for codeword q is denoted as b(q)(0), ..., b(q) , where is the
number of bits transmitted in one subframe.

The scrambling sequence c(q) is a pseudo-random sequence defined by a length-31

Gold sequence .

The scrambled bits are generated using a modulo 2 addition as:

Advantages of scrambling

Except the multicast channel, for all other downlink transport channels and control
information, the scrambling sequences are different for neighboring cells so that
inter-cell interference is randomized, which is one of the approaches for interference
mitigation.

For the multicast channel, common scrambling is applied for all cells involved in a
specific MBSFN transmission.

MODULATION MAPPING

For each codeword q, the block of scrambled bits are

modulated into a block of complex-valued modulation
symbols , where is the number of the modulation
symbols in each codeword and depends on the modulation scheme.

The relation between and is as follows:

where Qm is the number of bits in the modulation constellation, with Qm = 2 for

QPSK, Qm = 4 for 16QAM, and Qm = 6 for 64QAM.

The supported data-modulation schemes in LTE include QPSK, 16QAM, and 64QAM,
and BPSK is applied for the PHICH physical channel.

Different physical channels employ different modulation schemes, listed in Table

7.3.

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Table 7.3 Modulation Schemes for Different Physical Channels

LAYER MAPPING AND PRECODING

Both layer mapping and precoding are associated with multiantenna transmission
and reception (MIMO).

The layer mapper maps Nc codewords to ν spatial layers, while the precoder maps
these ν layers to P antenna ports. Some of the terminologies used in MIMO
transmission are explained as follows.
Figure 7.6 Layer mapping and precoding.

• Codeword:
A codeword is defined as the output of each channel coding/rate matching stage
associated with a single transport block coming from the MAC layer.

• Layer:
A layer corresponds to a data stream of the spatial multiplexing channel. Each
codeword is mapped into one or multiple layers. Therefore, the number of layers, and
the number of codewords are, ν ≥ Nc.

• Antenna port:
The term "antenna port" is related to physical layer.
 It is the logical concept and not the physical one like RF antenna.
 Each antenna port represents specific and unique channel model.

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 Dedicated reference signals are assigned for all the antenna ports
individually, which helps in channel estimation and equalization.
 Reference signals are also known as pilot signals or pilot carriers.
 An antenna port is defined by its associated reference signal, which is a logical
entity and may not correspond to an actual physical antenna.
 The number of transmit antenna ports at the eNode-B is sent to UEs through the
PBCH channel, which can be 1, 2, or 4 in LTE.
 Antenna ports are divided into three groups:
 Antenna ports 0-3 are cell specific, which are used for downlink MIMO
transmission.
 Antenna port 4 is MBSFN specific and is used for MBSFN
transmission.
 Antenna port 5 is UE specific, which is used for beamforming to a single
UE using all physical antennas.
Cell-specific ports and the UE-specific port cannot be simultaneously used.

For a ν-layer transmission, modulation symbols for

codeword q shall be mapped onto the layers x(i) = [x0(i) ··· xν−1(i)] , i = 0, 1,
T

..., , where is the number of modulation symbols per layer.

Layer mapping is different for different MIMO modes, described as follows.

• Single antenna port: One codeword is mapped to a single layer, which is straight-
forward.
• Transmit diversity: One codeword is mapped to two or four layers. It is an open-
loop MIMO mode.
• Spatial multiplexing: Nc codewords are mapped to ν layers, where Nc = 1, 2, ν =
1, 2, 3, 4 and ν ≥ Nc.
The detailed mapping is in Table 7.4.
Both open-loop (OL) and closed-loop (CL) spatial multiplexing modes are supported
in LTE.
Table 7.4 Codeword-to-Layer Mapping for Spatial Multiplexing

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The precoder takes a block of vectors x(i) as input, and generates a block of vectors y(i)
= [y0(i), ..., yP − 1(i)]T, i = 0, 1, ..., to be mapped onto resources on each of the
antenna ports, where yp(i) is the signal for antenna port p and is the number of
symbols on each antenna port. The precoder is either fixed or selected from a
predefined codebook based on the feedback from UEs. The general form for precoding
is

y(i) = W(i)×(i),

where W(i) is the precoding matrix of size P × ν.

Different physical channels support different MIMO modes, specified in Table 7.5.
The PDSCH channel supports all the specified MIMO modes, while the PMCH
channel only supports single-antenna-port transmission (antenna port 4).
Table 7.5 Supported MIMO Modes for Different Physical Channels

RESOURCE MAPPING

For each of the antenna ports used for transmission of physical channels, the block of
complex-valued symbols yp(0), ..., shall be mapped in sequence,
starting with yp(0), to resource blocks assigned for transmission.

The mapping to resource element (k, l) on antenna port p shall be in increasing order
of first the index k and then the index l, starting with the first slot in a subframe,if not
reserved for other purposes.

OFDM BASEBAND SIGNAL GENERATION

The continuous-time signal on antenna port p in OFDM symbol l in a downlink

slot is generated as:

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for 0 ≤ t ≤ (NCP,l + N) × Ts,
where and , and for 20MHz
bandwidth the value of N is given by:

The cyclic prefix (CP) length NCP,l depends on the CP type and the subcarrier spacing,
listed in Table 7.6.

Table 7.6 Values of NCP,l

 In practice, the OFDM signal is generated using IFFT digital signal processing.
 At the receiver, FFT processing can be used to convert the time-domain signal
back to the frequency domain.
 The implementation of the OFDM transceiver using IFFT and FFT is a major
advantage of OFDM transmission due to its computational efficiency.

The OFDM signal generation with multiple users is illustrated in Figure 7.8.

Figure 7.8 OFDMA signal generation with N users, where P/S denotes the parallel-to-serial converter.

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DOWNLINK SHARED CHANNELS

 The DL-SCH is carried on the Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH).

 Data transmission in the PDSCH is based on the concept of shared-channel

transmission
 Resource blocks which are the PHY layer resources are available for PDSCH.
 These are dynamically shared among different UEs.
 The dynamic multiplexing of UEs on the PDSCH is done by the scheduler on a
1-msec interval. This is suitable for packet-data applications.

With shared-channel transmission and opportunistic scheduling, multiuser diversity

can be obtained.
Figure 7.9 Channel mapping around the downlink shared channel.

CHANNEL ENCODING AND MODULATION

 The DL-SCH uses the rate 1/3 convolutional turbo code

 Rate matching is used in order to achieve an effective channel coding rate that
matches the payload capacity .
 The redundancy version used for repetition or puncturing depends on the H-
ARQ transmission number and is indicated by the eNode-B.
 The modulation scheme allowed for DL-SCH includes QPSK, 16QAM, and
64QAM and is chosen based on the Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) provided
by the UE and various other parameters such as the size of the transport block.

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 The transport block size, the redundancy version, and the modulation order
are indicated in the Downlink Control Information (DCI).
 For MIMO spatial multiplexing with two codewords, different modulation and
coding can be used for each codeword, which requires individual signaling.
 The resource mapping of the PDSCH physical channel depends on whether UE-
specific reference signals are transmitted.
MULTIANTENNA TRANSMISSION

As the main channel for downlink traffic data transmission, the PDSCH
supports all the MIMO modes specified in LTE.

There are seven different transmission modes defined for data transmission on the
PDSCH channel:
• Single-antenna port (port 0)
• Transmit diversity
• Open-loop (OL) spatial multiplexing
• Closed-loop (CL) spatial multiplexing
• Multiuser MIMO
• Closed-loop rank-1 precoding
• Single-antenna port (port 5)
Transmission mode 1 can be classified as a Single-Input-Single-Output (SISO) mode
that does not require any layer mapping and precoding.
Transmission modes 2–6 can be classified as MIMO modes, which require explicit
layer mapping and precoding.
• Single-antenna port (port 0): One transport block is transmitted from a single
physical antenna corresponding to antenna port 0.

• Transmit diversity: One transport block is transmitted from more than one
physical antenna, that is, ports 0 and 1 if two physical antennas are used and ports 0,
1, 2, and 3 if four physical antennas are used.

• Open-loop (OL) spatial multiplexing: One or two transport blocks are

transmitted from two or four physical antennas. Predefined precoder matrices are
used. The precoding matrix is fixed.

• Closed-loop (CL) spatial multiplexing: One or two transport blocks are

transmitted from two or four physical antennas. The precoding in this case is adapted
based on the Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI) feedback from the UE.

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• Multiuser MIMO: Two UEs are multiplexed onto two or four physical antennas
with one transport block to each UE. The rank-1 PMI feedback from each UE is used
to create the overall precoding matrix.

• Closed-loop rank-1 precoding: It is a special case of the CL spatial multiplexing

with single-layer transmission, that is, a P × 1 precoder is applied.

• Single-antenna port (port 5): A single transport block is transmitted from two
or more physical antennas. The eNode-B performs beamforming to a single UE using
all physical antennas. In this mode the reference signal is also transmitted using the
same beamforming vector that is used for the data symbols. Beamforming can be used
to improve the received signal power and/or reduce the interference signal power,
which is especially important for cell edge users.
OL MIMO TECHNIQUES

The OL MIMO technique requires no or little feedback from UEs, so it is suitable for
scenarios where accurate feedback is difficult to obtain or the channel changes rapidly
enough, making the feedbacks obsolete, such as the high mobility scenario. OL MIMO
modes include OL transmit diversity and OL spatial multiplexing.

CL MIMO TECHNIQUES

CL MIMO transmission requires explicit feedback from UEs regarding the optimum
precoding matrix (or vector).

The UE determines this based on its current MIMO channel and sends this
information to the eNode-B using the uplink control channel. This is able to provide
additional performance gain and simplify the receiver structure.

The precoder of CL MIMO modes is based on the predefined codebook, which is

selected at the eNode-B with the help of the feedback of RI and PMI from UEs. This
reduces the feedback bandwidth significantly .

MU-MIMO IN DOWNLINK

In current specifications of 3GPP Release 8, there is a limited support for MU-MIMO

in the downlink.This kind of MU-MIMO mode is able to provide a throughput gain
when there is transmit spatial correlation or with a large number of UEs.

The main difficulty with MU-MIMO lies in channel state information (CSI)
measurement and feedback. CSI requirements of MU-MIMO at the eNode-B are
substantial. In Release 9 and beyond, the eNode-B will be able to utilize the UE
specific reference signals for the newly defined antenna ports 7 and 8 to assist the MU-

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MIMO transmission. A method called dual layer beamforming is used to cancel
interference.

DOWNLINK CONTROL CHANNELS

Downlink control channels are carried over the Physical Downlink Control Channel
(PDCCH) and they contain control information from the MAC layer, including

 Downlink control information (DCI)

 Control Format Indicator (CFI)
 H-ARQ Indicator (HI).

Channel mapping between control information and physical channels in the downlink
is shown in Figure 7.11.

There is a specific physical channel for each type of control information.

On the physical layer the PDCCH and the PDSCH are time multiplexed, such that
the PDCCH is carried over the first few OFDM symbols of each subframe and the
PDSCH is carried over the rest of the OFDM symbols. The number of OFDM
symbols allocated for PDCCH can vary from one to four and is conveyed by the CFI.
The CFI is carried on yet another control channel known as the Physical Control
Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH), which is always carried in a predetermined
format over the first OFDM symbol of each subframe. This predetermined format of
PCFICH allows each UE to decode the CFI without ambiguity and thus determine
the number of OFDM symbols in the beginning of each subframe that are used as
the control region.
Figure 7.11 Channel mapping for control information in the downlink.

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DOWNLINK CONTROL INFORMATION (DCI) FORMATS

 Among the control information in the downlink, the DCI is the most important
as it carries detailed control information for both downlink and uplink
transmissions.
 The DCI carries the downlink scheduling assignments, uplink scheduling
grants, power control commands, and other information necessary for the
scheduled UEs to decode and demodulate data symbols in the downlink or
encode and modulate data symbols in the uplink.

LTE defines ten different DCI formats for different transmission scenarios,
summarized as follows:

• DCI format 0 carries uplink scheduling grants and necessary control information for
uplink transmission.
• DCI format 1/1A/1B/1C/1D provides scheduling information for one codeword
transmission without spatial multiplexing.
• DCI formats 2 and 2A provide downlink scheduling information for CL and OL
spatial multiplexing, respectively. In this case, DCI contains information about
the modulation and coding scheme and the redundancy version for each of the two
codewords.
• DCI formats 3 and 3A carry Transmit Power Control (TPC) commands for the
uplink.

CHANNEL ENCODING AND MODULATION

DOWNLINK CONTROL INFORMATION (DCI)

The DCI is mapped to the PDCCH physical channel, and multiple PDCCHs can be
transmitted in a subframe. A 16-bit CRC is attached to the control information
symbols. The CRC parity bits are then scrambled according to the following rules:

• If UE transmit antenna selection is not configured or applicable, the CRC parity bits
are scrambled with one radio network temporary identifier (RNTI), which is the UE
identity. Then the UE is able to detect its own DCI.
• If UE transmit antenna selection is configured and applicable, the CRC parity bits of
PDCCH with DCI format 0 are scrambled with the corresponding RNTI and the
antenna selection mask indicated in Table 7.12, which informs the UE about the
selected antenna port.

