WhyMax

Abdul Rehman Usmani

Wateen Telecom, BSS Engineering Email: abdulrehman.usmani@wateen.com

Abstract This article gives a brief overview of currently available and future mobile communication systems, compares their performance in terms of net throughput and mobility and gives a brief understanding of WiMAX solution. Since Wateen has chosen WiMAX for their Radio Access Network (RAN), therefore focus will be on WiMAX, its underlying OFDM core is discussed in detail for the thorough understanding. Finally a brief introduction is made on the Media Access Control (MAC) layer of WiMAX.

I. I NTRODUCTION Current mobile communication systems including UMTS (3G) provide maximum bit rates of 384Kbits/s for slow mobile users while Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) provide up to 100Mbit/s in stationary ofce environments. Future mobile communication systems (4G and beyond) will provide higher and reliable data rates not only for pedestrians (slow moving) but also users moving at vehicular speeds (fast mobile users). Fig.( 1) shows bit rates for different types of mobility comparing past and future trends.Communication systems having high data rates tend to use wider channel bandwidths and with fast moving users (e.g. vehicles) they suffer from strong multi-path and Doppler fading as the channel is more frequency selective and has higher Doppler shifts. The appropriate solution requires higher bandwidth efciency, better coding and equalization techniques. A. Past and Future Trends of Mobile Communication Systems The cellular age traces its roots with standardization of the rst generation cellular systems back to the 1980s. Different kinds of systems were developed such as Nordic Mobile Telephones (NMT) in Europe, Total Access Communication Systems (TACS) in United Kingdom and the Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) in the USA. All these rst generation pioneering systems were based on analog technfology and were utilizing Frequency Modulation (FM) for speech and frequency shift keying (FSK) for signalling and the access technique used was frequency division multiple access (FDMA). In the following years, advancements in digital signal processing techniques (source coding for data compression, encryption for security and channel coding for error protection) coupled with micro electronics industry, gave birth to second generation cellular systems in 1990s. Such systems are based on FDMA and TDMA techniques, an example is the global system for mobile communication (GSM) in Europe while some others were based on code division multiple access (CDMA) with direct sequence (DS) spectrum spreading in conjunction with FDMA, e.g. the interim standard (IS)-95 in the USA. Since

Fig. 1. Feature Cost Coverage Performance Market window Acceptance

Comparison of mobility vs transmission rate WiMAX Requires new infrastruc. 5 Km (Approx.) 2 Mb/s per user (Avg.) First products in 2007 Only used for BWA 3G HSxPA rides on UMTS 5 Km (Approx.) 2 Mb/s per user (Avg.) HSDPA launched in 2006 Higher due to mobility

TABLE I C OMPARISON OF W I MAX AGAINST 3G (HS X PA)

TECHNOLOGIES

the advent of second generation systems, the data transmission rate becomes a crucial factor because of the offered multimedia services require much more throughput. With the advent of 2.5G, enhanced data rate GSM evolution (EDGE), higher modulation schemes are exploited resulting in the tripling of throughput rate compared to GSM. Later with the advent of internet technology users expectations increased, responding to these factors, higher data rates were needed, so the third generation cellular systems are developed and commissioned into service all around the world. Some examples of these systems are universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) in Europe and international mobile telecommunications 2000 (IMT-2000) in the USA. Lately, work has been started for the next generation cellular systems (beyond 3G) in order to shape the future cellular systems. One such system is WiMAX, which is still in the research process. It promises upto 70 Mbps in stationary environments, while its mobile version (802.16-e) is still awaited. Since the above mentioned situation requires higher throughput and in future the number of mobile stations is expected to increase, there is a strong demand of communication schemes which not only provide higher throughput but

