1.

Tell us about LTE Frame Structure?

Configuration
Frame Length
Subframes per Frame
Subframe Length (ms)
Slots per Subframe
Symbols/Slot, normal CP
Symbols/Slot, extended CP

2.

(FDD)Frame
Type 1
10 ms
10
1
2
7
6

(TDD) Frame
Type 2
10 ms
10
1
2
7
6

What are the Bandwidths used for LTE deployment?

1.4MHz, 3MHz, 5MHz, 10MHz, 15MHz, 20MHz,

3.

How Many subcarriers/RBs are there in 5/10/20 MHz channel

Channel Bandwidth, MHz

1.4

10

15

20

Subcarriers per Resource Block

12

12

12

12

12

12

15

25

50

75

100

128

256

512

1024

1536

2048

72

180

300

600

900

1200

Number of Resource Blocks

Total subcarriers
Occupied Subcarriers

4.

What is Subcarrier Bandwidth in LTE?

15KHz

5.

How can we calculate LTE DL/UL throughput?

Lets assume channel bandwidth = 20MHz
One radio sub frame have
=14 OFDMA symbol
Subcarriers
= 1200
Modulation Scheme 64 QAM
=6bits
So throughput
=1200*14*6
//
=100800 bits
//
=100800/1ms
//
=100.8Mbs
So with 4X4 Mimo
=108*4
Throughput
=403
25% overhead
=403*.75
=302Mbs
6.
What Maximum LTE throughput can be achieved in the field?
I have seen upto 70Mbps on TDD network with 20 MHz bandwidth channel.

7.

How many states a UE can have ?

UE can either be on Connected or on Idle state at a time

8.

What is difference between Idle & Connected Mode

RRC Connected, when it has a RRC connection with a given eNB
RRC IDLE when it has no valid RRC link with any eNB.

9.

Message flow during LTE Call?

10.

What is RRC Reconfiguration?

11. RRC CONNECTION RECONFIGURATION message is the command to modify an RRC connection.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

The

purpose of this procedure is,

To establish/modify/release Radio Bearers
To perform Handover
To setup/modify/release Measurements
To add/modify/release SCells
Dedicated NAS Information might also be transferred from eNodeB to UE

17.

What is difference between HO , Redirection, Cell Selection / Re-Selection?

X2 handover from one site to another site
S1 handover is redirection because MME change
In idle mode change of cell is called cell reslection
Cell slection to slect suitable cell

18.
19.

Can you tell us about Prach/PCI/Pusch/Pucch Planning?

What is Difference between MIB and SIB?
MIB stands for Master Information Block it is transmitted on BCCH channel while sib transmited on sch
channel because the message contain in SIB is large message
There are two parts in SI static part and dynamic part. Static part is called as MIB and is transmitted
using BCH and carried by PBCH once every 40ms. MIB carries useful information which includes
channel bandwidth, PHICH configuration details; transmit power, no. of antennas and SIB scheduling
information transmitted along with other information on the DL-SCH.

20.
21.

Handover types in LTE

What is difference between X2 and S1 HO?
X2 HO occurs when source and target eNBs are served within the same MME pool
When 2 eNB are not connected with x2 interface then there will be S1 interface based handover

22.
23.

Explain Handover signaling messages?

Explain Events measurements in LTE
A1 Serving becomes better than threshold
A2 Serving becomes worse than threshold
A3 Neighbour becomes offset better than PCell
A4 Neighbour becomes better than threshold
A5 PCell becomes worse than threshold1 and neighbour
becomes better than threshold2
A6 Neighbour becomes offset better than SCell
B1 Inter RAT neighbour becomes better than threshold

B2 PCell becomes worse than threshold1 and inter RAT

neighbour becomes better than threshold2

24.

Which event trigger during the reselection from LTE to 3G and vice versa
B2 event, 2d,2f

25.

What is ANR?
In the general ANR procedure, the eNB instructs the LTE terminal to take quality
measurements of neighboring cells on a periodic basison the same frequency, for
instance (Fig. 3). While doing so, the device may detect a PCI that is not listed in the
neighbor list. When sending the measurement report to the network, the device uses the cell
identity to indicate the cell it is reporting, including the newly detected cell with a PCI of 27.