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Table 7.12 UE Transmit Antenna Selection Mask

The tail-biting convolutional code with rate 1/3 is used as the channel coding scheme,
while QPSK is the modulation scheme. After channel coding, cell-specific scrambling
is applied, and the PDCCH shall be transmitted on the same set of antenna ports as
the PBCH.

CONTROL FORMAT INDICATOR (CFI)

The CFI indicates how many OFDM symbols the DCI spans in the subframe. Such an
indicator is needed because the load on PDCCH varies, depending on the number of
resource blocks and the signaling format conveyed on PDCCH.

The CFI uses a block code predefined based on (3, 2) simplex coding with repetition
of coding rate 1/16, the codewords of which are listed in Table 7.15. QPSK is the
modulation scheme. In addition, cell-specific scrambling tied to the cell identity is
used.
Table 7.15 CFI Codeword

The CFI is mapped to the PCFICH physical channel carried on specific resource
elements in the first OFDM symbol of the subframe. The PCFICH is transmitted when
the number of OFDM symbols for PDCCH is greater than zero. In addition, the
PCFICH shall be transmitted on the same set of antenna ports as the PBCH.

H-ARQ INDICATOR (HI)

The control information HI is for H-ARQ acknowledgement in response to uplink

transmission. As spatial multiplexing is not supported in the uplink in current
specifications, only one information bit is required for H-ARQ acknowledgment. It
has two values: HI = 1 for a positive acknowledgment (ACK) and HI = 0 for a negative
acknowledgment (NAK). A repetition code with rate 1/3 is applied, which has two
codewords: and . Such a repetition is able to provide frequency diversity
by mapping different code bits to different resource elements. BPSK modulation is
applied.

HI is mapped onto the PHICH physical channel.

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MULTIANTENNA TRANSMISSION

To improve the transmission reliability, OL transmit diversity is supported for

downlink control information. For PDCCH and PCFICH, the precoding is the same as
the OL transmit diversity for PDSCH. For PHICH, the precoding for two-antenna-port
transmission is the same as PDSCH. For transmission on four antenna ports, the
precoding is different.

or

The precoding and repetition for PHICH achieves frequency and spatial diversity.

BROADCAST CHANNELS

 Broadcast channels carry system information such as downlink system

bandwidth, antenna configuration, and reference signal power.
 The UEs can get the necessary system information after the cell search (or
synchronization) procedure.
 Due to the large size of the system information field, it is divided into two
portions
 Master Information Block (MIB) transmitted on the PBCH
 System Information Blocks (SIB) transmitted on the PDSCH
 The PBCH contains basic system parameters necessary to demodulate the
PDSCH, which contains the remaining SIB.
 The transmission of the PBCH is characterized by a fixed pre-determined
transport format and resource allocation, that is, there is no higher-layer
control.
 Error detection is provided through a 16-bit CRC, and then the CRC parity bits
are scrambled according to the eNode-B transmit antenna configuration .

Table 7.16 CRC Scrambling Sequences for PBCH

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 This implicitly tells the UE about the eNode-B antenna configuration.
 The tail-biting convolutional coding with rate 1/3 is used, and the coded bits are
rate matched to 1920 bits for the normal CP and to 1728 bits for the extended
CP.
 The modulation scheme is QPSK.
 No H-ARQ is supported.
 For MIMO modes, PBCH supports single-antenna transmission and OL
transmit diversity.
 Dynamic adaptation modulation and coding is not possible, due to the lack of
channel quality feedback.
 The complex-valued modulation symbols are mapped onto the 72 subcarriers
centered around the DC subcarrier in slot 1 in subframe 0 during four
consecutive radio frames, that is, the Transmission Time Interval (TTI) for the
PBCH is 40 ms.
 The PBCH occupies the most narrow bandwidth supported by LTE (1.4MHz)
and is located in the subframe guaranteed to be used in the downlink. Therefore,
the resource mapping of the PBCH is independent of the system bandwidth and
the duplex mode.
 This allows the UE to detect and decode the PBCH without any prior knowledge
of the system bandwidth and the duplex mode.
 Once the PBCH is detected and the MIB is decoded, the UE can then extract the
system bandwidth and the duplex mode.
MULTICAST CHANNELS

 Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS), introduced in 3GPP

Release 6 for the UTRA supports multicast/broadcast services in a cellular
system.
 It sends the same content information to all the UEs (broadcast) or to a given
set of UEs (multicast), and is used for delivering services such as mobile TV.
 In principle, the MBMS transmission can originate from a single base station or
multiple base stations.
 For MBMS in the UTRA, to receive the same data information from multiple
cells, the complexity at the receiver is high and there will be interference
between signals from different base stations.
 One major design requirement for LTE is to provide enhanced support for the
MBMS transmission, which is called Enhanced MBMS (E-MBMS)and is
achieved through the so-called Single-Frequency Network (SFN) operation.
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 With the OFDM-based transmission in the downlink, over-the-air combining of
multicast/broadcast transmissions from multiple base stations is possible in
LTE with an extended CP.
 The extended CP is used as the propagation delay from multiple cells and will
typically be larger than the delay spread in a single cell,which avoids inter-
symbol interference at the cost of a slight reduction in peak data rate.
 In such Multicast/Broadcast Single Frequency Networks (MBSFNs), the same
information is broadcast on the same radio resources from multiple
synchronized neighboring base stations to multiple UEs.
 The SFN operation has already been used in the terrestrial Digital Video
Broadcasting system (DVB-T).
 The E-MBMS transmission in LTE occurs on the MCH transport channel,
along with the 7.5kHz subcarrier spacing and the extended CP.
 There are two types of E-MBMS transmissions:
 Single-cell transmission (non-MBSFN operation): The
MBMS service (MTCH and MCCH) is transmitted on the MCH, and
combining of MBMS transmission from multiple cells is not
supported.
 Multicell transmission (MBSFN operation): The MBMS
service (MTCH and MCCH) is transmitted synchronously on the
MCH, and combining is supported with the SFN operation.
DOWNLINK PHYSICAL SIGNALS

The structure and processing of downlink physical signals, including downlink

reference signals and synchronization signals is discussed. The emphasis is on the
resource mapping of different signals.

DOWNLINK REFERENCE SIGNALS

There are three different types of downlink reference signals: cell-specific reference
signals, MBSFN reference signals, and UE-specific reference signals.

The reference sequence is generated from a pseudo-random sequence, with different

initializations for different types of reference signals.

CELL-SPECIFIC REFERENCE SIGNALS

 Cell-specific reference signals are transmitted in all downlink subframes in a cell

supporting non-MBSFN transmission.

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 In the subframe used for transmission with MBSFN, only the first two OFDM
symbols can be used for cell-specific reference symbols.
 Cell-specific reference signals are defined separately for antenna ports 0, 1, 2,
and 3 as shown in Figure 7.12.
 Therefore, in LTE a maximum of four antennas can be used while transmitting
the cell specific reference signal.
 The cell specific reference signals are defined only for the normal subcarrier
spacing of Δf = 15kHz.

Figure 7.12 An example of mapping of downlink cell-specific reference signals, with four antenna
ports and the normal CP. Rp denotes the resource element used for reference signal transmission on
antenna port p.

In the time domain, for the antenna port p {0, 1}, the reference symbols are inserted
within the first and the third last OFDM symbols in each slot, which are the first and
fifth OFDM symbols for the normal CP and the first and fourth OFDM symbols for the
extended CP.

For p {2, 3}, the reference symbols are only inserted in the second OFDM symbol.
So antenna ports 0 and 1 have twice as many reference symbols as antenna ports 2

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and 3. This is to reduce the reference signal overhead but also causes an imbalance in
the quality of the respective channel estimates.

In the frequency domain, the spacing between neighboring reference symbols in the
same OFDM symbol is five subcarriers, that is, the reference symbols are transmitted
every six subcarriers.

The resource elements (k, l) occupied by reference symbols on any of the antenna
ports in a slot shall not be used for any transmission on any other antenna port in the
same slot and set to zero.

With such resource mapping, the reference signals on different antennas are
orthogonal to each other. In addition, there is a frequency shift determined by the slot
number and the cell identity.

So cell-specific reference signals from different eNode-Bs will have different

frequency shifts, which allows the UE to detect the neighboring eNode-B and estimate
the associated channel.

An example of resource mapping for cell-specific reference signals is shown in Figure

7.12, where Rp is used to denote a resource element used for reference signal
transmission on antenna port p. Note that there are four reference symbols per
resource block for p {0, 1} and two reference symbols per resource block for p {2,
3}.

MBSFN REFERENCE SIGNALS

MBSFN reference signals are only transmitted in subframes allocated for MBSFN
transmission, which is only defined for extended CP and transmitted on antenna port
4.

In the time domain,

 for even-numbered slots, the reference symbols are inserted in the third OFDM
symbol for Δf = 15kHz and in the second OFDM symbol for Δf = 7.5kHz;
 for odd-numbered slots, the reference symbols are inserted in the first and fifth
OFDM symbols for Δf = 15kHz and in the first and third OFDM symbols for
Δf = 7.5kHz.

In the frequency domain,

 the reference symbols are transmitted every two subcarriers for Δf = 15kHz and
every four subcarriers for Δf = 7.5kHz.

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Based on these rules, an example of the resource mapping of MBSFN reference signals
is shown in Figure 7.13 with the extended CP, and Δf = 15kHz.

Figure 7.13 An example of mapping of MBSFN reference signals, with the extended CP and Δf=
15kHz.

Note that the density of the MBSFN reference signal in the frequency domain is three
times higher than that of the cell-specific reference signal. This is because the SFN
transmission includes a highly frequency selective channel, so it requires a high
density of reference signals in the frequency domain.

UE-SPECIFIC REFERENCE SIGNALS

UE-specific reference signals support single-antenna-port transmission with

beamforming for the PDSCH and are transmitted on antenna port 5.

They are transmitted only on the resource blocks upon which the corresponding
PDSCH is mapped.

The UE-specific signal is not transmitted in resource elements in which one of the
other physical signals or physical channels is transmitted.

An example of resource mapping of UE-specific reference signals is shown in Figure

7.14 with the normal CP.

In the even-numbered slots, the reference symbols are inserted in the fourth and
seventh OFDM symbols; in the odd-number slots, the reference symbols are inserted

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in the third and sixth OFDM symbols. There is a frequency shift of two subcarriers in
neighboring reference symbols.

Figure 7.14 An example of mapping of UE-specific signals, with the normal CP.

SYNCHRONIZATION SIGNALS

The downlink synchronization signals are sent to facilitate the cell search procedure,
during which process the time and frequency synchronization between the UE and the
eNode-B is achieved and the cell ID is obtained.

There are a total of 504 unique physical-layer cell IDs, which are grouped into 168
physical-layer cell-ID groups. A physical-layer cell ID is uniquely defined as:

where = 0, 1, ..., 167 represents the physical-layer cell-ID group and = 0, 1, 2

represents the physical-layer ID within the cell-ID group. Each cell is assigned a
unique physical-layer cell ID.

The synchronization signals are classified as primary synchronization

signals and secondary synchronization signals.

Primary synchronization signals identify the symbol timing and the cell ID index
, while secondary synchronization signals are used for detecting the cell-ID group
index and the frame timing.

The synchronization signals are designed in such a way to make the cell search
procedure fast and of low complexity. The sequence used for the primary
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synchronization signal is generated from a frequency-domain Zadoff-Chu sequence.
The Zadoff-Chu sequence possesses the Constant Amplitude Zero Auto-Correlation
(CAZAC) property, which means low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). The
primary synchronization signals for different cell IDs are orthogonal to each other.

The sequence used for the secondary synchronization signal is an interleaved

concatenation of two length 31 binary sequences.

Both primary and secondary synchronization signals are transmitted on the 62

subcarriers centered around the DC subcarrier, with five reserved subcarriers on
either side in the frequency domain, so there are a total of 72 subcarriers occupied by
synchronization signals, corresponding to the most narrow bandwidth supported by
LTE (1.4MHz). In the time domain, both primary and secondary synchronization
signals are transmitted twice per 10 ms in predefined slots.

. The resource mapping for synchronization signals is illustrated in Figure 7.15.

.

Figure 7.15 The mapping of primary and secondary synchronization signals to OFDM symbols for
frame structure type 1 and type 2, with the normal CP. ‘P’ and ‘S’ denote primary and secondary
synchronization signals, respectively

H-ARQ IN THE DOWNLINK

In a wireless network, due to the effects of channel fading and interference from
neighboring cells, it is nearly impossible to guarantee error-free transmission no
matter how robust the channel coding is.
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As the coding rate decreases, the transmission becomes more robust but at the same
time power efficiency is lost, that is, a significant amount of power is used to transmit
a few bits of information.

An approach to solve this problem is to use the H-ARQ protocol, which combines FEC
and retransmission within a single framework.

Hybrid automatic repeat request (hybrid ARQ or HARQ) is a combination of

high-rate forward error-correcting coding and ARQ error-control.

In standard ARQ, redundant bits are added to data to be transmitted using an error-
detecting (ED) code such as a cyclic redundancy check (CRC).