also utilize the bandwidth resources in a more efcient way. Current orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based transmission schemes such as WiMAX (802.16-2004) provide high throughput and good bandwidth efciency. II. W I MAX VS . 3G (UMTS), PROS AND CONS The major contender of WiMAX are the current 3G technologies such as UMTS in Europe and CDMA2000 in Americas. The evolution of 3G towards the 3.5G technologies such as HSxPA promises the similar results, while the benet lies in the fact that these networks are already operational and offer full mobility. The table Tab.(I) summarizes the comparison. III. M OBILE R ADIO C HANNEL The radio channel is generally hostile in nature. Coupled with mobility i.e. time variance (TV) it becomes even more complex. It is very difcult to predict its behavior, therefore, mobile radio channels are usually modelled in a statistical way based on the real measurement data. The following two subsections describe general propagation properties of electromagnetic waves and mobile channel characteristics briey. A. Propagation Models of the Mobile Radio Channel In general signal propagation between a transmitter and receiver can be decomposed into three components. A largescale path loss component of non-varying characteristics, a medium-scale, slow varying component using a log-normal distribution and a small-scale fast varying component being modelled as Ricean or Raleigh distribution depending upon the presence or absence of line of sight (LOS) between the transmitter and receiver. Accordingly a three-stage propagation model is introduced briey in following. 1) Large-Scale Propagation Model: It comprises of the reduction in received power due to the distance between the transmitter and receiver. The average path loss gives spatially averaged power of an electromagnetic wave which decreases as a function of a distance from the transmitter as shown in Fig.( 2). Usually this function is characterized by the path loss power law. Throughout this paper we do not consider large-scale propagation effects, but assume a perfect control on these effects. But in general, this component manifests itself as signal to noise ratio (SNR) at the input of the receiver. 2) Medium-Scale Propagation Model: This model determines the gradual changes in the local mean received power if the receiving antenna is moved over distances in the range of few 10s to 100s of meters. Since the wireless environment continuously uctuates due to the presence of the large scale physical obstacles e.g. buildings, mountains etc., the received power changes gradually. This is usually termed as slow fading as shown in Fig.( 2). The obstacles can cause shadowing which is due to the blocking of line of sight between between transmitter and receiver. The average received power uctuates with log-normal distribution about a mean power. Throughout this paper we also do not consider

Recieved Power [dBm] Slow Fading 30

40

Exponential Loss Over Distance[Path Loss]

50

60

70

80

90
Recieve Level [dB]

Fast Fading

100

Distance

Fig. 2.

Visualization of fading types

medium-scale propagation effects, but assume a perfect control on these effects. But in general, this component manifests itself as slow change in the signal to noise ratio (SNR) at the input of the receiver. 3) Small-Scale Propagation Model: It characterizes the fast variance of the received signal strength over short distances in the order of few wavelengths or over short time durations in the order of a few to milliseconds depending upon the speed of the mobile receiver. Smallscale fast fading is usually referred to as multi-path or fast fading and is depicted in Fig.( 2), which is due to multi-path reections of the transmitted signal by local scattering objects resulting in the superposition of waves reaching at the receiver from different paths having different amplitude, phase and attenuation. This might result into complete constructive or destructive interference and in case of stationary objects is a function of transmission frequency alone. In case of wideband communications this results into a frequency selective channel which favors few frequencies and rejects others. Small movements (in the order of half wavelengths) of the mobile users can have signicant effects on the received signal strength. The following parameters are used to describe the intensity of these changes.

Delay spread max : Due to multi-path propagation, several copies of the transmitted signal are received over the time with different amplitudes, phases and delays. Delay spread is dened as the delay between the reception of the rst and last replica of the transmitted impulse. In addition, the received signal is corrupted with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Fig.(3) shows the channel impulse response (CIR) having delay spread scenario. The power delay prole P ( ) and frequency correlation S (f ) are related by Fourier transform (FT) (1)

Power Delay Prole P ( )

Time Correlation | S (t)|

max =Delay Spread Frequency Correlation | S (f )|

c(t) = Coherence Time Doppler Power Spectral Density P ( )

Coherence time c (t) : Due to multi-path fading the channel is changing with time. The coherence time could therefore be dened as the duration during which the channel impulse response has not yet changed signicantly. If the symbol duration is shorter than the coherence time, the channel appears time invariant (TI) for the symbol transmission. The coherence time is usually approximated as (4) c (t) 9 . 16 fd,max (4)

