2012 IEEE 12th International Conference on Computer and Information Technology

Performance and Analysis on LTE System under

Adjacent Channel Interference of Broadcasting
System
Wei Li , Jiadi Chen , Hang Long , Bin Wu

Wireless Signal Processing and Network Lab

Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communication, Ministry of Education
Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, Beijing China

Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Email: liweijiansheliuxing@bupt.edu.cn

AbstractIn the progress of the standardization of the long

term evolution (LTE) system, the interference between the LTE
system and other systems is quite important. In China, the LTE
system and the broadcasting system may deploy in the same
geographical area in adjacent frequency channels around the
band of 698 MHz in digital dividend spectrum, which is free up
for the conversion from analog TV to digital TV. Therefore, with
the deployment of frequency planning, it is urgent to ensure the
coexistence between the LTE system and the broadcasting system.
This paper is aiming at analyzing the interference from the
broadcasting system to the LTE system with different distances
between the two systems and different offset distances with
Monte Carlo simulations. We calculate the required adjacent
channel interference ratio values to achieve 5% throughput loss.
Simulation results show that the interference situation of LTE
uplink is much more severe than LTE downlink and should be
paid more attention. Additionally, it can be improved by locating
the broadcasting system transmitter at the LTE systems cell
edge.

Therefore, the coexistence issue between the broadcasting

system and the LTE system in digital dividend spectrum is
important in the spectrum plan.
The coexistence simulation is a static simulation which
is usually based on the Monte Carlo approach for a set of
snapshots and it is a classic way to study interference of
wireless communication systems. In every snapshot, the user
equipments (UEs) will be deployed randomly with a uniform
distribution. The possibility of a variety of UE locations in
the actual system can be simulated by limited snapshots. The
required isolation condition can be easily got from the results
of the Monte Carlo simulation which is close to the real
situation of the actual system to ensure the coexistence of
two systems.
There are a number of researches on the coexistence issue in
relative elds. The performance evaluation on the coexistence
scenario of two 3GPP LTE systems is given in [4]. [5]
studied the system coexistence between the LTE time division
duplexing (TDD) system and the time division-synchronous
code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) system. [4] and
[5] did not consider the coexistence scenario of the LTE system
and the broadcasting system. The analysis of interference from
the digital terrestrial television broadcast to the LTE-TDD
system is presented in [6], but it does not consider the offset
distance between the broadcasting transmitter and the base
station (BS) of LTE.
In this paper, we focus on the analysis of interference from
the China digital television (DTV) system below 698 MHz
to the LTE system which is deployed in 698806MHz. The
Monte Carlo simulation method is used in this research. We
consider the urban and suburban scenarios, each including two
cases: 1) China DTV interfering LTE uplink and 2) China
DTV interfering LTE downlink. We investigate throughput
loss of the LTE system interfered by the China DTV system
with different inter-site distances (ISD), distances between two
systems, offset distances and adjacent channel interference
ratios (ACIRs).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The
system model, including network deployment, interference

I. I NTRODUCTION
The radio access network in the third generation partnership
project (3GPP) is studied and developed to the evolution
of the universal terrestrial radio access network, which is
often referred as long term evolution (LTE). The demand for
spectrum resources is increasing every year and spectrum is
scarce especially below 1 GHz.
In China, the conversion from analogue TV to digital TV
will free up 342 MHz radio spectrum resource [1], which is
called digital dividend. A part of digital dividend spectrum will
be allocated to mobile operators for the LTE system. Assigned
by world radiocommunication conference 2007 (WRC-07) [2],
the spectrum bandwidth from 698 MHz to 806 MHz is used
for the international mobile telecommunications (IMT) system
which is presented by the LTE system. China assigned the
spectrum bandwidth from 698 MHz to 862 MHz for mobile
operators by footnotes in WRC-07. The LTE system and the
broadcasting system may deploy in the same geographical area
in adjacent channels around the frequency of 698 MHz [3].
1 This work is supported in part by National Key Technology R&D Program
of China under Grant 2012ZX03004004 and the China Natural Science
Funding (NSF) under Grant 60976022

978-0-7695-4858-6/12 $26.00 2012 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/CIT.2012.75

290

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Fig. 2: Offset between China DTV and LTE






B. Interference Scenario



In our simulation, there are two interference scenarios

considered:
1) China DTV interferes LTE uplink;
2) China DTV interferes LTE downlink.
Besides, both urban and suburban scenarios will be considered. In urban scenario, ISD is 750 m and BS antenna height
is 30 m. In suburban scenario, ISD is 1732 m and BS antenna
height is 45 m.