After receiving the measurement report, the eNB instructs the terminal to report the ECGI,
while reading the BCCH channel info of that cell. In the next step, the UE reports the
example ECGI of 46, which the eNB will use to update its neighbor relation table (NRT).
This table contains for each cell the neighbor relation (NR), determined by the target cell
identifier (TCI), which comprises ECGI and PCI.
For each TCI, three attributes will be set: no remove, no handover, and no X2. The first
stipulates that the eNB shall not remove this cell from the NRT. The second stipulates that
no handover shall be initiated to this cell, whereas attribute three excludes the
establishment of the logical X2 interface to this identified cell and its serving eNB. The
operation and maintenance (OAM) center controls the listed attributes. It is the only
authority that can delete entries from the NRT.
As indicated earlier, ANR enables intra-frequency and inter-frequency neighbor cell
detection for LTE. For the latter, the network needs to inform the device about which
frequencies to measure. It also requires the scheduling of measurement gaps, which enables
the terminal to retune its receiver to the instructed frequencies and take the required signal
quality measurements.
Feature group indicators (FGIs) indicate ANR support. The FGI for LTE as of 3GPP Release
8 is a 32-bit map, where each bit indicates the devices support of a specific feature. This
bitmap is submitted to the network during the initial registration and attach procedure as
part of the UE capability transfer.

26.

What are the types of ANR? Which one is better?

Below are two types
i)
UE based ANR

ii)
iii)
ii) ANR with OAM Support

UE based ANR

No OAM support is required.

UE detects PCI of unknown cell when it needs to do measurement (as configured by

network)

In case of inter-frequency or inter-RAT measurements, eNB needs to configure

measurement gaps/or DRX so UE can detect PCI to different frequencies as well.

UE reports the unknown PCI to eNB via RRC-Reconfiguration message.

eNB request UE to report Eutran Cell Global ID (ECGI).

UE reports ECGI by reading BCCH channel.

eNB retrieves the IP address from MME to further setup the x2 interface.

ANR with OAM Support

OAM support is required

Every new eNB registers to OAM and download the table with information of PCI/ECGI/IP
related to neighbors

Neighbors also update their own table with new eNB information

Now like "UE based ANR", UE will detect unknown PCI and report it to the eNB

eNB doesn't request for ECGI and does not need support from MME

eNB setups x2 interface with the help of mapping table created in second step above

27.

What is QCI?
LTE provides different QoS for a given application by putting it into the different bearer .each bearer has its own QCI
(QoS Class Identifier) which introduce a particular service for a particular application. as far as I know 9 different
QCIs have been defined in LTE based on priority,packet loss and delay

28.

What is LTE modulation?AMC?

OFDMA and SC-FDMA
OFDMA
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) is a form of transmission that uses a large number of close spaced
carriers that are modulated with low rate data. Normally these signals would be expected to interfere with each other,
but by making the signals orthogonal to each other there is no mutual interference. The data to be transmitted is split
across all the carriers to give resilience against selective fading from multi-path effects.

SC-FDMA
For Uplink single carrier frequency division multiple access technique is used

AMC adaptive modulation coding scehme

In the current generation of satellite networks, modulation and coding schemes can be dynamically changed in realtime to face different link conditions. Therefore, the link budget is not anymore required to be computed under the
worst case, with relevant advantages in terms of efficiency

29.

What is MIMO?
In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO(pronounced as "my-moh" or "me-moh"), is a
method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmit and receive antennas to
exploit multipath propagation

30.

What is TM? TM1? TM2? TM3? TM4?

TM stands for transmission mode
In LTE, usually they use multiple Antenna for downlink (at least from Category 3 UE and
higher), meaning that eNode (Network) has use multiple Tx Antenna and UE use multiple Rx
antenna.
Now you almost automatically think about 'MIMO', but in reality 'multiple antenna' does not
automatically mean 'MIMO'. For example, you have two downlink antenna. You can use
these two antenna in various ways. Of course, one ways is to use it as 2 x 2 MIMO, but this
is not the only way. You can use the two antenna in diversity configuration rather than
MIMO configuration. Or you can just use only one of the antenna and sometimes you would
like to use various different multiplexing, precoding methods etc.

In LTE, they give a special name for each of the way of transmission and it is called
'Transmission Mode'. For example, what we normally call 'SISO' (Single Transmission
Antenna and Single Reciever Antenna) is called 'TM1(Transmission Mode 1)'. What we
normally call 'Diversity' is called 'TM2'. What we call 'MIMO' but no feedback from UE is
called 'TM3'. MIMO and UE feedback from UE (CQI, PMI, RI) is called 'TM4'.

