HARQ FOR WCDMA ENHANCED UPLINK: LINK LEVEL PERFORMANCE IN SHO

Massimo Bertinelli, Esa Malkamki Nokia Research Center, P.O. Box 407, FIN-00045 Nokia Group, Helsinki, Finland, firstname.lastname@nokia.com

Abstract This paper deals with the link performance of the enhanced uplink Dedicated Channel (E-DCH), a new concept currently studied in 3GPP for introduction in the WCDMA/UTRA-FDD standard. A key feature of E-DCH is the physical/MAC layer retransmission, employing soft combining of different versions of the same packet to improve the performance of the link. In order to evaluate the possible gain from this new feature, extensive link-level simulations are needed, which take into account even the effect of the needed side signaling on the overall performance. This paper presents results for some interesting cases, considering in particular the situation of a user in Soft Handover (SHO). Keywords Wideband-CDMA (WCDMA), Enhanced Uplink Dedicated Channel (E-DCH), Hybrid-ARQ (HARQ), Soft Handover (SHO), Outband Information. I. INTRODUCTION The Enhanced-Uplink Dedicated Channel (E-DCH) is a new concept being studied in order to be introduced in future releases of 3GPP WCDMA/UTRA-FDD. The main driver of this study item [1] is to introduce new features in the uplink in order to reduce the packet delay and to increase the user and system throughput. A similar study was done previously in the downlink for UTRA/FDD, where the so called High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) concept was introduced [2,3] in order to benefit from low retransmission delays between Node B and User Equipment (UE). At the link level, one of the main feature is the use of an advanced retransmission strategy based on Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ), which allows to perform possible retransmissions directly at physical/MAC layer, without involving higher layer mechanisms and so reducing the delay. From the uplink point of view, this means that a Node B, when receiving a packet in error, will directly request a retransmission from the UE, without involving the Radio Network Controller (RNC) (as would instead be the case with the current release of WCDMA specs [4]). In this paper, the main focus is on the link performance of HARQ for WCDMA, with a particular attention to the Soft Handover (SHO) case. Section II will introduce the HARQ concept, explaining how it should work in the WCDMA uplink environment. Then, Section III will illustrate the assumptions done for the simulations. In Section IV, the results from the simulation campaign are shown, with a

discussion of the main findings. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section V. II. HARQ CONCEPT FOR WCDMA In a mobile communication environment, link performance is severely limited by the possibly bad quality of the channel. Multipath fading, in particular, can model quite accurately the propagation channel between UEs and Node Bs. Because of the limitations due to fading, powerful error correcting codes and retransmission techniques are needed in order to provide the required quality to the users. WCDMA uses convolutional or turbo codes for the data channel [4,5]. Coupling the error protection capabilities of these codes with possible retransmissions of too corrupted packets can improve significantly the link performance without reducing the capacity of the system. In the current specifications for the uplink, retransmissions, if needed, are done at Radio Link Control (RLC) layer, producing additional delay that could be a problem for some applications (e.g. gaming). In order to reduce the delay and still being able to combat the fading, the physical/MAC layer HARQ technique could be introduced in the uplink WCDMA, as it was done for the downlink with the HSDPA concept [2,3]. In [1] it is proposed to use a dedicated channel (DCH) to implement this enhancement for the uplink, protecting the carried data with turbo code and using a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) code to detect possible residual errors. At the receiving side (Node B, in the uplink), after the iterative decoding stage, the CRC is checked in order to verify if the reception is correct or not. In case of an error, the Node B request a retransmission (signaling a NACK) of the same packet from the transmitting side (UE), and this process is repeated until the packet is correctly decoded or a maximum number of transmissions are reached. When the Node B decodes correctly the data packet, an ACK is signaled to the UE, which is then forced to transmit a new packet. Several parallel Stop-And-Wait (SAW) HARQ processes are used at the physical layer. The number (N) of the processes is selected in order to leave enough time to decode the packet as well as to transmit and process the ACK/NACK signals. In Figure 1 an example is shown, where one SAW process is shown in a situation with N=2.

ACK/NAK Downlink Data 1st Tr.