Fig. 1: Network deployment

scenario, ACIR model, propagation model and link level

performance model, is given in Section II. Section III describes
the simulation method and parameters in detail. In Section IV,
the simulation results and analysis are given. Conclusions of
the paper are presented in Section V.

C. ACIR Model
Adjacent channel interference (ACI) could not be completely avoided when the China DTV system and the LTE
system operate in neighbor spectrum. High ACI can lead to
signicant reduction in neighbor system capacity. In order
to calculate ACI, the radio frequency (RF) characteristics of
transmitters and receivers are taken into account by weighting
adjacent system signal with a parameter ACIR, which is the
adjacent channel interference power ratio. As a measure of
the total interference caused by a transmitter to an adjacent
channel receiver, ACIR is dened as the ratio of the total
power transmitted from a source to the total interference power
affecting a victim receiver, resulting from both transmitter and
receiver imperfections [7].
In this simulation, the uplink ACIR is changed from 40
dB to 140 dB with a step size of 5 dB to get the different
throughput loss, whereas the downlink ACIR is changed from
0 dB to 50 dB with a step size of 5 dB.

II. S YSTEM M ODEL

A. Network Deployment
The network deployment is illustrated in Fig. 1. The LTE
system is deployed in macro cellular network and the service
area in simulation is a layout of 3-tier 19 hexagonal cells with
3 identical sectors per cell and it will be 5-tier after wrapround
to avoid edge effect caused by niteness of simulation region.
The China DTV transmitter is located in the center LTE cell.
For the sake of calculating the interference from China
DTV to LTE with different distances between the China DTV
transmitter and LTE BSs, we use the method as follows:
1) Firstly, there are only three layers of cells. Another two
outside layers will be added after wrapround.
2) With the distance between the China DTV transmitter and
LTE BSs of 0 m, the center LTE cell is considered as the
victim cell and the outside two layers are not taken into
account.
3) With the distance equal to ISD which is dened as intersite distance, the left 2nd layer inner cells are considered
as the victim cells.
4) With the distance equal to 2 ISDs, The 3rd layer cells
are considered as the victim cells.
In the urban scenario, ISD = 0.75 km, whereas in suburban
scenario, ISD = 1.732 km. Fig. 2 shows the case with different
offsets between the two
systems. R is the LTE cell radius
which equals to ISD/ 3. The two systems are co-site if offsets
= 0. When offsets = R, the China DTV BS is located at the
LTE systems cell edge.

D. Propagation Model
According to the chairmans report recommendation of JTG
5-6 [8], the Hata model is adopted when the propagation
distances are below 0.1 km. The model in Rec. ITU-R P.15464 [9] is used when the distances are larger than 1km. For
distances between 0.1 km and 1.0 km, logarithm interpolation
is
L(d) = L(0.1)+

[log(d) log(0.1)]
[L(1.0) L(0.1)] (1)
[log(1.0) log(0.1)]

where, d is the propagation distances in our simulation, L(0.1)

291

TABLE III: Simulation parameters of LTE [7]

TABLE I: Parameters of link level performance [7]

Parameters

DL

UL

Parameters

Values

, attenuation

0.6

0.4

Cellular layout

Hexagonal grid 3-sector sites

SINRmin , dB

-10

-10

Thrmax

ISD

4.4

2.0

Urban: 750 m
Suburban: 1732 m

Trafc model

Full buffer

TABLE II: Simulation parameters of China DTV [10]

Parameters

Values

Bandwidth

8 MHz

Occupied bandwidth
BS transmit power

7.6 MHz
60 dBm

Transmitter antenna gain after cable loss

9 dBi

Transmitter antenna height

150 m

Transmitter antenna pattern

Omni-directional antenna

Propagation model

Rec. ITU-R P.1546-4 [9]

is the propagation loss at 0.1 km and L(d) is the propagation

loss at d km.