A good summary of each Transmission Mode can be as following table from 36.213.

31.

What is close loop MIMO?

Closed loop MIMO relies on CSI[Channel State Information] feedback to design beamforming and
precoding. Processing time and frame structure is directly proportional to the delay and overhead.
Open loop MIMO rely on CQI and RI for the modulation and coding rate.PMI is not reported when
compared to closed loop.
Just adding to what others have said, Open Loop MIMO is represented by Transmission Mode 3 (TM3)
and Closed loop by TM4 ..
Think of Openloop MIMO as your entry-level poor man's Mimo.. Before TM3, the other transmission
modes - TM1 and TM2 are not even Mimo. TM1 is single antenna transmission (SISO) and TM2 is
Transmit Diversity (Well, two antenna transmission but the same information is transmitted by the two
antennas)..
With TM3, we enter the MIMO space but we keep things simple by not incorporating any PMI feedback
mechanism. TM4 makes it more efficient but complicated by adding the feedback.
From a practical point of view, it is quite common to have the default eNodeB settings configured with
TM4.
You can see the TM mode used in the below log snippet (from rrcconnectionsetup message or
rrcconnectionreconfig)

32.

Mapping of MIB and SIB messages?

the MIB is mapped to BCCH logical channel and then carried on BCH, while all other types of SI messages
are mapped on the BCCH and then dynamically carried on DL-SCH where they can be identified through the
SI-RNTI (SystemInformationRNTI).
Both the MIB and SIB1 use a fixed schedule with a periodicity of 40ms and 80 ms respectively while the
scheduling of other SI messages is flexible and indicated through SIB1. The eNB may schedule DL-SCH
transmissions concerning logical channels other than BCCH in the same subframe as used for BCCH. The
minimum UEcapability restricts the BCCH mapped to DL-SCH e.g.regarding the maximum rate.

33.
34.

Explain SIB messages?

What is purpose of SIB19?

As specified in the 3GPP standard, the system information block

type 19 contains Inter-RAT frequency and priority information to be
used in the cell. The test set support SIB 19 by the following
parameters:
35.
36.

What Message will be observed on layer-3 during handover stage?

Which channel carries CQI information to enod?
37. CQI (Channel Quality Indication) report is an important element of LTE and has significant impact on the
system performance. There are two types of CQI report in LTE: periodic and aperiodic. The periodic CQI
report is carried by PUCCH. But if the UE needs to send UL data in the same subframe as the scheduled
periodic CQI report, the periodic CQI report will use the PUSCH, together with UL data transmission. This is
because a UE can't transmit on both PUCCH and PUSCH simultaneously. In this case, the periodic PUCCH
resource will be idle. Since periodic CQI report brings in the "always on" signaling overhead, the report
granularity is relatively rough. In order to get more detail CQI report, the eNB can trigger aperiodic CQI
report when needed. The aperiodic CQI report is transmitted on PUSCH, together with UL data or alone.
38. The granularity of CQI report can be divided into three levels: wideband, UE selected subband, and higher
layer configured subband. The wideband report provides one CQI value for the entire downlink system
bandwidth. The UE selected subband CQI report divides the system bandwidth into multiple subbands,
selects a set of preferred subbands (the best M subbands), then reports one CQI value for the wideband
and one differential CQI value for the set (assume transmission only over the selected M subbands). The
higher layer configured subband report provides the highest granularity. It divides the entire system
bandwidth into multiple subbands, then reports one wideband CQI value and multiple differential CQI values,
one for each subband.
39. If closed loop MIMO is used, PMI (Precoding Matrix Indicator) and RI (Rank Indication) are also reported.
PMI indicates the codebook (pre-agreed parameters) the eNB should use for data transmission over multiple
antennas based on the evaluation of received reference signal. RI indicates the number of transmission
layers that the UE can distinguish. Spatial multiplexing can be supported only when RI>1. For spatial
multiplexing, CQI is reported based on per codeword. The maximum number of codeword in LTE is two.
40. There are seven transmission modes in LTE, each one is corresponding to certain multiple antenna
techniques. For each transmission mode, certain combination of CQI report is defined in the specs, based
on periodic/aperiodic, wideband/UE selected subband/higher layer configured subband, No PMI/single
PMI/multiple PMI. Since RI changes slower than CQI/PMI, it is reported with a longer interval on periodic
report. It is reported together with CQI/PMI on aperiodic report since the resource on PUSCH is less limited.

