Some questions and answers on LTE Radio Interface - Part1

1. How is the UE getting information that it is scheduled? By reading the PDCCH (this is valid for both UL scheduling grants and DL scheduling assignments). PDCCH contains DCI(DL control information), which indicate 3 different messages:1. Uplink scheduling grants for PUSCH 2. Downlink scheduling assignment for PDSCH 3. TPC command for PUSCH and PUCCH 2. In which node is PDCP located and what are the tasks of that protocol? PDCP is located in the eNodeB and handles encryption of user data streams and reordering at handover. Each radio bearer also uses one PDCP instance. PDCP is responsible for header compression(ROHC Robust Header Compression) and ciphering/deciphering. Obviously header compression makes sense for IP diagram's, but not for signalling. Thus the PDCP entities for signalling radio bearers will usually do ciphering/deciphering only. 3. What is a resource block? A Resource Block (RB) is a time- and frequency resource that occupies 12 subcarriers (12x15 kHz = 180 kHz) and one slot (= 0.5 ms). RBs are allocated in pairs by the scheduler (then referred to as Scheduling Blocks).

4. What are two radio interface solutions that increase the spectrum efficiency ? Higher order modulation:-LTE support all types of modulation schemes like QPSK,16 QAM, 64 QAM that results in high data rate MIMO:- MIMO increase data rate by doubles in 2*2 and 4 folds in 4*4 case. 5. How large is a Resource Block? 12 subcarriers 15 kHz = 180 kHz in frequency domain and one slot (0.5 ms) in time domain 6. What is the smallest unit the scheduler can allocate? What is the

name of that unit? Two consecutive Resource Blocks (RBs) which is called a Scheduling Block (SB). The duration of it is 1 ms and its called TTI.

7. Why is the Cyclic Prefix (CP) needed? In order to reduce the ISI (Inter Symbol Interference) and ICI (Inter Carrier Interference) in time dispersive environments. Insertion of cyclic prefix prior to transmission improves robustness in timedispersive channels and Spectral efficiency loss.The Length of cyclic prefix is 4.7microsec in normal case.The CP is copy of the last part of the symbol in order to preserve the subcarrier orthogonality. This is possible since the FFT is a cyclic operation, but it is required that the time dispersion of the radio channel is shorter than the CP length.

8. List some benefits and drawbacks of OFDM Benefits: flexible bandwidth usage, frequency diversity, robust against time

dispersion, easy to implement Drawbacks: Sensitive to frequency errors, high PAPR, introduces overhead (CP) 9. On which physical channel is the MIB sent? On which channel is the SIBs sent? MIB is sent on PBCH and SIBs on the PDSCH. MIB(Master information block) is static part of SI is transmitted on the BCH, which in turn is carried by PBCH. Its transmission period is 40ms. The MIB contains e.g. number of antennas, system bandwidth, PHICH configuration, transmitted power and scheduling information on how the SIBs are scheduled together with other data on DL-SCH. 10. How can the uplink be orthogonal within a LTE-cell when WCDMA is not? The resources within a cell are never allocated on the same frequency at the same time in UL (in DL when spatial multiplexing is used resources can be allocated simultaneously at the same frequency on different layers).