Mobile Communication

EE-451
Lecture 03
By Dr Rabeea Basir
EME, NUST
 Today’s Outline
• The Cellular Concept-System Design Fundamentals
o Introduction
o Frequency Reuse
o Channel assignment strategies
 A Finite Resource
• Spectrum is like real estate—”they just don’t make it anymore”
[Webb ’99]
• Cellular systems enable a service provider to serve more
customers within a limited spectrum allocation

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Objectives and Compromises in Designing
Cellular Systems
• Objectives
o Maximize users per MHz
o Maximize users per cell cite
• Base stations are too costly

• Compromises made for these objectives

4
 Before Cellular Systems
• A single antenna would serve all the customers in the service area
• Service provider was limited to a certain bandwidth

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 One Call per Channel
• A different channel for every active call
• Even with trunking, demand quickly exceeded resources
• Trunking is a network configuration that allows multiple clients to
access a network at the same time by sharing resources.

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 Frequency Reuse
• Partition the service area into smaller cells
• One antenna (base station) serves each cell, transmitting lower
power, using only a subset of the available channels
• Adjacent cell uses a mutually exclusive subset of channels
• Original channel subset used in a cell that is far away from the
first cell

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 Frequency Reuse
• Total number of channels, S, are used in one cluster

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 Reuse in Each Cluster
• The same S channels are used simultaneously in another cluster
• Max no. of users = S times no. of clusters

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 Frequency Reuse
• S is the total number of duplex channel for the system from the
regulation body.
• K is the # of channel per cell.
If there are N of cells, then:
• S=KN.
• If the area covered by M clusters then:
• C=MS=MKN.
• Where C is the total capacity of the system.
• M++ C++&as M-- C--.
• Cell area fixed: N--  M++ &C++ but co-channel interference ++ .
• Cell area fixed : N++  M-- & C—but co-channel interference --
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Cells

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 Cells
• Hexagonal cell shape has
been universally adopted,
since it permits easy and
manageable analysis of a
cellular system.
• The actual radio coverage
of a cell is determined from
field measurements or
propagation prediction
models.

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 Cells
• For a given distance between
the center of a polygon and its
farthest perimeter points, the
hexagon has the largest area
among the sensible geometric
cell shapes (square ,
equilateral triangle).
• Thus, by using the hexagon
geometry, the fewest number
of cells can cover a geographic
region, and the hexagon also
closely approximates a circular
radiation pattern which would
occur for an omni-directional 13

base station antenna and free

• Normally
o Omni-directional antennas are used in center-excited cells
o Sectored directional antennas are used in corner-excited cells

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Cells

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 Co-channel Interference
• In the 4-cell cluster case, the nearest interfering
signal comes from 2 cells over

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17
 Transmit Power Constraint
• The power transmitted by each base station needs to be large
enough to cover its own cell, but small enough to not cause too
much interference in the co-channel cells
• As cells get smaller, transmit power is reduced

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 Cluster Size, N
• N only takes values N=i2+ij+j2 where i and j are non-negative
integers.
• Examples:
• i =2, j =0: N =4
• i =2, j =1: N =7

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 Location Rule
• To find the nearest co-channel cell, move i cells
along a chain of hexagons, turn 60 degrees counterclockwise and
move j cells
• i =2, j =1: N =7

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 Channel assignment strategies
• Main objectives (maximum capacity and minimum interference)
• Two types (effects on the performance of the system)
o Fixed channel assignment
• predetermined set of voice channels
• unused channels requirement for call setup, if not BLOCKED status
• Borrowing strategy, supervised by the mobile switching center (MSC)(a cell is allowed to borrow channels
from a neighbouring cell)
o Dynamic channel assignment
• Channels are not allocated to different cells permanently
• Call request is made (serving base station requests a channel from the MSC)
• Allocation of a channel using algorithm (blocking, frequency, distance, and cost)
• MSC to collect real-time data on channel occupancy, traffic distribution, and radio signal strength
indications (RSSI) of all channels on a continuous basis

Reduce blocking, increases capacity