41.

What other info PUCCH carries?

This LTE channel is used to carry UCI(Uplink Control Information). UCI can also be transported
using PUSCH channel. An LTE UE can never transmits both PUCCH and PUSCH during the
same subframe.
If UE has application data OR RRC signalling then UCI is carried over PUSCH
If UE does not have any application data OR RRC signalling then UCI is carried over PUCCH

This is a stand-alone uplink physical channel. This PUCCH control signaling channel
comprises following:

42.
43.

HARQ ACK/NACK
CQI-channel quality indicators
MIMO feedback - RI(Rank Indicator),PMI(Precoding Matrix Indicator)
scheduling requests for uplink transmission
BPSK or QPSK used for PUCCH modulation
What is UE disconnection Timer?
What is DRX?

Even while there is no traffic between the network and UE, UE has to keep listening to
Network. At least it should be ready to decode PDCCH. It means UE has to be "ON" all
the time even when there is no traffic. But being ON all the time would drain the battery.
You may ask "Then why don't UE shut down (getting into a sleep mode) when there is
no traffic ?". Sounds good, but what if Network tries to send some data to UE while the
UE is in the sleep mode ?
Then what would be the ideal solution for this ?what is the ideal solution to save battery
consumption and still does not lose chance of receiving the data that Network sent to
UE ?
One of the solution for this is let UE get into sleeping mode for a certain period of time
and wake up again checking if there is any data coming from the network and getting
into sleeping mode again if there is no data and wake up again... repeating this cycles.
This kind of periodic repetition of "sleep mode and wake up mode" is called DRX
(Discontinuous Reception".
Does it sound simple ? It may..but in reality implementing DRX may not be as simple as
you may expected because there should be well designed synchronization between UE
and Network. In worst case, Network tries to send some data while UE is in sleep mode
and UE tries to wake up when there is no data to be received. To prevent this kind of

worst case scenario, UE and Network has a well defined agreement about when UE
has to be in sleep mode and when UE has to wake up. This agreement is defined in
3GPP TS36.321 Section 5.7 for connected mode, and TS36.304
Section 7.1 for idle mode.

44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.

What is the Location of PUCCH in the UL Spectrum?

CS Fall back criteria and event?
Explain CSFallbacksignalling?
What basic parameters are required from Planning to configure a site?
Explain PCI (Physical Cell id) Planning?
How do you deal with Interference issues during PCI planning

50.
51.
52.

How do we do optimization of site?

What are the Features available to improve accessibility, retainability?
What is BLER? Whats Target value?
The Block Error Rate (BLER) is a measure of how successful a data transmission is over the air at the
Physical/MAC layer level. If a transport block is successful decoded (the CRC calculated by the receiver
matches the CRC sent in the block, then the transmission is successful. The target BLER for the radio link is
typically set to 10% (meaning that the transmission must be sent in such a way as to achieve a 90%
success rate on average).
If the transmission fails, then the receiver indicates this with a HARQ NAK (negative acknowledgement); the
sender can then send additional information (e.g. error correction bits) to help the receiver decode the
original transmission (a so-called HARQ retransmission). The receiver combines the new bits with the
original bits, and tries to decode the block again; if successful, the transmission is complete, if not, another
HARQ retransmission can provide more help. Generally speaking, HARQ will try 3 times to get the block
through (original + 2 retransmissions), after which the transmission is considered to have failed.

53.

How to investigate low throughput?

We need to check BlER, CQI reporting parameter, low demand, Scheduler
limitations, Downlink interference, MIMO parameter, VSWR, backhaul. Etc

54.
55.

What major KPIs have you been analyzing most?

Paging message are transmitted on which channel
Paging information for the UE is being carried on the PDSCH in the resource blocks indicated
by the PDCCH. Paging indication on the PDCCH is single fixed indicator (FFFE) called the
Paging RNTI (P-RNTI). Different group of UEs monitor different sub frames for their paging
messages

56.