fc fd fc

fc + fd

IV. B RIEF OVERVIEW OF OFDM TRANSMISSION Assuming that the channel posses wide sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) properties, the mobile radio channel can be modelled using a linear time invariant (LTI) system during the transmission of one symbol. LTI systems in general distort the transmitted signal but they posses sinusoids as their eigenfunctions. Hence sinusoids can be transmitted over LTI channels without any distortions except a scaling in amplitude from the eigenvalue at that frequency. This special property makes sinusoids as the ideal waveform for the transmission over LTI Systems. The principle of OFDM is the exploitation of this property to provide high speed digital communications with a simple equalization scheme (in fact just Guard interval). In OFDM, information is transmitted in parallel over a set of orthogonal sub-carriers. Fig.(4) shows an example with sinusoidal sub-carriers. If the sampling instant is chosen correctly, there exists no cross talk between the sub-carriers and the task of channel estimation is reduced to nding the eigenvalue (scaling factor) at that subcarrier frequency. The phenomenon of extension of symbol duration is achieved by transmitting Nc data symbols in parallel on Nc sub-carriers simultaneously as shown in Fig.(5) so that the data rate over each subcarrier is reduced by the factor of Nc . A single high data rate stream is converted to Nc low data rate sub-streams, each of which is modulated on one of the sub-carriers. This results in the division of a single wideband channel into several narrowband channels each of which is experiencing at fading (frequency non selective). The data rate per subcarrier is reduced by Nc and hence the symbol duration is extended which reduces the multi-path effect to only a fraction of symbol duration, short enough to be able to be removed by the GI and hence ISI could be completely eliminated, but the overall data rate remains the same. A complex valued vector of symbols is represented as Y , Y = (c , c+1 , ..., c+m ). (5)

c(f ) = Coherence Bandwidth

fd = Doppler Spread

Fig. 3.

Channel characteristics

P ( ) S (f )

(1)

Coherence bandwidth c (f ) : In general, a communication signal consists of more than one frequency (components). As we have already discussed, the channel affects the amplitude and phase of different frequency components differently. The coherence bandwidth, therefore shows the approximate frequency range over which the channel properties, i.e. channel impulse response does not change signicantly. Doppler spread fd : In case of mobile communications the component of the velocity of the relative speed of the transmitter and receiver, scaled by the velocity of light is added to the frequency of the signal. The Doppler spread is a measure of the broadening (or rather dispersion) of the signal bandwidth through the channel due to relative mobility of the transmitter and receiver. In accordance to, the maximum Doppler Spread is given by fc v c

fd,max =

(2)

where v is the maximum speed of the mobile receiver, c the speed of light, fc the carrier frequency of the signal and fd the Doppler frequency shift. The carrier frequency is shifted from fc to fc + fd,max . The time correlation function S (t) and power spectral density P ( ) are related by Fourier transform (FT) as given by (3). S (t) f P ( ) (3)

An OFDM modulator maps these serial complex valued symbols of rate Td onto Nc parallel streams. After parallel conversion, the symbol duration per carrier is extended to Ts given by, where Td is duration of a source symbol,

BICM
1

Ser q COD c
Interleaver

1 IDFT

1
Add Guard Period

Par

Ts
Interpolation LP

Mapper

Y
Par

0.8

s Ser N

e(t) s(t) Channel

h(, t)

Normalized amplitude

Nc
0.6

NF F T

WGN
n(t)
0.4

Ser
0.2

1 DFT

1
Remove Guard Period

g (t) Par Ts
Interpolation LP

q
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Y Iterative Receiver Par Nc NF F T

y Ser N

e(t)

0.2

(a) Basic OFDM transmission System

0.4 20 15 10 5 0 5 10 15 20

Normalized frequency
BICM

(a) Single sinusoidal subcarrier

q COD c
Interleaver

Ser c Mapper Y
Par

1 IDFT

1
Add Guard Period

Par s Ser N

Discrete Time Channel Model

Nc
1

NF F T

h(, kTs)
0.8

Channel

Normalized amplitude

Ser
0.6

1 DFT

1
Remove Guard Period

Sampled AWGN n Par

Iterative Receiver

Y Par Nc

y Ser N

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NF F T

0.2

(b) Simplication 1: Model in discrete domain

0

0.2

BICM Ser q c c Y
Par

0.4

20

15

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COD

Interleaver

Mapper

Normalized frequency

Nc

(b) 5 sinusoidal sub-carriers Fig. 4. Spectrum of OFDM signal, showing orthogonal sub-carriers
q Iterative Receiver Y Par 1 Ser

Discrete Time Multicarrier Channel Model in frequency Domain

Component wise Sampled AWGN

Channel

H (nfs , kTs)

nnfs ,

Ser Td fd =
1 Td

fc1

Nc

fc 2

fc 3 fc Nc

Ts = TdNC

Par

Fig. 5.

