Building a HetNet with Smarter

Small Cells
China Small Cell Symposium
Oct 2012

Zhihong Lin
Strategic Marketing Manager, Multicore Processors

Texas Instruments

Global mobile network traffic trends

iPhone5

Samsung

HTC

- Mobile Expert Research, 2012

Despite the global gloom, there are better days ahead
for mobile operators, for the first time since we began
tracking LTE in 2008, increased average revenue per
user (ARPU) is among the top LTE upgrade drivers,
along with spectral efficiencies that are driving down the
cost per gigabyte. As a result, operators bottom line
should improve for a change.
-- Stphane Tral Infonetics Research, Aug 2012

In 2016, 4G will be 6 percent of connections, but 36 percent of total traffic. In 2016, a 4G connection
will generate 9 times more traffic on average than a non-4G connection. --- Cisco VNI Mobile, 2012

LTE delivers highest capacity,

data rate and spectral efficiency
for heterogeneous network to
cope with mobile traffic demands

300Mbps LTE
42Mbps HSDPA
384Kbps
Rel99

14Mbps
Rel 6
HSPA

1Gbps LTE-A
168Mbps HSDPA
300Mbps LTE
84Mbps HSDPA

28Mbps

Rel 7
HSPA+

Rel 8
LTE

2000
2005
2007
2008

2009
2011-2012

Small cell overlaid on top of macro cell

can boost network capacity, throughput
--- Adding more LTE capable small cells!

HetNet Challenges
More small cells
= more interference

Macro Cell
Interference

= more cell edge users

Small Cell

= more spectrum availability

= more signaling, management between base
stations
= more base station intelligence for self organization and
optimization

RAN Evolution moving to LTE-A

--Addresses HetNet and small cell challenges
Carrier
Aggregation

High order MIMO

Coordinated multipoint (CoMP)

Enhanced inter-cell
interference
coordination (eICIC)

8x8 DL MIMO
4x4 UL MIMO
Enhanced SU- MUMIMO

Using multiple
eNodeB point joint
TX and/or RX
to/from a single UE

HetNet load
balancing, offload
macro cell traffic into
small cell

Improves peak
spectral efficiency

Improves cell edge

throughput

Improves cell edge

throughput

CoMP Set

Cell Range Expansion(CRE)

(CA)
Up to 5 carriers
and 100MHz BW
Improves peak
data rate
CC1

CC2

10M
Hz

10M
Hz

Scheduler

Hz

Hz

Mux

Non-Contiguous Carrier

1
UE1
8

eNodeB

Scheduler

20Mhz

CW1

UE1 Channel
coding CW2
Data Modulation

UE1
UE2
Data

Mux
CW1
Channel
coding
Modulation

eNodeB

CW2

Precoding

Carrier CC2
10M
separation
10M
CC1

Precoding

Contiguous Carrier

DL SU-MIMO

CRE

UE1

Pico eNodeB

UE connects to macro
eNodeB without CRE and to
pico eNodeB with CRE
UE does not connect
to strongest cell with CRE

Signal

UE2

DL MU-MIMO

Carrier Aggregation

Signal

Macro eNodeB

LTE-A adding HetNet eNodeB complexity

-- Carrier Aggregation

Motivation

Implementation

Complexity

Refarm legacy spectrum into LTE

operation, improve spectral efficiency
Increase network capacity and
throughput as well as interference
mitigation

Up to 5 carriers and 100MHz can be

aggregated into a single virtual carrier
Carrier can be intra-band or inter-band

Independent MAC/PHY layer

processing per carrier
Cross carrier scheduling further adds
complexity

Frequency Band

Carrier Aggregation

LTE-A also introduces small cell complexity

CoMP and eICIC

CoMP

Coordinated multi-point joint

transmission to a single UE
Mitigate inter-cell interference and
improve cell edge throughput

CoMP Set
Signal

Signal

eICIC

Enhanced signaling enable Cell Range

Expansion to offload traffic from macro
cell to small cell
Dynamic network load balancing,
enable more efficient network

Cell Range Expansion(CRE)

CRE

Complexity

Significant complexity in scheduling,

inter eNodeB signaling and cross
management

Pico eNodeB

UE connects to macro
eNodeB without CRE and to
pico eNodeB with CRE
UE does not connect
to strongest cell with CRE

Macro eNodeB

Re-think small cells

--Requires robust SoC architecture to support HetNet complexity

High performance
low power
processing horse
power

Low latency
memory access to
eliminate latency
bottlenecks

Sufficient on chip
throughput for
LTE-A data rates
Small Cell
SoC
Architecture

High level of
integration for
small footprint
and energy
efficiency

Smarter small cell solution

High throughput, low latency,
cost/power efficient , LTE-A
ready small cell SoC to deliver
carrier grade small cell
applications

KeyStone
Small cell
System
on
Chip
TX / RX
Antenna
System Control
O & M/Processing
Transport/Security
Processing
MAC/PHY
Digital Front End

TI Software Investment

Small cell eNodeB

Power Management
Transport
L4, L3, L2

Transport
L2, L3, L4

Baseband
Processing

Baseband
Processing

Digital
Front End

Digital
Front End

Analog
Front end

Analog
Front end

Power
Amplifier

Low Noise
Amplifier

Antennas

Antennas

Downlink
User Equipment

Uplink

Smarter small cell SoC

Multicore Navigator
ARM Cores

+ * +
- << - DSP Cores

ARM shared L2
Large on chip
memory and
Low latency
external
memory access

DSP L2

EMIF

I2C

Power Mgr

SysMon

Debug

EDMA

Layer 1 Acceleration
Radio processing

Digital Radio Front End

DUC/DDC/CFR/DPD

Multicore Shared Memory

Controller
Shared L3
DDR3 L
64/72b

High
throughput
zero copy, low
latency SoC
infrastructure

TeraNet

High
performance
low power
cores for
sufficient small
cell processing

Packet and Security

Acceleration

DDR3 L
64/72b

SPI

UART

Ethernet Switch

USIM

USB 3

CPRI/OBSAI

JESD204B

Ethernet

JESD204B High Speed Serial data converter interface enabling LTE high data rate
9.8Gbps CPRI 5.0 with support LTE-A carrier aggregation
multiport ethernet with build in switch reduce data transfer latency

Multi-RAN
layer 1
acceleration
power and
area efficient

Digital radio
front end,
eliminate extra
FPGA for data
converters
interface, DPD
enables PA
efficiency and
reduces overall
system power

Layer 2, 3,
transport
acceleration, on
chip Ethernet
switch, reduce
BoM and
transport
latency

Conclusion
High end LTE enabled smart devices will continue
to drive the data demands on the mobile
networks

LTE enables higher data rate and continue to

evolve to LTE-A, network deployment need to
upgrade to meet LTE network capacity needs

LTE Small cell overlaid macro can deliver the

capacity, spectral efficiency for data demands, a
smarter LTE small cells solution will need to have
sufficient resources to meet the data rate and
latency required for LTE to deliver the true small
cell user experience

Thank You!