Receivers detecting a corrupted message will request a new message from the sender.

In Hybrid ARQ, the original data is encoded with a forward error correction (FEC)
code, and the parity bits are either immediately sent along with the message or only
transmitted upon request when a receiver detects an erroneous message.

In the case of LTE both Type I Chase Combining (CC) H-ARQ and Type
II Incremental Redundancy (IR) H-ARQ schemes have been defined. The H-ARQ
operation is part of the MAC layer, while the PHY layer handles soft combining.

In type I H-ARQ—commonly referred to as chase combining—during a

retransmission the transmitter sends a copy of the encoded bits that is identical to the
first transmission and the receiver soft combines the received bits with the previous
transmission.

 As the noise/interference is uncorrelated, the receiver can combine all the

transmissions to increase the effective SINR.
 Thus, with every subsequent transmission the error probability is reduced and
this process continues until the receiver is able to decode the information
without error.

In type II H-ARQ—commonly referred to as incremental redundancy—the

transmitter changes the bits that are punctured during a retransmission. This way
with every retransmission the effective code rate at the receiver decreases, which
reduces the error probability.

• At the receiver turbo decoding is first applied on the received code block. If this is
a retransmission, which is indicated in the DCI, the code block will be combined with
the previously received versions for decoding. If there is no error detected in the
output of the decoder, an ACK signal is fed back to the transmitter through the PUCCH
physical channel and the decoded block is passed to the upper layer; otherwise, an
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NAK signal is fed back and the received code block is stored in the buffer for
subsequent combining.
• At the transmitter for each (re)transmission, the same turbo-encoded data is
transmitted with different puncturing, so each of these (re)transmissions has a
different redundancy version and each is self-decodable. Puncturing is performed
during the rate matching. The rate matcher can produce four different redundancy
versions of the original coded block.
NEED FOR N CHANNEL STOP and WAIT PROTOCOL

As it takes a certain amount of time for the H-ARQ ACK/NAK to be received and for
the system to be ready to retransmit, there is a time interval between two successive
H-ARQ transmissions, which is typically 8 msec in LTE. During this 8 msec, the
transport block can either be transmitted (if received with errors) or be discarded
from the transmit buffer (if received without errors). This implies a certain amount of
inefficiency in transmission since the transmitter has to wait for 8 msec before it can
take any action. In order to mitigate this issue, an N-channel Stop-and-Wait
protocol is used for downlink H-ARQ operation.

N CHANNEL STOP and WAIT PROTOCOL

An N-channel Stop-and-Wait protocol consists of N parallel H-ARQ processes. When

one or more of the processes are busy waiting for the H-ARQ ACK/NAK, the processes
that are free can be used to transmit other transport blocks.

There is one H-ARQ entity in the eNode-B for each UE that maintains a number of
parallel H-ARQ processes. For the FDD mode, a maximum of eight H-ARQ processes
is allowed in the downlink; for the TDD mode, the maximum number of H-ARQ
processes in the downlink is determined by the UL/DL configuration, specified
in Table 7.17, which ranges from 4 to 15. Each H-ARQ process is associated with an
H-ARQ process ID. When spatial multiplexing is used, both transport blocks are
associated with the same H-ARQ process.
Table 7.17 Maximum Number of Downlink H-ARQ Processes for TDD

Figure 7.16 An example of a 10-msec frame with eight H-ARQ processes. The H-ARQ process 1 is
transmitted in the first TTI, for which the H-ARQ ACK/NAK is received in the 5-th TTI, and then the
H-ARQ process 1 is transmitted again in the 9-th TTI.
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Figure 7.16 shows a 10 msec frame with TTI index 1 transmitting the H-ARQ process
1, TTI index 2 transmitting the H-ARQ process 2, and so on. The H-ARQ ACK/NAK
for the H-ARQ process 1 is received in TTI index 5.Then in TTI index 9 the H-ARQ
process 1 is transmitted again, either a new transmission if an ACK is received or a
retransmission if an NAK is received.

LTE downlink applies the asynchronous H-ARQ protocol, where the H-ARQ
processes can be transmitted in any order without fixed timing. The uplink, on the
other hand, uses the synchronous H-ARQ, where the H-ARQ process is assigned to a
specific subframe.

ADVATAGES OF ASYNCHRONOUS H-ARQ

The asynchronous H-ARQ makes it possible to reflect channel quality measurements

at the instance of retransmission, which is able to provide a higher throughput with
re-scheduling or changing the modulation and coding scheme, called adaptive H-
ARQ.

In addition, asynchronous operation makes it possible for the eNode-B to avoid

potential collision of H-ARQ retransmissions with other high priority scheduled
transmissions such as persistent scheduling.

DISADVANTAGE OF ASYNCHRONOUS H-ARQ

Meanwhile, the asynchronous H-ARQ requires more overhead, as the receiver does
not know ahead of time what is being transmitted and when the retransmission
occurs.

To support asynchronous H-ARQ in the downlink, PDCCH contains fields indicating

the H-ARQ process number and the current redundancy version .
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The maximum number of H-ARQ retransmissions of each transport block is
configured by the Radio Resource Control (RRC) layer. When this maximum number
is reached without a successful transmission of the transport block or the
transmission is in error due to the error in H-ARQ-ACK signaling, a Radio Link
Control (RLC) layer ARQ protocol will be triggered to handle the error event.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter, we described the physical layer processing for downlink transport
channels and control information.

• The downlink data stream transmission is based on a shared-channel concept,

which allows channel-dependent scheduling and adaptive modulation and coding.
Convolutional turbo coding with a QPP contention-free internal interleaver is
applied as the channel code. A variety of MIMO modes are supported in the
downlink shared channel, but current specifications provide a limited support for
the MU-MIMO mode.
• For each downlink subframe, the PDCCH carrying DCI is mapped to the
first n OFDM symbols (n ≤ 4), where the PCFICH located in the first OFDM symbol
indicates the value of n. The PHICH carries H-ARQ ACK/NAK in response to the
uplink H-ARQ transmission. Different DCI formats are defined, optimized for
different scenarios.
• LTE supports E-MBMS services by the SFN operation, which transmits the same
data symbols from multiple base stations and combines them efficiently using
OFDM. It is supported by the 7.5kHz subcarrier spacing and the extended CP.
• Different types of reference signals are defined for different transmission modes,
and they are inserted in the radio resource grid at pre-determined intervals. The
density of reference symbols in the time-frequency plane is determined by making a
tradeoff between the channel estimation accuracy and the overhead. For cell-specific
reference signals, antenna ports 0 and 1 have twice as many reference symbols as
antenna ports 2 and 3. The density of the MBSFN reference signal in the frequency
domain is three times higher than that of the cell-specif
ic reference signal.
• LTE downlink employs H-ARQ protocols with soft combining to improve the
transmission reliability. The N-channel Stop-and-Wait protocol is used where each
H-ARQ entity maintains a number of parallel H-ARQ processes. Asynchronous and
adaptive H-ARQ protocol is used.

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MODULE-4
Uplink Transport Channel Processing Overview:
 Channel coding processing
 Modulation processing

Uplink Shared Channels:

 Channel encoding and modulation
 Frequency Hopping
 Multiantenna Transmission

Uplink Control Information :

 Channel coding for Uplink Control Information
 Modulation of PUCCH
 Resource mapping

Uplink Reference Signals

 Reference Signal Sequence
 Resource Mapping of Demodulation Reference Signals
 Resource Mapping of Sounding Reference Signals

Random Access Channel :H-ARQ in Uplink

 The HDD Mode
 The TDD Mode
Physical layer Procedures and Scheduling :Hybrid –ARQ feedback
 H-ARQ Feedback for Downlink (DL) Transmission
 H-ARQ Feedback for Uplink (UL) Transmission
Channel Quality Indicator(CQI) Feedback
 A Primer on (CQI) Feedback
 CQI Feedback Modes
Precoder for closed –loop MIMO operation:
 Precoder Estimation for Multicarrier Systems
 Precoding matrix Index (PMI) and Rank Indication (RI) Feedback
Uplink Channel Sounding

Buffer status reporting in Uplink

Scheduling and Resource Allocation
 Signaling for Scheduling in Downlink and Uplink
 Multiuser MIMO Signaling

 Cell Search
 Random Access Procedures
 Power control in Uplink

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Uplink Transport Channel Processing

Differences

There are major differences between downlink and uplink in LTE, including different
transmission and multiple access schemes, and different types of channel and control
information, and different physical layer processing.

Low complexity and high power efficiency are the major factors for the transmitter
design in the uplink. As a result, the multiple access in the uplink is based on SC-
FDMA due to its low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) compared to OFDMA.

Due to the SC-FDMA nature of the uplink, each UE can only be allocated contiguous
resource blocks, unlike downlink where each UE can be allocated non-contiguous
resource blocks in order to extract frequency diversity gain.

The uplink only supports a limited number of MIMO modes compared to the
downlink.

Similarities
There are similarities between the downlink and uplink transport channel processing.
For example, the same channel coding processing is applied on both downlink and
uplink shared channels and the time-frequency structure of the uplink resource blocks
is similar to that of the downlink. There are also interactions between downlink and
uplink transmissions.

The downlink control information carries scheduling grants for the uplink
transmission, while the uplink control information provides necessary information
such as channel quality and channel rank for downlink scheduling and transport
format selection.

UPLINK TRANSPORT CHANNEL PROCESSING OVERVIEW

The transport channel processing in the uplink is very similar to that of the downlink,
which can be divided into two distinct steps

 Channel coding
 Modulation

Spatial multiplexing is not supported in the uplink, data streams from the MAC layer
are presented to the encoding unit only one transport block every subframe.
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The codeword after encoding is passed to the symbol mapping unit where the bits are
mapped onto complex valued symbols.

The modulated symbols are processed to generate SC-FDMA signals and mapped onto
the assigned resource blocks.
Figure 8.1 Overview of uplink transport channel processing.

CHANNEL CODING PROCESSING

The channel coding processing in the uplink includes CRC addition, code block
segmentation, channel coding, rate matching, and code block concatenation.

The usage of the channel coding scheme and coding rate for the uplink shared channel
and control information is specified in Table 8.1 and Table 8.2, respectively.

Table 8.1 Usage of Channel Coding Scheme and Coding Rate for Uplink Transport Channels

Table 8.2 Usage of Channel Coding Scheme and Coding Rate for Uplink Control Information

The same turbo encoder used for downlink shared channels is also used for uplink
shared channels.

For control information, the channel coding scheme depends on the type of control
information and also on the type of the physical channel that carries the control
information.

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Unlike the downlink, the control information in the uplink can be mapped either to
the Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) or the Physical Uplink Control Channel
(PUCCH).

MODULATION PROCESSING

For the modulation in the uplink, the various steps such as scrambling and
modulation mapping are done in the same way as in the downlink.

Unlike downlink, in uplink a UE-specific scrambling is applied in order to randomize

the interference.

Also, since spatial multiplexing is not supported in the uplink there is no layer
mapping or MIMO precoding. SC-FDMA-based transmission is used in the uplink.

The generation of the SC-FDMA baseband signal is illustrated in Figure 8.2.

1. First, the DFT-based precoding is applied to the block of complex-valued

modulation symbols, which transforms the time-domain signal into the
frequency domain.
2. In LTE, the DFT size is decided based on a tradeoff between the complexity of
the implementation and the flexibility on the assigned bandwidth. The DFT size
also depends on the number of resource blocks assigned to the UE.
3. Then the output of the DFT-based precoder is mapped to the resource blocks
that have been allocated for the transmission of the transport block.
4. In LTE, only localized resource allocation is supported in the uplink, that is,
contiguous resource blocks are assigned to each UE.
The baseband signal sl(t) in SC-FDMA symbol l in an uplink slot is defined by:

for 0 ≤ t < (NCP,l + N) × Ts, where , N is the FFT size, Δf = 15kHz,

and ak,l is the content of resource element (k, l). It is generated with an IFFT operation,
after which the cyclic prefix (CP) is inserted.

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Figure 8.2 Generation of SC-FDMA baseband signals, where P/S denotes the parallel-to-serial
converter.

Note that the generation of the SC-FDMA signal shares the similar structure as that
for the OFDMA signal, with an additional DFT operation.

UPLINK SHARED CHANNELS

The transport channel processing for Uplink Shared Channels (UL-SCH).

 In the uplink, the UL-SCH is the only transport channel that carries traffic
data.
 It can also be used to transfer control signals for higher layers.

The channel mapping around the UL-SCH is shown in Figure 8.3.

Figure 8.3 Channel mapping around the uplink shared channel.

CHANNEL ENCODING AND MODULATION

 The channel coding scheme for data streams on the UL-SCH is the same as that
for the DL-SCH.

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 A rate 1/3 turbo encoder is used to encode the transport block.
 The encoded symbols are scrambled prior to modulation, which is done to
randomize the interference.
 Instead of using a cell-specific scrambling as in the downlink, a UE-specific
scrambling is applied in the uplink.
 The UL-SCH is mapped to the PUSCH, which supports QPSK, 16QAM, and
64QAM modulation schemes.
 The QPSK and 16QAM modulation schemes are mandatory and support for the
64QAM modulation is optional and depends on the UE capability.