ACK/NAK

performance of the outband signaling channel is very important for the HARQ in SHO.
3rd Tr.

Uplink

2nd Tr.

III. SIMULATION SETTINGS Figure 1 HARQ operation for one SAW process, N=2 In order to improve the link performance, soft combining of the different versions (retransmissions) of the same packet can be done at the receiver side. Chase Combining (CC) is a well-known possibility [3,6]: at the receiver, before decoding, each retransmission of the same packet is added to a reserved buffer, which will feed the decoder (other elements of the receiving chain, as rate matcher, are considered here as part of the decoder). In this way, different retransmission of the same packet are combined before the (turbo) decoding, with a gain over pure ARQ (where each retransmission is decoded independently and, in case of an error, simply discarded). Additional information is needed by the Node B in order to be able to perform the soft combining: the process number, the block size, the new data indicator and the redundancy version (with Incremental Redundancy (IR) schemes). It is estimated that, according to the design choices done, 3-15 outband information bits are required. The so-called outband information channel, time- or code-multiplexed with the data channel, carries this information. The outband channel needs even better protection than the data itself: an error in the outband information means that the actual data packet has to be discarded and, therefore, the HARQ gain is lost. An undetected error in this side information could cause a wrong combination of different versions of the same packet, with a consequent corruption of the (Node B) soft buffer. This would eventually trigger RLC-level retransmission, with a delay increase that is against one of the main targets of physical/MAC layer HARQ. Error-protection code and CRC are thus needed for this channel. If an error is detected, after the channel decoding, the soft combining of the data is prevented, and a retransmission is requested, avoiding in this way to corrupt the buffer. It is worth noting that the presence of outband information causes a power overhead, regardless of whether it is time-multiplexed or codemultiplexed with the data channel. In WCDMA, it is estimated that 20-40% of the connections could be in SHO [4]: several Node Bs try to decode the data transmitted by the same UE and combine their results in the Radio Network Controller (RNC), with a macro diversity (MD) gain. When HARQ is considered, in SHO it is enough that one Node B receives correctly a packet in order to stop further retransmissions from the UE. In fact, in this case the correct packet will be delivered to the higher layers, whichever the results from the other Node Bs. A retransmission is needed only if all Node Bs ask for it. It is worth noting that, in SHO, the MD combining gain is only for the data channel. Outband information is needed only at Node B level and is not routed to RNC. For this reason, the In order to assess the performance of the HARQ technique introduced in Section II, a time-multiplexed structure, with a 10ms frame duration, has been considered, where E-DCH data and outband information are mapped onto the same physical code channel. For the outband information, 14 bits are considered, while 32kbps, 144kbps and 384kbps are the data rates used for the data channel. The UE transmitting chain is the same as for the current specifications [4,5]: each transport channel (data or outband information), after being protected by a CRC, is encoded and then transmitted over the propagation channel (after other operations, as rate matching). Data channel is turbo coded, while the outband information uses convolutional coding: for both, a rate 1/3 code is used. It is possible to tune the amount of resources (i.e. channel bits) allocated to data and outband information by means of the rate matching operation. Multipath fading is used to model the propagation channel, and the effect of the movement of the UE is taken into account. Two power delay profiles, with an increasing degree of diversity, have been considered: Pedestrian A and Vehicular A [1]. On the receiving side, possibly several Node Bs are modelled, each one with 2 receiving antennas and performing rake processing at the front-end stage. The receiving chain is symmetrical to its transmitting counterpart. In order to ensure the required quality, uplink power control algorithm is modelled. The received Signal over Interference Ratio (SIR) is estimated at each Node B; if it is below a determined threshold, a power up command is issued towards the UE; otherwise a power down command. In SHO mode, the UE will receive power control commands from the several Node Bs: it will increase its transmit power only if all Node Bs need so. The HARQ operations and turbo decoding (8 iterations) are performed for the data channel, while the outband channel undergoes Viterbi decoding. The maximum number of transmissions allowed for a single packet is fixed to 4. Chase combining is used in the simulation. In Table 1, the main simulation parameters used are listed for readers convenience: Table 1 Simulation parameters Parameter Channel model Value Pedestrian A (3km/h) Vehicular A (30km/h) Data rates Outband info. bits 32/144/384kbps 14 or 3

HARQ Node Bs UEs Uplink power control Channel estimation Rx Antennas Receiver front end

Active for E-DCH transmissions) 1 or 2 1

(CC,

Node B is doing the actual data decoding, but the 2 cells are still in SHO from the power control point of view.