4.5 MHz

BS maximum transmit power

43 dBm

UE maximum transmit power

23 dBm

BS antenna gain after cable loss

12 dBi

UE antenna gain

0 dBi

BS antenna height

Urban: 30 m
Suburban: 45 m

UE antenna height

1.5 m

BS noise gure

5 dB

UE noise gure

9 dB

Thermal noise density

-174 dBm/Hz
 

2
A() = min 12
, Am
3dB

3dB = 65 degrees, Am = 20 dB

A link level performance model is used to support a

mapping from SINR to throughput and it can be approximated
by an attenuated and truncated form of the Shannon bound [7].
The throughput can be calculated by using the following
equation:

SINR < SINRmin

SINRmin < SINR < SINRmax
SINR > SINRmax

5 MHz

Occupied bandwidth

BS antenna pattern

E. Link Level Performance Model

Thr
=
0
S(SINR)

Thrmax

Bandwidth

UE antenna pattern

Omni-directional antenna

Minimum coupling loss (MCL)

Urban: 70 dB
Suburban: 80 dB

6) Calculate each UEs SINR.

7) Finally, the throughput per UE can be obtained from the
link level model.
The simulation parameters of the China DTV system and the
LTE system are summarized in Tables II and III, respectively.

(2)

IV. S IMULATION R ESULT AND A NALYSIS

In this section, we will study and analyze the throughput
loss as well as the required ACIR values when the LTE system
and the China DTV system operate on adjacent frequency
channel in some typical interference scenarios. Simulation
results is presented in terms of throughput loss relative to the
reference throughput without external interference vs. ACIR,
which is expressed as:

where, S(SINR) is the Shannon bound with S(SINR) =

log2 (1 + SINR), is the attenuation factor and representing
implementation losses. SINRmin is the minimum SINR of the
codeset. Thrmax is the maximum throughput of the codeset.
SINRmax is the SINR at which the maximum throughput is
reached S1 (Thrmax ). More detailed parameters are shown in
Table I.

ThroughputLoss = 1

III. S IMULATION F LOW AND PARAMETERS

Each ACIR is corresponding to a number of snapshots in
the Monte Carlo simulation and the simulation ow for each
snapshot is as follows:
1) Set simulation parameters, distribute the LTE BSs and the
China DTV transmitter in the simulation region.
2) Then a certain number of UEs will be randomly distributed in simulation region.
3) Calculate the path loss from each UE to all cells including
antenna gain and shadow fading, and nd the smallest
path loss for each UE. Then select a cell for each UE
with the handover margin of 3 dB.
4) Allocate the resource blocks of each BS to its linked UE
randomly until the resource blocks of the BS is exhausted.
5) After resource allocation, power control model will start.

Tmulti
Tsingle

(3)

where Tmulti and Tsingle represent the victim system throughput with or without interference, respectively. The interference
is thought to be tolerable if the throughput loss is less than
5%.
A. China DTV interferes LTE uplink
Fig. 3 gives the simulation results for throughput loss of
the 5 MHz LTE uplink interfered by the China DTV system
in the urban scenario. D represents the distances from the
victim LTE cells to the cells which the China DTV is BS
located in and Do represents the distances from the China
DTV BS to the BS of the center LTE cell. When Do = 0 m,
it means that the two systems co-site, namely the China DTV