FREQUENCY HOPPING

 The resource mapper maps the complex-valued modulation symbols in

sequence on to the physical resource blocks assigned for transmission of
PUSCH.
 In LTE, only localized resource allocation is supported in the uplink due to its
robustness to frequency offset compared to distributed resource allocation.
 Localized resource allocation also retains the single-carrier property in the
uplink transmission. As a consequence, there is very little frequency diversity
gain.
 On the contrary, in the downlink it is possible to allocate disjoint sets of resource
blocks to a UE to extract some frequency diversity gain.
 To achieve diversity gain, LTE supports frequency hopping on PUSCH, which
provides additional frequency diversity gain in the uplink.
 Frequency hopping can also provide interference averaging when the system is
not 100% loaded.
 In LTE both intra-subframe and inter-subframe frequency hopping are
supported, as illustrated in Figure 8.4.
 In intra-subframe hopping, the UE hops to another frequency allocation from
one slot to another within the same subframe; in inter-subframe hopping, the
frequency resource allocation changes from one subframe to another.
 Higher layers determine if the hopping is “inter-subframe” or “intra- and inter-
subframe.”
 In general, “intra-subframe” hopping provides higher frequency diversity gain
since this gain can be extracted over a single H-ARQ transmission, which always
spans only one subframe.
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 In the case of “inter-subframe” hopping, multiple H-ARQ transmissions are
needed in order to extract the frequency diversity gain.

Figure 8.4 Illustrations of frequency hopping on PUSCH.

If the single bit Frequency Hopping (FH) field in the corresponding PDCCH with DCI
format 0 is set to 1, the UE shall perform PUSCH frequency hopping; otherwise, no
PUSCH frequency hopping is performed.

• No frequency hopping ,if uplink frequency hopping is disabled (FH = 0)

• Frequency hopping If uplink frequency hopping is enabled (FH = 1), there are
two frequency hopping types. Type 1 hopping and Type 2 hopping
MULTIANTENNA TRANSMISSION

Considering cost and complexity of the UE, LTE only supports a limited number of
multiantenna transmission schemes in the uplink: a) transmit antenna selection and
b) multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO).

TRANSMIT ANTENNA SELECTION

With two or more transmit antennas at the UE, transmit antenna selection can be
applied, which is able to provide spatial diversity gain. The multiantenna transmission
at the UE depends on the signaling from higher layers.

• No antenna selection If transmit antenna selection is disabled or not supported

by the UE, the UE shall transmit from antenna port 0.
• Closed-loop (CL) antenna selection If CL UE transmit antenna selection is
enabled by higher layers, the UE shall perform transmit antenna selection in response
to commands received via DCI format 0 from the eNode-B. The DCI format 0 is

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scrambled with the antenna selection mask, which enables the UE to determine which
antenna port to select.
• Open-loop (OL) antenna selection If OL UE transmit antenna selection is
enabled by higher layers, the transmit antenna to be selected by the UE is not
specified.The UE can determine the optimum antenna based on H-ARQ ACK/NAK
feedbacks.
MU-MIMO IN UPLINK

 MU-MIMO is supported in the uplink, which is also referred to as “virtual”

MIMO transmission.
 Two UEs transmit simultaneously on the same radio resource, forming a virtual
MIMO channel, and the eNode-B separates the data streams for each UE.
 This transmission mode provides a spatial multiplexing gain to increase the
uplink spectrum efficiency, even with single-antenna UEs.
 As the eNode-B can estimate the channel information from the uplink reference
signal, it is capable of performing CQI calculation and scheduling without
further feedback from UEs, which makes it easier to implement MU-MIMO in
the uplink than in the downlink.
 For the eNode-B to differentiate and demodulate signals from the two UEs,
orthogonal reference signals are assigned for each of them.
UPLINK CONTROL INFORMATION

The Uplink Control Information (UCI) is to assist physical layer procedures by

providing the following types of physical layer control information:

• Downlink CQI, which is used to assist the adaptive modulation and coding and the
channel-dependent scheduling of the downlink transmission.
• H-ARQ acknowledgment (H-ARQ-ACK) associated with the downlink H-ARQ
process.
• Scheduling Request (SR) to request radio resources for the uplink transmission.
• Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI) and Rank Indication (RI) for downlink MIMO
transmission.
 RI indicates the maximum number of layers that can be used for spatial
multiplexing in the downlink
 PMI indicates the preferred precoding matrix.

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Figure 8.5 Channel mapping for control information in the uplink.

CHANNEL CODING FOR UPLINK CONTROL INFORMATION

 UCI can be transmitted on PUCCH, or on PUSCH if there is uplink assignment.

 The channel coding for UCI therefore depends on whether it is carried on the
PUCCH or PUSCH.
 Different types of control information are encoded differently using different
coding rates.
UCI ON PUCCH

When the UCI is transmitted on the PUCCH, three channel coding scenarios are
considered: 1) the UCI contains CQI/PMI but not H-ARQ-ACK, 2) the UCI contains
H-ARQ-ACK and/or SR but not CQI/PMI, and 3) the UCI contains both CQI/PMI and
H-ARQ-ACK.

MODULATION OF PUCCH

UCI from multiple UEs can be transmitted on the same radio resource through code
division multiplexing (CDM).

RESOURCE MAPPING

The PUCCH is never transmitted simultaneously with the PUSCH from the same UE,
that is, the PUCCH is time-division multiplexed with the PUSCH from the same UE.
This is done in order to retain the single-carrier property of SC-FDMA. for the
transmission of the PUCCH. The PUCCH uses one resource block in each of the two
slots in a subframe.

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Figure 8.7 Mapping to physical resource blocks for PUCCH.

UPLINK REFERENCE SIGNALS

In LTE there are two types of reference signals defined in the uplink:

• Demodulation reference signals, which are transmitted on uplink resources

assigned to the UE, are for coherent demodulation of data and control information
at the eNode-B.
As PUCCH cannot be transmitted simultaneously with PUSCH, there are
demodulation reference signals defined for each of them, that is, there are
demodulation reference signals for PUSCH and demodulation reference signals for
PUCCH.
• Sounding reference signals are wideband reference signals for the eNode-B to
measure uplink channel quality information for uplink resource allocation. They are
not associated with the transmission of PUSCH or PUCCH.

The reference signal in the uplink cannot be transmitted at the same time as user data.
Instead, the uplink reference signals are time-division multiplexed with the uplink
data on the assigned subcarriers. In this way, the power level of the reference signal
can be different from that of the data symbol as they are transmitted over different
SC-FDMA symbols, so the PAPR is minimized over each SC-FDMA symbol.

REFERENCE SIGNAL SEQUENCE

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Both the demodulation reference signal and the sounding reference signal are defined
by a cyclic shift of the same base sequence. The generation of the base sequence
depends on the reference signal sequence length, which
is with , where m is the size of the resource blocks
assigned to the UE.

RESOURCE MAPPING OF DEMODULATION REFERENCE SIGNALS

The resource mapping of the demodulation reference signal is different for PUSCH
and PUCCH channels.

The reference signals are inserted in the time domain, which is to preserve the low
PAPR property of SC-FDMA.

For PUSCH, the demodulation reference signal sequence is mapped to resource

elements (k, l) with l = 3 for normal CP and l = 2 for extended CP, with increasing
order first in k and then in the slot number.

An example of demodulation reference signal mapping for PUSCH is shown in Figure

8.8, with the normal CP.

Figure 8.8 Resource mapping of demodulation reference signals for PUSCH with the normal CP.

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As shown in Section 8.3, PUCCH supports six different formats, and the resource

RESOURCE MAPPING OF SOUNDING REFERENCE SIGNALS

For the FDD mode, the sounding reference signal is transmitted in the last SC-FDMA
symbol in the specified subframe. For the TDD mode, the sounding reference signal
is transmitted only in configured uplink subframes or the UpPTS field in the special
subframe.

Figure 8.10 An example of resource mapping of sounding reference signals, with the normal CP.

RANDOM ACCESS CHANNELS

The uplink random access procedure is used during initial access or to re-establish
uplink synchronization.

H-ARQ IN THE UPLINK

As in the downlink, the H-ARQ retransmission protocol is also used in the LTE uplink,
so the eNode-B has the capability to request retransmissions of incorrectly received
data packets.

For the uplink H-ARQ process, the corresponding ACK/NAK information is carried
on the PHICH.

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LTE uplink applies the synchronous H-ARQ protocol, that is, the retransmissions are
scheduled on a periodic interval unlike downlink where the scheduler determines the
timing of retransmissions.

Synchronous retransmission is preferred in the uplink because it does not require to

explicitly signal the H-ARQ process number so there is less protocol overhead.

There are two types of H-ARQ operation in the uplink:

The non-subframe bundling operation (normal H-ARQ operation)

The subframe bundling operation (also called TTI bundling)

 four redundancy versions are transmitted over four consecutive uplink

subframes.
 That is , sending four H-ARQ retransmissions back to back without waiting for
the H-ARQ ACK/NAK feedback.
 When TTI bundling is used, the eNode-B waits for four TTIs to receive and
decode the four redundancy versions jointly before sending an H-ARQ
ACK/NAK over the PHICH in the downlink.

The N-channel Stop-and-Wait protocol is used in the uplink.

The FDD Mode

 For the FDD mode, there are eight parallel H-ARQ processes in the uplink for
the non-subframe bundling operation, and four H-ARQ processes for the
subframe bundling operation.
 For the FDD mode with the normal H-ARQ operation, upon detection of an NAK
in subframe n, the UE retransmits the corresponding PUSCH in subframe n + 4
 For the FDD mode with the subframe bundling operation, upon detection of an
NAK in subframe n − 5, the UE retransmits the corresponding first PUSCH
transmission in the bundle in subframe n + 4.
The TDD Mode

For the TDD mode, the number of H-ARQ processes is determined by the DL/UL
configuration, listed in Table 8.12.

• For TDD UL/DL configurations 1–6 and the normal H-ARQ operation, upon
detection of an NAK in subframe n, the UE retransmits in subframe n + k, with k given
in Table 8.13.

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• For TDD UL/DL configuration 0 and the normal H-ARQ operation, upon detection
of an NAK in subframe n, the UE will retransmit in subframe n + 7 or n + k with k given
in Table 8.13, which depends on the UL index field in DCI and the value of n.
• For TDD UL/DL configurations 1 and 6 with subframe bundling, upon detection of
an NAK in subframe n − l with l given in Table 8.14, the UE retransmits the
corresponding first PUSCH transmission in the bundle in subframe n + k, with k given
in Table 8.13.
• For TDD UL/DL configuration 0 and the subframe bundling operation, upon
detection of an NAK in subframe n − l with l given in Table 8.14, the UE retransmits
in subframe n + 7 or n + k with k given in Table 8.13, depending on the UL index field
in DCI and the value of n.
Table 8.12 Number of Synchronous UL H-ARQ Processes for TDD

Table 8.13 The Value of k for TDD Configurations 0–6

Table 8.14 The Value of l for TDD Configurations 0, 1, and 6

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter we described the physical layer processing for uplink transport
channels. The processing in the uplink shares similarities with the downlink but also
has some differences, which we highlighted in this chapter.
• Downlink and uplink share similar coding and modulation procedures. Different
from the downlink, the uplink transmission is based on SC-FDMA, so the baseband
signal generation is different. Uplink shared channels only support localized resource
allocation, and frequency hopping is introduced to increase frequency diversity. For
MIMO transmission, transmit antenna selection and MU-MIMO (or virtual MIMO)
are supported in the uplink.
• If uplink resource is assigned for the UE, the UCI is multiplexed with the uplink data
stream on the PUSCH; otherwise, the UCI is carried on the PUCCH that is time-
division multiplexed with the PUSCH from the same UE. Multiple UEs’ PUCCHs are
transmitted on the same resource blocks with CDM. Different contents in UCI have
different coding and modulation schemes.
• There are two types of reference signals defined in the uplink: demodulation
reference signals for coherent demodulation, and sounding reference signals to assist
the uplink scheduling. The uplink reference signals are time-division multiplexed with
the uplink data.
• LTE uplink supports the H-ARQ protocol with synchronous retransmission. The
number of H-ARQ processes and the time interval between the transmission and
retransmission depend on the duplexing mode and the H-ARQ operation type.

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CHAPTER 2

Physical Layer Procedures and Scheduling

HYBRID-ARQ FEEDBACK

In LTE, the H-ARQ protocol is applied to improve the transmission reliability over
the wireless channel for downlink and uplink, respectively.

The LTE downlink employs the asynchronous adaptive H-ARQ protocol, for which the
retransmissions are scheduled in a similar fashion to the first transmission, i.e., the
TTI and resource allocation for the retransmission is dynamically determined by the
scheduler.