ON (+/- 1dB step, 4% error) Realistic (based on DPCCH pilot) 2 Rake

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS In this section, the results of the study are illustrated, showing the main findings. The link throughput has been chosen in order to assess the performance. It has been measured at the receiver side counting the number of frames received and the number of erroneous frames. Defining with Ti the number of received frames at the ith transmission and with Ei the number of frames in error among them, the throughput is given by:

Figure 2 MDC gain in SHO: 144kbps in PedA (3km/h) It is clear how the MDC gives high advantages: the gain shown in Figure 2 ranges from 1 to 4 dB. In Figure 3 the same kind of comparison is done in Vehicular A, with an UE speed of 30km/h.

Throughput = Rb

(T E )
i =1 i i

T
i =1

(1),

where N is the maximum number of transmissions allowed (e.g., N=4) and Rb is the peak data rate. In SHO, the throughput is computed after combining at the RNC the received frames from each Node Bs: selection combining is implemented. For each case considered, the throughput is assessed against the received per antenna Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). In case of SHO, the SNR is measured at one of the Node Bs considered, usually the strongest one. A. MDC gain in SHO In this subsection, the SHO situation is considered in order to evaluate the gain from Macro Diversity Combining (MDC), performed at the RNC. HARQ is active, and CC is performed, with a maximum of 4 transmissions per data packet. Similar results have already been shown in [1,7,8], where only the Pedestrian A channel model was considered. In Figure 2 the throughput obtained with 144kbps in Pedestrian A is shown. A 2-cells scenario is considered, without any power imbalance between them (i.e., the same average path losses). In order to assess the MDC gain, two cases are considered. In the first one, selection combining is performed at the RNC, while in the second one the combining is not enabled: in the latter case, only one of the

Figure 3 MDC gain in SHO: 144kbps in VehA (30km/h) In this case, the MDC gain is more limited than in Pedestrian A case, ranging from 0.5 to 1.5dB. This fact can be explained considering that VehA model includes much more diversity than PedA. The gain due to macro diversity (exploited at the RNC), still present, is therefore more limited than in the previous case. B. Outband influence on HARQ performance In the previous subsection, the results shown were quite ideal, not considering the influence of outband information. In this subsection, this factor is taken into account, and its influence over the link performance is assessed. In Figure 4 it is shown how the performance is influenced by the presence of errors in the outband information, in the case of 144kbps data rate in PedA. Two cases are shown: a single cell configuration and a SHO case with 2 Node Bs without power imbalance.

As can be seen, the gap between the ideal curve and the realistic ones is almost closed by increasing the overhead from 0.099dB to 0.19dB. With higher outband overhead (not shown here), the E-DCH performance improvement stops and the overhead starts to decrease the throughput.

Figure 4 Performance losses due to outband error, 144kbps in PedA (3km/h) In case of an error detected on the outband channel, the EDCH packet is discarded and a retransmission requested, lowering consequently the throughput. The degradation is particularly heavy for low SNR, where almost 2dB are lost in the single cell case and around 1.5dB in the SHO case. In order to improve the overall performance, the outband channel itself needs better performance. This can be obtained with higher power for the outband channel, which means a higher power overhead. In a time multiplexed structure as the one used for these simulations, this can be done using the rate matcher in order to tune the channel resources, increasing the number of channel bits reserved to the outband information. A trade-off is needed, because the more channel bits are reserved to the outband information, the less are left for the transmission of the E-DCH data. In Figure 5 and Figure 6 it is shown how it is possible to improve the overall performance by increasing the outband power overhead, for the case of 144kbps peak data rate in Pedestrian A, in a single cell and in a SHO (2 cells) scenarios, respectively. In both cases, the comparison is done with the performance obtained with pure ARQ: in that case, no soft combining is done, so no outband information is required. As a reference, an ideal CC curve is shown, referring to a case with low outband overhead (0.099dB) and no outband errors.