Basic principle of multi-carrier transmission

Ts = Nc Td

The new Nc streams are modulated on Nc sub-carriers having uniform spacing of fs , given by fs = 1 Ts (7)

The resultant complex valued time signal generated by the sum of individual sub-streams can be written as, 1 s(t) = Nc
Nc

cn e(t) ej 2fn t ,
n=1

...

...

..

Nc

..

(c) Simplication 2: Discrete time frequency domain channel model

fs =
fd NC

Fig. 6.

OFDM Transmission system model

where e(t) is the basic waveform used to modulate each symbol on respective subcarrier and fn is the subcarrier frequency index given by, (6) fn = nfs , where n = {0, 1, 2, ...., (Nc 1)}. (9)

(8)

A general OFDM system can be modelled by the diagram Fig.(6(a)), where the inverse discrete fourier transform (IDFT) is used for synthesis of the time signal from the sum of orthogonal sinusoids shown in Fig.(5). The source sequence q is convolutionally encoded by a channel encoder. Its output consists of coded bits c . The following interleaver shufes the bits to remove neighbor bit dependencies and produces c . After interleaving m consecutive code bits (c , c+1 , ..., c+m ) are grouped together and mapped to a constellation symbol point Y chosen from M = 2m signal constellation according to mapping given

by (10). Y = fmap,M (c , c+1 , ..., c+m ) (10)

A separate binary source generates deterministic bits already known to the receiver. These so called pilots bits are grouped together and mapped according to (10) to complex valued pilot symbols P in the similar fashion as data symbols. After the mapping, the data symbols Y and pilot symbols P are multiplexed in order to form Z . The distance of pilot symbols in frequency direction is Df and in time direction Dt . After multiplexing the symbols Z are mapped to complex valued symbol vector Y which is afterwards converted from serial to Nc parallel symbols. The IDFT does time signal synthesis, i.e., scaling respective sub-carriers with one of the transmitted symbols. In order to combat ISI and maintaining the orthogonality between sub carriers a GI is inserted, which is the replica of the tail of the OFDM symbol (cyclic extension). The duration of this guard period has to be greater or equal to the delay spread max of the channel to avoid ISI and maintain orthogonality between sub-carriers. G max (11)
Fig. 7. 2 planes of the MAC layer

1 Eu , + n (15) 2 T Where EuT shows the energy of the matched lter in the equivalent low pass domain. The term n (k ) shows the noise contribution, which is responsible for errors. This noise is usually termed as colored noise, since some frequencies are now ltered due to the passage through the matched ler and correlation between its samples exist in the time domain. y = V. M EDIA ACCESS C ONTROL (MAC) L AYER 2 The OFDM physical layer of WiMAX provides services to a 2nd layer in OSI hierarchy called MAC layer. This layer differentiates users and distributes as well as manages resources, available at physical layer. In order to enhance the efciency for a multiplicity of services, WiMAX forum divided this layer into 2 planes as shown in Fig.(7). A. Data plane of MAC layer This plane is responsible for the activities which involve low latency such as scheduling, packing, fragmentation, and ARQ etc. These processes are subject to hard real-time deadlines. B. Control plane of MAC layer This plane deals with the activities which typically execute according to timers that are not associated with a specic frame or the frame period and as such do not have stringent deadlines. For instance, Subscriber Station (SS) registration and association with a Base Station (BS), which occurs through the exchange of several messages, results in the creation of several connections and associated state between the SS and BS is dealt at control plane.

The duration of one OFDM symbol is extended to Ts after the guard period insertion which is responsible for a small rate loss. T s = G + T s (12)

A subsequent digital to analog conversion (DAC) provides a continues time wave ready to be transmitted over the channel. e(t) represents the basic waveform used for modulation, h(, t), the multi-path channel impulse response and n represents AWGN of appropriate variance. The received signal at time instant in equivalent low pass domain is, gT,

= HT,

sT,

+ nT,

(13)

where subscript T indicates equivalent low pass domain, HT denotes the channel fading coefcients in equivalent low pass domain and nT corresponds to complex zero-mean Gaussian 2 noise with variance n = N0 /(2 Es ) in both real and imaginary dimension. The receiver essentially does the inverse operation of the transmitter. The sampled output of the interpolation lter at time instant in the equivalent low pass domain can be given by yT, = 1 2
+

gT ( )u T ( )d

(14)

where matched lter u(t) = e(t) h(, t) and g (t) = s(t) H (t) + n(t). The output at time instant say namely x , is given by the following equation,