In the uplink, synchronous adaptive H-ARQ protocol is used, for which the
retransmissions are automatically scheduled after a certain time window and the UE
does not need to send the H-ARQ process number. This reduces the amount of
signaling overhead in the uplink. With different frame structures, the H-ARQ
feedback is different for FDD and TDD modes

H-ARQ Feedback for Downlink (DL) Transmission

For H-ARQ transmissions in the downlink, UEs need to feed back the associated
ACK/NAK information on PUCCH or PUSCH. One ACK/NAK bit is transmitted in
case of single-codeword downlink transmission, while two ACK/NAK bits are
transmitted in case of two-codeword downlink transmission.

For the FDD mode, the UE transmits H-ARQ-ACK in subframe n for a PDSCH
transmission in subframe n − 4.

For the TDD mode, in asymmetric uplink/downlink cases with more downlink
subframes than uplink subframes, it may happen that more than one
acknowledgment needs to be sent in a certain UL subframe. Therefore, H-ARQ
reporting is different from the FDD mode. For TDD, two ACK/NAK feedback modes
are supported by higher layer configuration:

• ACK/NAK bundling using PUCCH format 1a or 1b, which is the default mode and
consists of one or two bits of information
• ACK/NAK multiplexing using PUCCH format 1b, which consists of between one
and four bits of information
H-ARQ Indicator for Uplink (UL) Transmission
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For the uplink H-ARQ process, as spatial multiplexing of transport blocks is not
supported, only a single-bit H-ARQ Indicator (HI) needs to be sent to each scheduled
UE, which is carried on the PHICH physical channel. For the FDD mode, an
ACK/NAK received on the PHICH assigned to a UE in subframe n is associated with
the PUSCH transmission in subframe n − 4. For the TDD mode, different from the
feedback for downlink transmission, there is no problem to transmit multiple
acknowledgments on PHICH

CHANNEL QUALITY INDICATOR (CQI) FEEDBACK

The Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) contains information sent from a UE to the
eNode-B to indicate a suitable downlink transmission data rate, i.e., a Modulation and
Coding Scheme (MCS) value.

CQI is a 4-bit integer and is based on the observed signal-to-interference-plus-noise

ratio (SINR) at the UE.

The CQI reported values are used by the eNode-B for downlink scheduling and link
adaptation, which are important features of LTE.

LTE supports wideband and subband CQI reporting.

9.2.2 CQI Feedback Modes

CQI is reported with other uplink control information including Precoder Matrix
Indicator (PMI) and Rank Indicator (RI) on PUSCH or PUCCH. The reporting of CQI,
PMI, and RI in the time domain can be categorized into two classes:

• Periodic reporting: The UE reports CQI, PMI, and RI with reporting periods
configured by the higher layer on the PUCCH. If the UE is scheduled in the uplink, the
periodic reporting is carried on PUSCH.
• Aperiodic reporting: The UE reports CQI, PMI, and RI using the PUSCH upon
receiving either a DCI format 0 or a random access response grant. Feedback via
PUSCH can be used to provide large and more detailed reporting in a single reporting
instance compared to the periodic feedback.

UPLINK CHANNEL SOUNDING

Channel sounding is mainly used for uplink channel quality measurement at the
eNode-B. The Sounding Reference Symbol (SRS) is transmitted by the UE in the
uplink for the eNode-B to estimate the channel state information, which includes the
MIMO channel of the desired signal, SINR, noise, interference level, etc.

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BUFFER STATUS REPORTING IN UPLINK

A Buffer Status Report (BSR) is sent from the UE to the serving eNode-B to provide
information about the amount of pending data in the uplink buffer of the UE. The
buffer status, along with other information, such as priorities allocated to different
logical channels, is useful for the uplink scheduling process to determine which UEs
or logical channels should be granted radio resources at a given time.

CELL SEARCH

When a UE powers on, it needs to acquire time and frequency synchronization with a
cell and detect the physical-layer cell ID of that cell through the cell search procedure
or synchronization procedure. Such synchronization is especially important for LTE,
as the performance of LTE systems relies on the orthogonal intra-cell transmission in
both uplink and downlink. During cell search, different types of information need to
be identified by the UE, including symbol and frame timing, frequency, cell
identification, transmission bandwidth, antenna configuration, and the cyclic prefix
length.LTE uses a hierarchical cell search scheme similar to WCDMA.

Figure 9.4 The cell search process.

RANDOM ACCESS PROCEDURES

In LTE, there are two random access mechanisms:

• Non-synchronized random access: Non-synchronized random access is used

when the UE uplink has not been time synchronized, or when the UE uplink loses
synchronization. Its main purpose is to obtain synchronization of the uplink, notify
the eNode-B that the UE has data to transmit, or transmit a small amount of control
information and data packets.
• Synchronized random access: Synchronized random access is used when uplink
synchronization is present. Its main purpose is to request resources for uplink data
transmission from the eNode-B scheduler.

In this section, we focus on non-synchronized random access.

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The non-synchronized random access procedure, which consists of four steps, is
depicted in Figure 9.5and described here:

1. First, multiple UEs transmit randomly selected random access code.

2. Second, eNode-B conducts a multiuser detection process and allocates resources to
the detected UEs.
3. Third, each UE transmits detailed information using allocated resources.
4. Fourth, the eNode-B transmits the contention-resolution message on the DL-SCH.
When the previous steps are finished successfully, eNode-B and each UE initiate data
communication.
Figure 9.5 The non-synchronized random access procedure.

POWER CONTROL IN UPLINK

In LTE, the power control in the uplink is to control the interference caused by UEs
to neighboring cells while maintaining the required SINR at the serving cell. The
power control scheme for the PUSCH transmission in the uplink.

Conventional power control in the uplink is to achieve the same SINR for different
UEs at the base station, also known as full compensation, but it suffers low
spectral efficiency as the common SINR is limited by the cell-edge UEs. LTE specifies
Fractional Power Control (FPC) as the open-loop power control scheme, which allows
for full or partial compensation of path loss and shadowing. FPC allows the UEs with
higher path loss, i.e., cell-edge UEs, to operate with lower SINR requirements so that
they generate less interference to other cells, while having a minor impact on the cell-
interior UEs so that they are able to transmit at higher data rates.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter, we specified the physical layer procedures that provide services to
upper layers.

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• CQI feedback from UEs and channel sounding procedure provide the eNode-B with
channel quality information for downlink and uplink channels, respectively, which are
then used per UE scheduling and link adaptation. For CQI feedback, to enable
frequency-selective scheduling and also to keep the overhead low, various reporting
modes are supported, including period and aperiodic reporting, with both wideband
and subband reporting. For MIMO modes, RI and PMI feedback are also reported
from UEs.
• Both downlink and uplink scheduling are performed at the eNode-B. For uplink
scheduling, buffer status reporting is required from UEs. The resource assignments,
including the assigned time/frequency resources and respective transmission
formats, are conveyed through downlink control signaling on PDCCH.
• Semi-persistent scheduling, which is a combination of dynamic scheduling and
persistent scheduling, is proposed for the VoIP service in LTE. The initial
transmission follows persistent scheduling, while retransmissions follow dynamic
channel-dependent or persistent scheduling.
• The very first procedure a UE needs to do after powering on is to acquire time and
frequency synchronization with a cell and obtain necessary system information. Then
the UE can carry out the uplink synchronization and inform the eNode-B if it has data
to transmit through the random access procedure. Cell search and random access
procedures were discussed
• Intra-cell orthogonality (due to SC-FDMA) in uplink transmission makes the uplink
power control less critical in LTE than in W-CDMA/HSPA. LTE uplink power control
is used primarily to control inter-cell interference, which includes an open-loop
component employing FPC and a closed-loop component.

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MODULE -5:
Radio Resource Management and Mobility Management :
Packet data Convergence protocol(PDCP) Overview
 Header Compression
 Integrity and Ciphering

MAC/RLC overview:
 Data Transfer Modes
 Purpose of MAC and RLC Layers
 PDU Headers and Formats
 ARQ Procedures

RRC overview:
 RRC States
 RRC Functions

Mobility Management:
 S1 Mobility
 X2 Mobility
 RAN Procedures for Mobility
 Paging

Inter-Cell Interference Coordination:

 Downlink
 Uplink

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Data Flow, Radio Resource Management, and Mobility
Management

 Higher-layer protocols and mobility management in LTE.

 Radio resource management and inter-cell interference mitigation techniques.

LTE is a packet-switched network from end to end that is designed primarily for high-
speed data services.

To efficiently support the varying QoS requirements of different IP applications, LTE

uses the concept of a bearer (Virtual Channel) as the central element of QoS control.

Each EPS (Evolved Packet System) bearer is defined between the Packet Data
Network Gateway (PDN-GW) and the UE, and maps to a specific set of QoS
parameters such as data rate, latency, and packet error rate.

Applications with very different QoS requirements such as e-mail and voice can be put
on separate bearers that will allow the system to simultaneously meet their QoS
requirements.

The end-to-end connectivity through the network is made via the bearer service, and
the bearer service architecture is shown in Figure 10.1.

An EPS bearer has to cross multiple interfaces, and across each interface it is mapped
to a transport layer bearer.

An S5/S8 bearer transports the packets of an EPS bearer between a Serving GW (S-
GW) and a PDN-GW.

An S1 bearer transports the packets of an EPS bearer between an eNode-B and an S-

GW.

Over the radio interface the bearer is referred to as the radio bearer, which transfers
data between a UE and the E-UTRAN.

Radio bearers are channels offered by Layer 2 to higher layers for the transfer of
either user or control data.

Signaling Radio Bearers (SRBs) carry the Radio Resource Control (RRC) signaling
messages, while the Data Radio Bearers (DRBs) carry the user plane data.

Radio bearers are mapped to logical channels through Layer 2 protocols.

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Figure 10.1 EPS bearer service architecture.

Broadly, the bearers can be divided into two classes:

• Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR) bearers:

 These bearers define and guarantee a minimum bit rate that will be available to
the UE.
 Bit rates higher than the minimum bit rate can be allowed if resources are
available.
 GBR bearers are used for applications such as voice, streaming video, and real-
time gaming.
• Non-GBR bearers:
 These bearers do not define or guarantee a minimum bit rate to the UE.
 The achieved bit rate depends on the system load, the number of UEs served by
the eNode-B, and the scheduling algorithm.
 Non-GBR bearers are used for applications such as web browsing, e-mail, FTP,
and P2P file sharing.

Each bearer is associated with a QoS Class Identifier (QCI), which indicates the
priority, packet delay budget, acceptable packet error loss rate,and the GBR/non-GBR
classification.

The nine standardized QCI defined in the LTE are shown in Table 10.1.

Table 10.1 Standardized QoS Class Identifiers (QCIs) for LTE

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One EPS bearer is established when the UE connects to a Packet Data Network (PDN),
and that remains established throughout the lifetime of the PDN connection to
provide the UE with always-on IP connectivity to that PDN. This is referred to as
the default bearer.

Any additional EPS bearer that is established to the same PDN is referred to as
a dedicated bearer. The core network handles the establishment and modification of
the dedicated bearer.

The protocol architecture in LTE between the UE and the core network is divided into

 The user plane protocol stack

 The control plane protocol stack

USER PLANE PROTOCOL STACK

The user plane is responsible for transporting IP packets carrying application-specific

data from the PDN-GW to the UE.

This is done by encapsulating the IP packets in an Evolved Packet Core (EPC)-specific

protocol and tunneling them from the PDN-GW to the eNode-B using the GPRS
Tunneling Protocol (GTP).

From the eNode-B the packets are transported to the UE using the Packet Data
Convergence Protocol (PDCP).

Figure 10.2 User plane protocol stack.

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CONTROL PLANE PROTOCOL

The control plane is used for transporting signaling between the Mobility
Management Entity (MME) and the UE.

The type of signaling handled over the control plane is typically related to bearer
management, QoS management, and mobility management including functions such
as handover and paging.
Figure 10.3 Control plane protocol stack.

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LTE PROTOCOL STACK

 In LTE, Layer 2 of the protocol stack is split into the following sublayers:
Medium Access Control (MAC), Radio Link Control (RLC), and PDCP.
 The Layer 2 structure for the downlink is depicted in Figure 10.4.
 Radio bearers are mapped to logical channels through PDCP and RLC sublayers.
 The Service Access Point (SAP) between the physical layer and the MAC
sublayer provides the transport channels that are used by the physical layer to
provide services to the MAC.
 The SAP between the MAC sublayer and the RLC sublayer provides the logical
channels that are used by the MAC layer to provide services to the RLC.
 In LTE, there is one RLC and PDCP entity per radio bearer in the UE and eNode-
B. However, only one MAC entity exists in the UE and the eNode-B for all the
radio bearers.
 The single MAC layer multiplexes the data and control information from all the
radio bearers at the eNode-B and UE, i.e., it multiplexes several logical channels
on the same transport channel (i.e., transport block).

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Figure 10.4 Layer 2 structure for downlink.

In W-CDMA, the RLC, PDCP, and RRC entities are in the Radio Network Controller
(RNC), and the MAC entity is either in the Node-B (HSPA) or in the RNC (Release 99
W-CDMA).

In LTE, all of these entities are contained in the eNode-B.

At the transmit side, each protocol layer receives a service data unit (SDU) from the
higher layer, and presents a protocol data unit (PDU) to the layer below. Input is SDU
and output is PDU

There are protocols between the core network and the UE that are transparent to the
radio interface and referred to as Non-Access Stratum (NAS) signaling.