Figure 6 Different power overhead for outband: 144kbps, PedA, SHO From the results above, it is clear that the HARQ concept can introduce performance benefits compared to pure ARQ, especially at low received SNRs and with a properly chosen outband overhead. The same kind of comparison is done for 384kbps (Figure 7) and 32kbs (Figure 8), for Pedestrian A channel model and SHO (2 cells). From Figure 7 it is easy to see how the same considerations done for 144kbps are still valid. In this case the outband power overhead is smaller (more channel resources available for E-DCH data bits), and the gap with the ideal curve is easily closed.

Figure 7 Different power overhead for outband: 384kbps, PedA, SHO The situation is quite different for 32kbps. With such a low data rate (reasonable in SHO, where it is more difficult to guarantee higher data rates) the power overhead due to outband information is quite heavy. It is still possible to find a trade-off in order to improve the link performance, but the gain over pure ARQ (if any) is very limited.

Figure 5 Different power overhead for outband: 144kbps, PedA, single cell

received SNR (and then increased capacity for the system). Besides, it has to be noticed that operating the link with the higher data rate would imply more complexity and resources needed (memory requirements for the buffers, higher speed circuitry). V. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, the link performance of E-DCH has been assessed by means of computer simulations. In particular, the HARQ concept for WCDMA uplink has been tested in different scenarios, considering various data rates and propagation conditions, and with a special attention to the SHO case. The MDC gain in SHO has been assessed both in PedA and in VehA, showing how it can be beneficial, while using HARQ for WCDMA. The outband information, needed in order to perform soft combining, has been taken into account while evaluating the link performance, and it has been shown how outband errors influence it. A way to improve the overall performance by means of fine-tuning the channel resources between data and outband information has been examined and different cases have been tested, looking for a convenient trade-off. Finally, it has been shown how the use of HARQ cannot guarantee high margin of gain over pure ARQ for low data rate services: its use is much more convenient for higher data rates (e.g. 144/384kbps or even higher). Figure 9 Throughput comparison 144kbps Vs 384kbps, PedA, SHO
[1]

Figure 8 Different power overhead for outband: 32kbps, PedA, SHO In Figure 9 it is shown a comparison of the throughput obtained with 144kbps and 384kbps in SHO, in a Pedestrian A channel model.

REFERENCES Feasibility study for enhanced uplink for UTRA FDD, 3GPP TR 25.896, v.1.3.0, February 2004. T. E. Koelding, K. I. Pederson, J. Wigard. F. Frederiksen and P. E. Mogersen, High-speed downlink Packet Access: WCDMA evolution, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society News, pp. 4-10, February 2003. Frederiksen and T. E. Koelding, Performance and modeling of WCDMA/HSDPA Transmission/H-ARQ schemes, in Proceedings of Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC), Vancouver, Canada, pp. 472-476, September 2002. H. Holma and A. Toskala, WCDMA for UMTS, 3rd edition, Wiley, 2002. Multiplexing and channel coding (FDD), 3GPP TS 25.212, v.5.7.0, December 2003. D. Chase, Code Combining - A maximum-Likelihood decoding approach for combining an arbitrary number of noisy packets, IEEE Trans. On Comm., vol. XXXIII, pp. 385-393, May 1985 Samsung, HARQ performance in SHO, 3GPP R1030898, August 2003 Nokia, Uplink E-DCH performance in SHO, simulation results, 3GPP R1-031027, October 2003

The comparison is done to show that there are different options in order to obtain the same target throughput. In the example of Figure 9, the same 135kbps target data rate is obtained with 144kbps peak data rate and 1st transmission BLER of 10%, or with 384kbps and 1st transmission BLER of around 90% (in Figure 10 the 1st tr. BLER curves, measures at the RNC, are shown.)

[2]

[3]

[4] [5] [6]

[7]

Figure 10 BLER comparison, 144kbps Vs 384kbos, PedA

[8]

It is clear from Figure 9 that the best choice, in the example considered, is using 144kbps, with a resulting lower