292

TABLE IV: Required ACIRs of LTE uplink

Urban

Suburban

D=0m
D = 750 m
D = 1500 m

Do = 0 m
115.1 dB
88.2 dB
78.5 dB

Do = 433 m
96.5 dB
92.3 dB
79.2 dB

D=0m
D = 1732 m
D = 3464 m

Do = 0 m
110.5 dB
79.3 dB
75.1 dB

Do = 1000 m
83.5 dB
80.2 dB
75.2 dB

the suburban scenario. When Do = 0 m, The required ACIRs

are 110.5 dB, 79.3 dB and 75.1 dB for D = 0 m, D = 1732
m (namely D = 1 ISD), D = 3464 m (namely D = 2 ISDs),
separately. When Do = 1000 m, namely the China DTV BS
is located at the cell edge, the required ACIRs are 83.5 dB,
80.2 dB and 75.2 dB for D = 0 m, D = 1732 m, D = 3464
m, separately. It can be concluded in Table IV.
Table IV shows that the LTE uplink interference situation of
the suburban scenario is a little better than the urban scenario.
It also can be noticed that when the two systems co-site,
namely Do = 0 m, the LTE uplink interference situation of
D = 0 m is very severe. When the China DTV BS is located
at the LTE systems cell edge, this interference can be reduced
largely and the needed ACIRs are 18.6 dB and 27 dB less than
co-site scenario for urban and suburban, separately. The reason
is that when the two systems co-site, the LTE BS is very close
to the China DTV BS and the received interfere power is very
high. When the China DTV BS is located at the LTE systems
cell edge, the received interfere power can be reduced a lot
compared with the co-site scenario.

Fig. 3: LTE uplink simulation results in urban scenario

Fig. 4: LTE uplink simulation results in suburban scenario

B. China DTV interferes LTE downlink

Fig. 5 gives the simulation results for throughput loss of the
5 MHz LTE downlink interfered by the China DTV system in
the urban scenario. When the two systems co-site, the required
ACIRs are 21.8 dB, 13.1 dB and 7.2 dB for D = 0 m, D =
750 m, D = 1500 m, separately. When the China DTV BS is
located at the LTE systems cell edge, the necessary ACIRs
are 17.6 dB, 13.2 dB and 7.3 dB for D = 0 m, D = 750 m,
D = 1500 m, separately. It can be collected in Table V.
Fig. 6 gives the simulation results for throughput loss of the
5 MHz LTE downlink interfered by the China DTV system
in the suburban scenario. When the two systems co-site, the
necessary ACIRs are 31.8 dB, 23.5 dB and 14.9 dB for
different distances of 0 m, 1732 m, 3464 m, separately. When
the China DTV BS is located at the LTE systems cell edge,
the necessary ACIRs are 29.3 dB, 23.7 dB and 15.1 dB for
D = 0 m, D = 1732 m, D = 3464 m, separately. It can be
collected in Table V.
Table V shows that the LTE downlink interference situation
of the urban scenario is better than the suburban scenario.
When D = 0 m, the necessary ACIR value of Do = 1000 m
is 4.2 dB smaller than Do = 0 m in the urban scenario while
2.5 dB smaller in the suburban scenario. The LTE downlink
interference situation of D = 0 m is not that severe when the

BS is located at the center of the LTE cell, while Do = 433 m

means that the China DTV BS is located at the cell edge. The
horizontal axis for uplink represents the ACIR simulation step.
The analysis of the LTE system uplink throughput loss is our
main concentration. It can be noticed that with the distances
between the two systems increasing, the throughput loss is
decreasing because the interference from the China DTV BS
is decreasing as the propagation distances increasing. We set
5% throughput loss as the evaluation criterion of maximum
interference coming from the China DTV system. When Do
= 0 m, the required ACIRs are 115.1 dB, 88.2 dB and 78.5
dB for D = 0 m, D = 750 m (namely D = 1 ISD), D = 1500
m (namely D = 2 ISDs), separately. We can see that when D
= 0 m, the interference situation is much more severe than D
= ISD and D = 2 ISDs because the China DTV BS is very
close to the LTE BS, so it leads to that the required ACIR is
26.9 dB more than D = ISD. When Do = 433 m, the required
ACIRs are 96.5 dB, 92.3 dB and 79.2 dB for D = 0 m, D =
750 m, D = 1500 m, separately. It can be concluded in Table
IV.
Fig. 4 gives the simulation results for throughput loss of the
5 MHz LTE uplink interfered by the China DTV system in