In EPS, the NAS protocols consist mainly of the protocols for mobility management
and session management between the UE and the MME.

This chapter deals with Layer 2 protocols, including the PDCP, RLC, and MAC
sublayers. The RRC protocol will be introduced, including the RRC states and
different functions provided by RRC.

PDCP (PACKET DATA CONVERGENCE PROTOCOL) OVERVIEW

PDCP provides services to RRC

A PDCP entity is associated either with the control plane or with the user plane
depending on which radio bearer it is carrying data for.

Each radio bearer is associated with one PDCP entity, and each PDCP entity is
associated with one or two RLC entities depending on the radio bearer characteristic
(uni-directional or bi-directional) and the RLC mode.
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PDCP is used only for radio bearers mapped on DCCH and DTCH types of logical
channels.

The main services and functions of the PDCP sublayer for the user plane and control
plane as shown in Figure 10.5 are as follows.
Figure 10.5 PDCP functions for the user plane and the control plane.

For the user plane:

 Header compression and decompression of IP data flows with the RObust

Header Compression (ROHC) protocol
 Ciphering and deciphering of user plane data
 In-sequence delivery and reordering of upper-layer PDUs at handover
 Buffering and forwarding of upper-layer PDUs from the serving eNode-B to
the target eNode-B during handover
 Timer-based discarding of SDUs in the uplink

For the control plane:

 Ciphering and deciphering of control plane data

 Integrity protection and integrity verification of control plane data
 Transfer of control plane data

The PDCP PDUs can be divided into two categories:

 The PDCP data PDU

 The PDCP control PDU
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• The PDCP data PDU is used in both the control and user plane to transport higher-
layer packets. It is used to convey either user plane data containing a
compressed/uncompressed IP packet or control plane data containing one RRC
message and a Message Authentication Code for Integrity (MAC-I) field for integrity
protection
• The PDCP control PDU is used only within the user plane to convey a PDCP status
report during handover and feedback information for header compression.
The PDCP control PDU does not carry any higher-layer SDU but rather is used for
peer-to-peer signaling between the PDCP entities at two ends.

 The constructions of the PDCP data PDU formats from the PDCP SDU for the
user plane and the control plane are shown in Figure 10.6.
 The various types of PDCP PDU carried on the user and control plane are shown
in Table 10.2.
 There are three different types of PDCP data PDUs, distinguished by the length
of the Sequence Number (SN).
 The PDCP SN is used to provide robustness against packet loss and to guarantee
sequential delivery at the receiver.
 The PDCP data PDU with the long SN is used for the Unacknowledge Mode
(UM) and Acknowledged Mode (AM) and the PDCP data PDU with the short SN
is used for the Transparent Mode (TM).
 ‘D/C’ field is used to distinguish data and control PDUs.
 The PDCP data PDU for the control plane comprises a MAC-I field of 32 bits for
integrity protection..

Figure 10.6 PDCP data PDU formats for the user plane and the control plane.

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Table 10.2 PDCP Data Units

HEADER COMPRESSION

The header compression protocol in LTE is based on the RObust Header Compression
(ROHC) framework defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

PDCP entities are configured by upper layers to use header compression, which is only
performed on user plane data.

REQUIREMENT FOR HEADER COMPRESSION:

All the services in LTE are IP-based, these protocols bring a significant amount of
header overhead at the network layer (IP), transport layer (TCP, UDP), and
application layer (RTP), which contains redundant and repetitive information and
unnecessarily consumes precious radio resources. Therefore, an efficient header
compression scheme is required, especially for VoIP services where the IP-related
repetitive information in the header field is large relative to the actual speech packets.

METHODS

There are multiple header compression algorithms, called profiles, defined for the
ROHC framework. Each profile is specific to the particular network layer, transport
layer, or upper-layer protocol combination, e.g., TCP/IP and RTP/UDP/IP.
Table 10.3 Supported Header Compression Protocols and Profiles

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INTEGRITY AND CIPHERING

The security-related functions in PDCP include integrity protection and ciphering.

A PDCP PDU counter, denoted by the parameter COUNT, is maintained and used as
an input to the security algorithm.

The format of COUNT is shown in Figure 10.7, which has a length of 32 bits and
consists of two parts: the Hyper Frame Number (HFN) and the PDCP SN. The SN is
used for reordering and duplicate detection of RLC packets at the receive end.

Figure 10.7 Format of COUNT.

INTEGRITY

 The integrity protection function includes both integrity protection and

integrity verification and is performed only for control plane data as indicated
in Figure 10.6.
 The data unit that is integrity protected is the PDU header and the data part of
the PDU before ciphering.
 Integrity protection is provided by the field MAC-I of 32-bit length.
 At transmission, the value of the MAC-I field is calculated based on the keys
provided by RRC, the radio bearer identifier, the COUNT value, and the
direction of the transmission.
 The receiver computes the expected message authentication code on the
received message using the same parameters and algorithm used by the sender.
 If this does not match the MAC-I field, then the PDCP PDU does not pass the
integrity check, and the PDCP PDU will be discarded.

CIPHERING

 The ciphering function includes both ciphering and deciphering.

 It is performed on both control plane data and user plane data.
 For the control plane, the data unit that is ciphered is the data part of the PDCP
PDU and the MAC-I.
 For the user plane, the data unit that is ciphered is the data part of the PDCP
PDU.

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 Neither integrity nor ciphering is applicable to PDCP control PDUs.
 The ciphering function is activated by upper layers, which also configures the
ciphering algorithm and the ciphering key to be used.
 The ciphering is done by an XOR operation of the data unit with the ciphering
stream.
 The ciphering stream is generated by the ciphering algorithm based on
ciphering keys, the radio bearer identity, the value of COUNT, the direction of
the transmission, and the length of the key stream.

MAC/RLC OVERVIEW
FUNCTIONS OF RLC

 The RLC layer performs segmentation and/or concatenation on PDCP PDUs

based on the size indicated by the MAC.
 RLC also reorders the RLC PDUs once they are received out of order possibly
due to H-ARQ processes in the MAC layer.
 The RLC layer also supports an ARQ mechanism, which resides on top of the
MAC layer H-ARQ and is used only when all the H-ARQ transmissions are
exhausted and the RLC PDU has not yet been received without errors.

At the transmitter and the receiver there is one RLC entity per radio bearer.

FUNCTIONS OF MAC

 The MAC layer performs multiplexing and demultiplexing of the various logical
channels on to the transport channels.
 At the eNode-B, this includes multiplexing and prioritizing various UEs that are
being served by the eNode-B as well as multiplexing and prioritizing the various
radio bearers within a given UE.

 At the UE, the MAC layer only performs the task of multiplexing and prioritizing
the various radio bearers associated with the UE.
 The MAC layer provides services to the RLC layer through logical channels,
while it accesses the data transfer services provided by the PHY layer through
transport channels.
DATA TRANSFER MODES

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Functions of the RLC layer are performed by RLC entities.

Each RLC entity can be operated in three different modes:

 The Transparent Mode (TM)

 The Unacknowledged Mode (UM)
 The Acknowledged Mode (AM)

THE TRANSPARENT MODE (TM)

 The TM mode is the simplest one.

 The RLC entity does not add any RLC header to the PDU and no data
segmentation or concatenation is performed.
 This mode is suitable for services that do not need retransmission or are not
sensitive to delivery order.
 Only RRC messages such as broadcast system information messages and paging
messages use the TM mode.
 The TM mode is not used for user plane data transmission.
 The RLC data PDU delivered by a TM RLC entity is called the TM Data (TMD)
PDU.
THE UNACKNOWLEDGED MODE (UM)

 The UM mode provides in-sequence delivery of data that may be received out of
sequence due to the H-ARQ process in MAC, but no retransmission of the lost
PDU is required.
 This mode can be used by delay-sensitive and error-tolerant real-time
applications, such as VoIP.
 The DTCH logical channel can be operated in the UM mode.
 The RLC data PDU delivered by an UM RLC entity is called the UM Data (UMD)
PDU.
 At the transmit end, the UM RLC entity segments and/or concatenates the RLC
SDUs according to the total size of RLC PDUs indicated by the MAC layer.
 Relevant RLC headers are also included in the UMD PDU.
 The receiving UM RLC entity performs duplicate detection, reordering, and
reassembly of UMD PDUs.
THE ACKNOWLEDGED MODE (AM)

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 The AM mode is the most complex one, which requests retransmission of
missing PDUs in addition to the UM mode functionalities.
 It is mainly used by error-sensitive and delay-tolerant applications.
 An AM RLC entity can be configured to deliver/receive RLC PDUs through
DCCH and DTCH.
 An AM RLC entity delivers/receives the AM Data (AMD) PDU and the STATUS
PDU indicating the ACK/NAK information of the RLC PDUs.
 When the AM RLC entity needs to retransmit a portion of an AMD PDU, which
results from the ARQ process and segmentation, the transmitted PDU is called
the AMD PDU segment.
 The operation of the AM RLC entity is similar to that of the UM RLC entity,
except that it supports retransmission of RLC data PDUs.
 The receiving AM RLC entity can send a STATUS PDU to inform the
transmitting RLC entity about the AMD PDUs that are received successfully and
that are detected to be lost.
PURPOSE OF MAC AND RLC LAYERS
The main services and functions of the RLC sublayer include
• Transfering/receiving PDUs from upper layers, i.e., from RRC for the
CCCH logical channel or from PDCP for other cases
• Error correction through ARQ (only when the RLC is operated in the AM
mode)
• Concatenation,segmentation, and reassembly of RLC SDUs (only for UM
and AM data transfer)
• Re-segmentation of RLC data PDUs (only for AM data transfer)
• In-sequence delivery of upper-layer PDUs (only for UM and AM data
transfer)
• Duplicate detection (only for UM and AM data transfer)
• Protocol error detection and recovery
• RLC SDU discard (only for UM and AM data transfer)
• RLC re-establishment

LTE defines two MAC entities: one in the UE and one in the eNode-B.

The exact functions performed by the MAC entities are different in the UE from those
performed in the eNode-B.

The main services and functions of the MAC sublayer include

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 Mapping between logical channels and transport channels
 Multiplexing/demultiplexing of MAC SDUs belonging to one or
different logical channels into/from the same transport block
 Scheduling for both downlink and uplink transmission.
 Error correction through H-ARQ, which has tight interaction with
ARQ in the RLC layer and will be discussed later in this section
 Priority handling between logical channels of one UE or between
UEs by means of dynamic scheduling
 Transport format selection, i.e., the selection of the Modulation and
Coding Scheme (MCS) for link adaptation
 Padding if a MAC PDU is not fully filled with data
PDU HEADERS AND FORMATS
RLC PDU Formats

 RLC PDUs can be categorized into RLC data PDUs and RLC control PDUs.
 RLC data PDUs are used by TM, UM, and AM RLC entities to transfer upper-
layer PDUs, called the TM Data (TMD) PDU, the UM Data (UMD) PDU, and the
AM Data (AMD) PDU, respectively.
 RLC control PDUs are used for peer-to-peer signaling between the AM RLC
entities at the two ends for ARQ procedures.

The formats of different RLC Data PDUs are shown in Figure 10.8.

 The TMD PDU only consists of a Data field, as no RLC header is added.

 The RLC headers are different for UMD PDU and AMD PDU, but they contain
common fields including:

Figure 10.8 Formats of RLC Data PDUs.

• Framing Info (FI) field: The FI field indicates whether a RLC SDU is segmented
at the beginning and/or at the end of the Data field.

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• Length Indicator (LI) field: The LI field indicates the length in bytes of the
corresponding Data field element present in the UMD or AMD PDU.
• Extension bit (E) field: The E field indicates whether a Data field follows or a set
of E field and LI field follows.
• SN field: The SN field indicates the sequence number of the corresponding UMD
or AMD PDU. It consists of 10 bits for AMD PDU, AMD PDU segments, and STATUS
PDUs, and 5 bits or 10 bits for UMD PDU.

For AMD PDU and AMD PDU segments, additional fields are available:

• Data/Control (D/C) field: The D/C field indicates whether the RLC PDU is an
RLC Data PDU or an RLC Control PDU.
• Re-segmentation Flag (RF) field: The RF field indicates whether the RLC PDU
is an AMD PDU or an AMD PDU segment.
• Polling bit (P) field: The P field indicates whether the transmitting side of an AM
RLC entity requests a STATUS report from its peer AM RLC entity.

Additionally, the RLC header of an AMD PDU segment contains special fields
including:

• Segment Offset (SO) field: The SO field indicates the position of the AMD PDU
segment in bytes within the original AMD PDU.
• Last Segment Flag (LSF) field: The LSF field indicates whether the last byte of
the AMD PDU segment corresponds to the last byte of an AMD PDU.