What is beamforming
Beamforming or spatial filtering is a signal processingtechnique used in sensor arrays for
directional signal transmission or reception.[1] This is achieved by combining elements in a phased

array in such a way that signals at particular angles experience constructive interference while
others experience destructive interference. Beamforming can be used at both the transmitting and
receiving ends in order to achieve spatial selectivity.
Heterogeneous

57.

RRC CONNECTION RE-ESTABLISHMENT

Upon
Upon
Upon
Upon
Upon

detecting radio link failure; or

handover failure; or
mobility from E-UTRA failure; or
integrity check failure indication from lower layers; or
an RRC CONNECTION RECONFIGURATION failure

granularity

2nd phase

What are LTE Interfaces?

What are LTE Network elements?
What are LTE protocols & specifications?
What is VoLGA?
What is CS Fallback in LTE?
How does LTE Security works?
What is IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)?
How does measurements work in LTE?
What is Automatic Neighbour Relation?
How does Intra E-UTRAN Handover is performed?
How does policy control and charging works in LTE?
What is SON & how does it work in LTE?
How does Network Sharing works in LTE?
How does Timing Advance (TA) works in LTE?
How does LTE UE positioning works in E-UTRAN?
How many operators have committed for LTE?
What is Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC)?
How does Location Service (LCS) work in LTE network?
How does Lawful Interception works in LTE Evolved Packet System?
What is carrier aggregation in LTE-Advanced?
What is Relay Node and how does Relaying works in LTE-Advanced?

3rd
What is LTE?
2. What's the difference between 2G, 3G & LTE?
3. What's the benefit of LTE?
4. What's technology applied in LTE? (Both in UL and DL).
5. What is LTE Architecture?

The high-level network architecture of LTE is comprised of following three main components:

The User Equipment (UE).

The Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN).

The Evolved Packet Core (EPC).

The evolved packet core communicates with packet data networks in the outside world such as the
internet, private corporate networks or the IP multimedia subsystem. The interfaces between the
different parts of the system are denoted Uu, S1 and SGi as shown below:

6. What is the EUTRAN?

The architecture of evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) has been
illustrated below.

The E-UTRAN handles the radio communications between the mobile and the evolved packet core
and just has one component, the evolved base stations, called eNodeB or eNB. Each eNB is a
base station that controls the mobiles in one or more cells. The base station that is communicating
with a mobile is known as its serving eNB.
LTE Mobile communicates with just one base station and one cell at a time and there are following
two main functions supported by eNB:

The eBN sends and receives radio transmissions to all the mobiles using the analogue and
digital signal processing functions of the LTE air interface.

The eNB controls the low-level operation of all its mobiles, by sending them signalling
messages such as handover commands.

Each eBN connects with the EPC by means of the S1 interface and it can also be connected to
nearby base stations by the X2 interface, which is mainly used for signalling and packet forwarding
during handover.
A home eNB (HeNB) is a base station that has been purchased by a user to provide femtocell
coverage within the home. A home eNB belongs to a closed subscriber group (CSG) and can only
be accessed by mobiles with a USIM that also belongs to the closed subscriber group.

7. What is LTE Network Interface?

8. What is LTE Network Element?
eNB, MME, SGW, PGW
9. What's the maximum Throughput we can achieve from LTE?
100Mbps DL

50Mbps UL

10. In the market, which type/category of UE is available now?

11. Do you have any experience in LTE dimensioning/planning and Drive-testing?
12. What is main frequency band for LTE?
13. In coverage planning, what are the most influence factors?
14. In 3G, RSCP and Ec/Io are used to determine in coverage planning. How's about in LTE? And why?
15. What are the range of SINR, RSRP, RSRQ, MCS and CQI values?
16. What is the typical cell range of LTE?
17. How do you understand RB and how does RB impact on Throughput?
18. What is the typical value of latency?
19. Do we still need Scraming code planning in LTE? If not, why?
20. Please explain me about eNodeB, MME and core network layout.
21. For capacity planning, do we still need Channel element (CE) dimensioning? If not, why?
22. Have you experience in Atoll and Momentun?
23. Have you experience in XCAL and Agilent NiXT?
24. Please explain me about QoS and Scheduling in LTE?
25. Pls. explain me about MIMO, SIMO and TxDiV configuration?
26. How's about those configuration and expected throughput?
27. What are the types of HO? If so, pls. explain me a bit of best cell HO and coverage HO?
28. What is ANR in LTE?
29. What is SON and how does work in LTE?
30. How does Timing advance(TA) works in LTE?