293

TABLE V: Required ACIRs of LTE downlink

Urban

Suburban

D=0m
D = 750 m
D = 1500 m

Do = 0 m
21.8 dB
13.1 dB
7.2 dB

Do = 433 m
17.6 dB
13.2 dB
7.3 dB

D=0m
D = 1732 m
D = 3464 m

Do =
31.8
23.5
14.9

Do = 1000 m
29.3 dB
23.7 dB
15.1 dB

0m
dB
dB
dB

and the LTE cells, the required ACIR value decreases. It can be
seen that the interference situation of LTE uplink is much more
severe than LTE downlink and should be paid more attention.
When the two systems are located co-site, the LTE uplink is
interfered most severely and the required ACIR value is 115.1
dB. This situation can be improved signicantly by deploying
the China DTV BS at the cell edge and the required ACIR
value is 96.5 dB. Meanwhile, the LTE downlink interference
situation will be improved a little at the same time. Hence, the
measure of deploying the China DTV BS at the LTE systems
cell edge can achieve a relative good performance.

Fig. 5: LTE downlink simulation results in urban scenario

R EFERENCES
[1] GB8496-87, Basic parameters and methods of measurement on electronic tuner for receiver for television broadcast transmissions, 1987.
[2] Ofcom,
WRC-07
agenda
item
1.4,
Consultation
on
candidate bands under consideration at WRC-07 for IMT.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/wrc07/wrc07.pdf.
[3] GB20600-2006, Framing structure, channel coding and modulation for
digital television terrestrial broadcasting system, 2006.
[4] Ruiming Zheng, Xin Zhang, Xi Li, et al., Perfonnance evaluation on
the coexistence scenario of two 3GPP LTE systems, in Proc. IEEE VTC
2009 fall, pp. 1-6.
[5] Hui Jia, Qingyu Miao, Changchuan Yin, et al., Performance analysis
of coexistence between LTE-TDD and TD-SCDMA, in Proc. IEEE
ICCTA 2009, pp. 303-307.
[6] Weidong Wang, Ben Wang, Zhi Lv, et al., Analysis of interference
from digital Terrestrial Television Broadcast to LTE TDD in Digital
Dividend spectrum, in Proc. IEEE IC-NIDC 2010, pp. 692-697.
[7] 3GPP TR 36.942 V10.2.0, Radio frequency (RF) system scenarios(Release 10), Jan. 2011. http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/htmlinfo/36942.htm.
[8] Annex 6 to Joint Task Group 5-6 Chairmans Report, Methodologies
(including interference objectives) for sharing studies between the mobile service, on the one hand, and the terrestrial broadcasting, on the
other hand, in the band 790-862 MHz, May 2010.
[9] Recommendation ITU-R P.1546-4, Method for point-to-area predictions
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[10] Annex 3 to Joint Task Group 5-6 Chairmans Report, List of broadcasting service characteristics for use in sharing studies in the band 790-862
MHz, May 2010.
[11] Annex 9 to Joint Task Group 5-6 Chairmans Report, JTG 5-6 compendium, May 2010.

Fig. 6: LTE downlink simulation results in suburban scenario

two systems co-site. The reason is that the China DTV BS is

not very close to most UEs which are deployed in the LTE
cell randomly.
According to Figs. 36 and Tables IVV, it can be
seen that LTE uplink is interfered much more severely than
LTE downlink and much more additional ACIR is required
especially when the two systems co-site, namely the LTE
BS receiver is very close to the China DTV transmitter. So
interference to LTE uplink should be paid more attention and
much more ACIR is needed. However, when the China DTV
BS is located at the LTE systems cell edge, the interference
situation of LTE uplink can be improved.
V. C ONCLUSION
The coexistence of the LTE system and the China DTV
system in digital dividend spectrum is studied in this paper and
we focus on the interference analysis with different distances
between the victim LTE cells and the China DTV BS in the
urban and suburban scenarios by Monte Carlo simulations.
We set the 5% as the threshold for the throughput loss and
calculate the required ACIRs. Simulation results show that
with the increasing of distances between the China DTV BS

294