The STATUS PDU is used by the receiving AM RLC entity to indicate the missing
portions of AMD PDUs. The format of the STATUS PDU is shown in Figure 10.9,
which consists of the following fields:

• Control PDU Type (CPT) field: The CPT field indicates the type of the RLC
control PDU, and in Release 8 the STATUS PDU is the only defined control PDU.
• Acknowledgment SN (ACK_SN) field: The ACK_SN field indicates the SN of
the next not received RLC Data PDU, which is not reported as missing in the STATUS
PDU.
• Extension bit 1 (E1) field: The E1 field indicates whether a set of NACK_SN, E1,
and E2 follows.
• Extension bit 2 (E2) field: The E2 field indicates whether a set of SOstart and
SOend follows.
• Negative Acknowledgment SN (NACK_SN) field: The NACK_SN field
indicates the SN of the AMD PDU (or portions of it) that has been detected as lost at
the receiving side of the AM RLC entity.

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• SO start (SOstart) field and SO end (SOend) field: These two fields together
indicate the portion of the AMD PDU with SN = NACK_SN that has been detected as
lost at the receiving side of the AM RLC entity.

Figure 10.9 The format of STATUS PDU.

MAC PDU FORMATS

The MAC layer receives data from RLC as MAC SDUs, and passes the MAC PDUs to
PHY.

A MAC PDU consists of two parts: a MAC header and a MAC payload, as shown
in Figure 10.10.

The MAC payload consists of zero or more MAC SDUs, zero or more MAC control
elements, and optional padding; the MAC PDU header consists of one or more MAC
PDU subheaders, while each subheader corresponds to either a MAC SDU, a MAC
control element, or padding. Therefore, both the MAC SDU and the MAC header are
of variable sizes.

Figure 10.10 An example of MAC PDU consisting of MAC header, MAC control elements, MAC SDUs,
and padding.

The format of a typical MAC subheader is shown in Figure 10.11, which contains five
different fields as explained in the following:

• “R” field: It is currently reserved always set to “0.”

• “E” field: It is an extension field as a flag indicating if more fields are present in the
MAC header. If it is set to “1,” another set of at least R/R/E/LCID fields follows;
otherwise, either a MAC SDU, a MAC control element, or padding follows.
• “LCID” field: This Logical Channel ID (LCID) field identifies the logical channel
instance of the corresponding MAC SDU or the type of the corresponding MAC control

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element or padding. There is one LCID field for each MAC SDU, MAC control element,
or padding included in the MAC PDU.
• “F” field: This format indicates the size of the Length field. It is set to “0” if the size
of the MAC SDU or MAC control element is less than 128 bytes; otherwise, it is “1.”
• “L” field: This Length field indicates the length of the corresponding MAC PDU or
MAC control element in bytes. The size of the L field is indicated by the F field.

Figure 10.11 An example of the MAC subheader.

For the last subheader in the MAC PDU, the MAC PDU subheader corresponding to
padding, and subheaders for fixed size MAC control elements, there are only four
header fields: R/R/E/LCID.

The MAC PDU for random access response has a different format, as shown in Figure
10.12. In the case of random access, there is a MAC header that consists of one or more
MAC PDU subheaders, where each subheader contains information about the
payload. The MAC payload consists of one or more MAC Random Access Responses
(MAC RAR) and optional padding. Each MAC RAR is of fixed size and consists of four
fields, described as follows:

• Reserved Bit: It is set to “0.”

• Timing Advance Command: It indicates the index value used to control the
amount of timing adjustment that UE has to apply. It is of 11 bits.
• UL Grant: It indicates the resources to be used on the uplink, and is of 20 bits.
• Temporary C-RNTI: This field indicates the temporary identity that is used by
the UE during random access. The size is 16 bits.
Figure 10.12 The MAC PDU for random access response.

ARQ Procedures

 To better support upper-layer services, LTE applies a dynamic and efficient two-
layer retransmission scheme:
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 A fast H-ARQ protocol with low latency and low overhead feedback in the MAC
layer. A highly reliable selective repeat ARQ protocol in the RLC layer.
 The H-ARQ protocol is responsible for handling transmission errors
by performing retransmissions based on H-ARQ processes with incremental
redundancy or chase combining, which is handled by the PHY layer.
 The ARQ protocol in the RLC layer is to correct residual H-ARQ errors, mainly
due to the error in H-ARQ ACK feedback. ARQ procedures are only performed
in the AM transfer mode by an AM RLC entity and the latency associated with
the RLC layer ARQ is much larger.
 The reliability of the H-ARQ protocol is determined by the error rate of the
feedback. It is costly to achieve a sufficiently reliable H-ARQ-ACK feedback.
 The solution adopted in LTE is to use a second-layer ARQ protocol, which is to
correct the error event due to H-ARQ feedback errors.
 This additional ARQ protocol provides a much more reliable feedback protected
by a CRC. This design yields low latency and low overhead without sacrificing
reliability.
 ARQ retransmission is triggered by an ARQ NAK received at the transmit side
of an AM RLC entity.
 The ARQ NAK is received either by the STATUS PDU from its peer AM RLC
entity or by H-ARQ delivery failure notification from the transmit MAC entity,
which can happen when the maximum number of H-ARQ transmissions is
exhausted without a successful transmission of the transport block.
 If the maximum number of ARQ retransmissions is reached, the AM RLC entity
will notify the upper layers.

In HSPA, the H-ARQ protocol of the MAC layer is terminated in the Node-B, while
ARQ of the RLC layer is terminated in the RNC. In LTE, both of them are terminated
in the eNode-B, which enables a tighter interconnection between the H-ARQ and ARQ
protocols. The benefits of this architecture include fast handling of residual H-ARQ
errors and variable ARQ transmission size.

RRC OVERVIEW

The RRC layer takes care of RRC connection management, radio bearer control,
mobility functions, and UE measurement reporting and control.

It is also responsible for broadcasting system information and paging.

RRC States

Compared to UMTS, which has four RRC states, LTE has only two states:
RRC_IDLE and RRC_CONNECTED, as depicted in Figure 10.13.
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This simplifies the RRC state machine handling and the radio resource management,
which controls the RRC state.

A UE is in the RRC_CONNECTED state when an RRC connection has been

established; otherwise, the UE is in the RRC_IDLE state.

Figure 10.13 RRC states in LTE.

RRC_IDLE State:

 In the RRC_IDLE state, the UE can receive broadcasts of system information

and paging information.
 There is no signaling radio bearer established, so there is no RRC connection.
 In the RRC_IDLE state, the mobility control is handled by the UE, which
performs neighboring cell measurements and cell selection/reselection.
 The system information mainly contains parameters by which E-UTRAN
controls the cell selection/reselection process, such as priorities of different
frequencies.
 The UE shall be allocated an ID that uniquely identifies the UE in a tracking
area.
 The UE also monitors a paging channel to detect incoming calls, and it specifies
the paging Discontinuous Reception (DRX) cycle.

RRC_CONNECTED State:

 In the RRC_CONNECTED state, the UE has an E-UTRAN RRC connection and

a context in the E-UTRAN, so it is able to transmit and/or receive data to/from
the network (eNode-B).
 The UE monitors control channels (PDCCH) associated with the shared data
channel to determine if data is scheduled for it.
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 The UE can also report channel quality information and feedback information
to the eNode-B to assist the data transmission.
 In the RRC_CONNECTED state, the network controls mobility/handover of the
UE, while UEs provide neighboring cell measurement information.

RRC Functions

Signaling Radio Bearers (SRBs)

SRBs are defined as radio bearers that are used only for the transmission of RRC
and NAS messages. There are three different SRBs defined in LTE:

• SRB0 is for RRC messages using the CCCH logical channel.

• SRB1 is for RRC messages and NAS messages prior to the establishment of SRB2,
all using the DCCH logical channel.
• SRB2 is for NAS messages, using DCCH logical channel. SRB2 has a lower-priority
than SRB1 and is always configured by the E-UTRAN after security activation.

Following are the main functions of the RRC protocol.

 Broadcast of system information

 RRC connection control
 Measurement configuration and reporting
 Other functions
o Dedicated NAS information
o Non-3GPP dedicated information
o Transfer of UE radio access capability information
o Support of self-configuration and self-optimization.

• Broadcast of system information: divided into

• The Master Information Block (MIB)
• A number of System Information Blocks (sibs).
The MIB includes a limited number of the most essential and most frequently
transmitted parameters that are needed to acquire other information from the cell,
and is transmitted on the BCH logical channel.
SIBs other than SIB Type 1 are carried in System Information (SI) messages.

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SIB Type 1 contains parameters needed to determine if a cell is suitable for cell
selection as well as information about the time-domain scheduling of the other SIBs.
SIB Type 1 and all SI messages are transmitted on DL-SCH.
• RRC connection control includes procedures related to the establishment,
modification, and release of an RRC connection, including paging, initial security
activation, establishment of SRBs and radio bearers carrying user data, radio
configuration control and QoS control, and recovery from the radio link failure.
• Measurement configuration and reporting includes establishment,
modification, and release of measurements, configuration, and (de-)activation of
measurement gaps, and measurement reporting for intra-frequency, inter-frequency,
and inter-RAT (Radio Access Technology) mobility.
• Other functions include transfer of dedicated NAS information and non-3GPP
dedicated information, transfer of UE radio access capability information, and
support of self-configuration and self-optimization.
MOBILITY MANAGEMENT

LTE mobility management functions can be categorized into two groups:

 Mobility within the lte system (intra-lte mobility)

 Mobility to other systems such as other 3gpp systems (e.g., umts) and non-
3gpp systems (inter-rat mobility).

 Mobility within the lte system (intra-lte mobility)

Intra-LTE mobility can happen either over the S1 interface or over the X2
interface.

 When the UE moves from one eNode-B to another eNode-B within the same
Radio Access Network (RAN) attached to the same MME, the mobility takes
place over the X2 interface.
 When the UE moves from one eNode-B to another that belongs to a different
RAN attached to different MMEs or if the two eNode-Bs are not connected over
an X2 interface, then the mobility takes place over the S1 interface.

 Mobility to other systems such as other 3gpp systems (e.g., umts) and non-3gpp
systems (inter-rat mobility).
 The inter-RAT mobility essentially uses the S1-mobility with the only difference
being that in this case the PDCP context is not continued and the UE needs to
re-establish its session once it moves to the target non-LTE system.

S1 MOBILITY
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S1 mobility is very similar to the UMTS Serving Radio Network Subsystem (SRNS)
relocation procedure and consists of the following steps (shown in Figure 10.14):

 Preparation Phase
 Execution Phase
 Completion Phase
Preparation Phase:
 Once a decision has been made for a handover and a target MME and eNode-B
have been identified, the network needs to allocate resources on the target side
for the impending handover.
 The MME sends a handover request to the target eNode-B requesting it to set
up the appropriate resources for the UE.
 Once the resources have been allocated at the target eNode-B, it sends a
handover request ACK to the MME.
 Once this message is received by the MME, it sends a handover command to the
UE via the source eNode-B.
Execution Phase:
 Once the UE receives the handover command, it responds by performing the
various RAN-related procedures needed for the handover including accessing
the target eNode-B using the Random Access Channel (RACH).
 While the UE performs the handover, the source eNode-B initiates the status
transfer where the PDCP context of the UE is transferred to the target eNode-B.
 The source eNode-B also forwards the data stored in the PDCP buffer to the
target eNode-B.
 Once the status and data have been transferred to the target eNode-B and the
UE is able to establish a Radio Access Bearer (RAB) on the target eNode-B, it
sends the handover confirm message to the target eNode-B.
 3. Completion Phase: When the target eNode-B receives the handover
confirm message, it sends a handover notify message to the MME. The MME
then informs the source eNode-B to release the resources originally used by the
UE.

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Figure 10.14 Mobility management over the S1 interface.

X2 MOBILITY

The mobility over the X2 interface is the default mode of operation in LTE unless an
X2 interface is not available between the source and target eNode-Bs. When this is the
case, the mobility over S1 interface is triggered as mentioned in the previous section.

Mobility over the X2 interface also consists of three steps (shown in Figure 10.15):

 Preparation Phase
 Execution Phase
 Completion Phase
Preparation Phase:
 Once the handover decision has been made by the source eNode-B, it sends a
handover request message to the target eNode-B.
 The target eNode-B upon receipt of this message works with the MME and S-
GW to set up the resources for the UE.
 In the case of mobility over X2 interface, it is possible to set up resources on a
per-RAB basis, which implies that upon the completion of the handover the UE
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will have the same RABs at the target eNode-B with the same set of QoS as it
had on the source eNode-B. This process makes the handover quick and
seamless and the UE is not required to set up the RAB with the target eNode-B
once the handover is completed.
 The target eNode-B responds to the source eNode-B with a handover request
ACK once it is ready.
Execution Phase:
 Upon receiving the handover request ACK, the source eNode-B sends a
handover command to the UE.
 While the UE completes the various RAN-related handover procedures, the
source eNode-B starts the status and data transfer to the target eNode-B. This
is done on a per-RAB basis for the UE.
Completion Phase:
 Once the UE completes the handover procedure, it sends a handoff complete
message to the target eNode-B.
 Then the target eNode-B sends a path switch request to the MME/S-GW and
the S-GW switches the GTP tunnel from the source eNode-B to the target
eNode-B.
 When the data path in the user plane is switched, the target eNode-B sends a
message to the source eNode-B to release the resources originally used by the
UE.

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Figure 10.15 Mobility management over the X2 interface.

Note:

In the case of X2 mobility, the source eNode-B can select a lossless handover for one
or more of the RABs.

In this case, both the PDCP-processed and PDCP-unprocessed packets are sent
to the target eNode-B during the status transfer.

The PDCP-processed packets are the data packets that have been transmitted
by the source eNode-B to the UE but the UE has not yet acknowledged the receipt of
such packets.

The PDCP-unprocessed packets are the packets buffered by the PDCP layer that
are yet to be transmitted by the source eNode-B.

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In LTE there is an additional feature called selective retransmission, which is
enabled where the target eNode-B may not retransmit the PDCP-processed packets
that were forwarded but were acknowledged by the UE after the status transfer was
initiated.

RAN Procedures for Mobility

The RAN-related mobility management procedures happen between the UE and the
eNode-B or between the UE and the MME in order to enable the UE to handover from
one eNode-B to another.

These procedures can be classified into two distinct cases:

 Mobility in the RRC_IDLE state

 Mobility in the RRC_CONNECTED state.

The mobility management in these two RRC states was designed to be consistent

 to prevent the ping-pong between two eNode-Bs when the UE undergoes

RRC state transitions
o The ping-pong handover means handover to and fro between a cell
pair frequently, that raises the network load and generally degrades
the network performance
 to be applicable in a host of different scenarios such as network sharing,
country border, and home deployment (femto cells).
o a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically
designed for use in a home or small business

INTRA-FREQUENCY HANDOVER

 In LTE, intra-frequency handover radio link quality is primary ,hence the UE

selects the eNode-B with the best radio link quality.
 In LTE, the radio link quality is indicated by the Reference Signal Received
Power (RSRP) for an LTE cell and by the Reference Signal Code Power
(RSCP) for a UMTS cell.
 Selecting the eNode-B/Node-B with the best radio link quality is necessary for
both interference management and a battery life point of view.

For intra-LTE handover there are five events that trigger measurement reporting:

• Event A1: The serving cell radio link quality becomes better than an absolute
threshold.
• Event A2: The serving cell radio link quality becomes worse than an absolute
threshold.
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• Event A3: The neighbor cell radio link quality becomes better than an offset relative
to the serving cell.
• Event A4: The neighbor cell radio link quality becomes better than an absolute
threshold.
• Event A5: Serving cell radio link quality becomes less than an absolute thresh-old
and the neighbor cell radio link quality becomes better than another absolute
threshold.

INTER-FREQUENCY HANDOVER

 In inter-frequency handover and/or inter-RAT handover, radio link quality is

not the primary measure on which the handover is based.
 Other factors such as UE capability, call type, QoS requirements, and other
policy-related aspects are also included in the handover decision process.
 The measurement report from the UE, which contains the radio link
measurement for the neighboring eNode-B, is the primary mechanism used by
the network to trigger and control a handover procedure.
 The serving eNode-B provides the UE with the list of the neighboring cells and
the frequencies that it ought to measure and report when a measurement report
is requested.

For inter-RAT handover there are two events that can trigger a measurement report:

• Event B1: Neighbor cell radio link quality on a different RAT becomes better than
an absolute threshold.
• Event B2: Serving cell radio link quality becomes worse than an absolute threshold
and the neighbor cell radio link quality on a different RAT becomes better than
another threshold.

For all these events the E-UTRAN can specify a timeToTrigger parameter.
This timeToTriggerparameter is chosen to prevent the UE from ping-ponging
between eNode-Bs, which can happen if no such parameter is used.

The RAN mobility management in LTE had been designed to trigger a measurement
report whenever there is a significant change in the radio link quality even if it is for
the better.

In the RRC_IDLE state, the UE decides when a handover is required and which
cell/frequency the UE should target. The E-UTRAN allocates absolute priorities to the
different frequencies. These priorities are conveyed by the system information
message carried over the BCH. The priority of each cell is determined by the UE based
on the priority of the frequency and the radio link quality of the cell.

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In the RRC_CONNECTED state, the E-UTRAN determines the optimum cell and
frequency for the target eNode-B in order to maintain the best radio link quality.
Normally, the handover is initiated by the E-UTRAN based on one or more of the
events that trigger a measurement report (A1-A5) and (B1-B2). However, the E-
UTRAN may initiate a handover without any of these trigger events, also called a blind
handover.

In LTE all handovers are hard handovers, i.e., a UE can be connected to only one
eNode-B at a time. This hard handover process is usually a “backward” handover
where the source eNode-B controls the handover and requests the target eNode-B to
prepare for the handover and allocate resources for the UE.

PAGING

Paging is a connection control function of the RRC protocol. The Paging message is
used to inform the UEs in the RRC_IDLE or RRC_CONNECTED state about a system
information change and/or about an Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System
(ETWS) notification.

The UE in the RRC_IDLE state also monitors a Paging channel to detect incoming
calls.

Change of system information only occurs at specific radio frames, and the concept of
a modification period is used. Within a modification period, system information can
be transmitted a number of times with the same content. Upon receiving a change
notification contained in the Paging message, the UE knows that the current system
information is valid until the next modification period boundary. After this boundary,
the UE will re-acquire the required system information.

If the ETWS notification is indicated, the UE that is ETWS capable will re-acquire the
system information block related to ETWS immediately without waiting for the next
system information modification boundary.

E-UTRAN initiates the paging procedure by transmitting the Paging message at the
UE’s paging occasion. One Paging Frame (PF) is one radio frame in which the E-
UTRAN can page the UE. One PF may contain one or multiple subframe(s) in which
a Paging message can be transmitted. Each such subframe is called a Paging Occasion
(PO), which is configured by the E-UTRAN. The paging information is carried on the
PDSCH physical channel. In a certain PO, the UE is configured to decode PDCCH with
CRC scrambled by the Paging-Radio Network Temporary Identifier (P-RNTI), and
then decode the corresponding PDSCH for the paging information. To reduce power
consumption, the UE may use Discontinuous Reception (DRX) in the idle mode, so it
needs only to monitor one PO per DRX cycle. After receiving the Paging message, the
UE can switch off its receiver to preserve battery

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INTER-CELL INTERFERENCE COORDINATION

NEED TO MITIGATE ICI

 In cellular networks, each UE suffers Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) due to

frequency reuse in other cells.
 Conventional cellular networks by design are interference-limited.
 To meet the spectrum efficiency target, LTE adopts universal frequency reuse,
i.e., the same spectrum will be reused in each cell. This will cause a high level of
ICI, especially for UEs at the cell edge.
 One of the objectives of LTE is to increase cell edge throughput.
 Therefore, ICI control techniques must be applied

MITIGATION OF ICI IN DOWNLINK

In the downlink, there are three basic approaches to mitigate ICI:

• ICI randomization:

 This is achieved by scrambling the codeword after channel coding with a

pseudo-random sequence.
 With cell-specific scrambling, ICI from neighboring cells is randomized, and
then interference suppression.
 ICI randomization has been applied in systems such as UMTS.

• ICI cancellation:
 If a UE is able to decode the interfering signals, it can regenerate and then
subtract them from the desired signal.
 This can be achieved with a multiuser detector at the UE.
 To decode the interfering signal from neighboring cells, the UE needs to know
its transmission format, which is not available as the UE cannot decode the
PDCCH from neighboring cells. Alternatively, ICI cancellation can also be
performed in the spatial domain.
 Linear spatial interference cancellation with statistical knowledge of
interference channels is a practical option for ICI cancellation, but application
in the downlink is limited by the capability and the number of antennas at UEs.
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• ICI coordination/avoidance
 This is achieved by applying restrictions to the downlink resource management
in a coordinated way between neighboring cells.
 The restrictions can be on time/frequency resources or transmit power used at
each eNode-B.
 It requires additional inter-eNode-B communication and UE measurements
and reporting.
 ICI coordination/avoidance can be either static or semi-static, with different
inter-eNode-B communication requirements and different performance.
• Static ICI coordination/avoidance
This is mainly done during the cell planning process and does not require frequent
reconfiguration. An example is static Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR).
• Semi-static ICI coordination/avoidance Semi-static coordination typically
requires reconfigurations on a time-scale of the order of seconds or longer, and inter-
eNode-B communication over the X2 interface is needed. The information exchanged
between neighboring eNode-Bs can be transmission power and/or traffic load on
different resource blocks. By considering such information at neighboring eNode-Bs,
ICI suppression is more efficient.

Figure 10.16 shows a simple example of power patterns in three neighboring cells.

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Figure 10.16 Possible downlink power levels of three neighboring cells. Edge users in each cell would
be allocated to the higher power levels.

COORDINATED MULTI-POINT TRANSMISSION

 Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission/reception is a advanced and

sophisticated technique developed for ICI mitigation in LTE-Advanced.
 Downlink CoMP transmission implies dynamic coordination among multiple
geographically separated transmission points.
 It can be deployed in the form of coordinated scheduling and/or beamforming,
or multicell joint transmission.
 CoMP with joint transmission theoretically can eliminate all the ICI and transfer
the cellular network from an interference-limited system to a noise-limited
system.
 Practical there are issues associated with CoMP transmission.
 It is a type of dynamic ICI coordination,which will have great impacts on radio-
interface specifications, such as feedback and measurement mechanisms from
the UE, inter-eNode-B signaling, and downlink control and reference signal
design.
ICI MITIGATION IN UPLINK

The basic approaches for uplink ICI mitigation are as follows:

• ICI randomization Similar to the downlink, ICI randomization in the uplink is

achieved by scrambling the encoded symbols prior to modulation. Instead of cell-
specific scrambling as used in the downlink, UE-specific scrambling is used in the
uplink as ICI comes from multiple UEs in neighboring cells.
• ICI cancellation ICI cancellation is more applicable in the uplink than in the
downlink, as the eNode-B has higher computational capability and usually more
antenna elements.
• Uplink power control Power control is an efficient way to suppress ICI in the
uplink. Fractional Power Control (FPC) is used in LTE.
• ICI coordination/avoidance Similar coordination techniques discussed for
downlink can be applied in the uplink, such as FFR.

To assist uplink ICI coordination, two messages are defined in LTE that can be
exchanged over the X2 interface between eNode-Bs for power allocation and user
scheduling: interference Overload Indicator (OI) and High Interference Indicator
(HII) .

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OI indicates physical layer measurements of the average uplink interference plus
noise for each PRB, based on which eNode-Bs can adjust uplink power to suppress
ICI.

HII indicates which PRBs will be used for cell-edge UEs in a certain cell. Neighboring
cells may then take this information into consideration when scheduling their own
users to avoid high interference.

COORDINATED MULTI-POINT RECEPTION

 Similar to the downlink, CoMP reception will be developed for uplink in LTE-
Advanced. This means coordinated reception at multiple eNode-Bs of
transmitted signals from multiple geographically separated UEs in different
cells.
 In contrast to downlink, uplink CoMP reception is expected to have very limited
impact on the radio-interface specifications.
 As uplink scheduling is performed at the eNode-B, coordinated inter-cell
scheduling can be applied to control ICI, which, however, will have impact on
radio-interface specifications.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This chapter described higher-layer protocols, and the mobility management and
inter-cell interference coordination in LTE.

• The EPS bearer is used as the central element for the QoS control in LTE. Each bearer
is associated with a QCI, which indicates its priority, packet delay budget, acceptable
packet error loss rate, and the GBR/non-GBR classification.
• Layer 2 of the LTE protocol stack is split into PDCP, RLC, and MAC sublayers.
– The main functions of the PDCP sublayer include header compression for user plane
data, integrity protection of control plane data, ciphering, and in-sequence delivery
and duplicated elimination.
– The RLC sublayer performs segmentation and/or concatenation on PDCP PDUs,
and reorders the RLC PDUs that are received out of order.
– The MAC sublayer performs multiplexing and demultiplexing between logical
channels and transport channels.
– LTE applies a two-layer retransmission scheme: A fast H-ARQ protocol with low
overhead feedback in the MAC layer and a highly reliable selective repeat ARQ
protocol in the RLC layer.
• In LTE, there are two RRC states: RRC_IDLE and RRC_CONNECTED, compared
to four RRC states in UMTS. The RRC protocol mainly includes functions such as
broadcast of system information, RRC connection control, and measurement
configuration and reporting.
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Department of ECE, KNSIT 234

Downloaded by Deepak Sharma K M ([email protected])

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• In LTE, there are two categories of mobility management: intra-LTE mobility and
inter-RAT mobility. Intra-LTE mobility can happen either over the S1 interface or over
the X2 interface, while inter-RAT mobility happens over the S1 interface. In the
RRC_IDLE state the mobility control is handled by the UE, while in the
RRC_CONNECTED state the eNode-B controls mobility/handover of the UE.
• Inter-cell interference control is important for cell-edge throughput. Different
interference mitigation techniques are available, including interference
randomization, interference cancellation, and interference coordination/avoidance.
LTE defines specific messages to assist interference coordination: RNTP indicator for
downlink coordination, and OI and HII for uplink coordination.

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Department of ECE, KNSIT 235

Downloaded by Deepak Sharma K M ([email protected])