Master Thesis

Performance Gain Analysis for 3G Long
Term Evolution Networks

Analiza pojemnoci i pokrycia dla sieci 3G
Long Term Evolution

AUTHOR:
Piotr Godziewski

WROCLAW UNIVERSITY
OF TECHNOLOGY
FACULTY OF ELECTRONICS

FIELD: Telecommunication and Computer Science
SPECIALISATION: IT Network Designing

MASTER THESIS

PROMOTOR:
dr in. Maciej Nawrocki, I-28

ADVISOR:
dr in. Maciej Nawrocki, I-28

NOTE:

WROCAW 2008

i
Contents
Abbreviations.......................................................................................................................................................... ii
List of figures.......................................................................................................................................................... v
List of tables........................................................................................................................................................... vi
1 Introduction..................................................................................................................................................... 7
2 Requirements for the evolved UTRA.............................................................................................................. 9
2.1 Coverage issue.........................................................................................................................................10
2.2 Requirement for co-existence with other technologies............................................................................11
3 Physical layer .................................................................................................................................................12
3.1 Radio frame structure ..............................................................................................................................13
3.2 Channel bandwidth ..................................................................................................................................15
3.3 OFDMA-based downlink ........................................................................................................................15
3.4 SC-FDMA based uplink ..........................................................................................................................19
4 Data and control information .........................................................................................................................24
4.1 Downlink .................................................................................................................................................24
4.1.1 Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) .............................................................................25
4.1.2 Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH) .................................................................26
4.1.3 Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) .............................................................................................26
4.1.4 Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH) .......................................................................27
4.1.5 Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH) .............................................................................................27
4.1.6 Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH)...............................................................................28
4.1.7 Reference signal .............................................................................................................................28
4.2 Uplink......................................................................................................................................................35
4.2.1 Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) ..................................................................................35
4.2.2 Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) ...................................................................................36
4.2.3 Random Access Channel (RACH) .................................................................................................37
4.2.4 Reference signal .............................................................................................................................38
5 Physical layer improvements .........................................................................................................................39
5.1 Link Adaptation.......................................................................................................................................39
5.1.1 Power Control ................................................................................................................................40
5.1.2 Adaptive Modulation and Coding..................................................................................................43
5.2 Interference Coordination........................................................................................................................43
5.2.1 Intra-cell interference .....................................................................................................................44
5.2.2 Inter-cell interference .....................................................................................................................45
5.2.3 Inter-symbol interference ...............................................................................................................47
6 Performance gain analysis..............................................................................................................................51
6.1 Dimensioning proposal ............................................................................................................................52
6.1.1 Transmitting end modelling ...........................................................................................................52
6.1.2 Receiving end modelling................................................................................................................53
6.1.3 Capacity limitations .......................................................................................................................54
6.1.4 Maximum allowable pathloss calculation ......................................................................................60
6.1.5 Coverage reliability........................................................................................................................62
6.1.6 Cell range and site count ................................................................................................................64
6.2 LTE Dimensioning Tool ..........................................................................................................................65
6.3 E-UTRA coverage capabilities ................................................................................................................67
6.4 E-UTRA capacity capabilities .................................................................................................................71
7 Conclusions....................................................................................................................................................79
8 References......................................................................................................................................................83
Appendix 1 LTE Dimensioning Tool system requirements................................................................................85
Appendix 2 LTE Dimensioning Tool GUI description.......................................................................................86
Appendix 3 LTE Dimensioning Tool guide........................................................................................................90

ii
Abbreviations
3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project
ACK Acknowledgment
AMC Adaptive Modulation and Coding
ARQ Automatic Repeat Request
AWGN Addititive White Gaussian Noise
BLER Block Error Rate
BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying
BS Base Station
CCE Control Channel Element
CCTrCH Coded Composite Transport Channel
CDF Cumulative Distribution Function
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
CM Cubic Metric
CP Cyclic Prefix
CPICH Common Pilot Channel
CQI Channel Quality Indicator
CS Circuit Switching
DFT Discrete Fourier Transform
DL-SCH Downlink Shared Channel
DVB-H Digital Vide Broadcasting for Handsets
EDGE Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
EIRP Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power
EPRE Energy Per Resource Element
E-UTRA Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
E-UTRAN Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network
FDD Frequency Division Duplex
FDMA Frequency Division Multiplex Access
FDPS Frequency Domain Packet Scheduler
FFS For Further Study
FFT Fast Fourier Transform
FPC Fast Power Control
FTP File Transfer Protocol
GERAN GSM Radio Access Network

iii
GSM Global System for Mobile communications
HARQ Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request
HICIM Hybrid Inter Cell Interference Mitigation
HSDPA High Speed Downlink Packet Access
HSPA High Speed Data Access
HSUPA High Speed Uplink Packet Access
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
IM Interference Margin
IP Internet Protocol
LA Link Adaptation
LNF Log Normal Fading
LOS Line Of Sight
LTE Long Term Evolution
MAPL Maximum Allowable Path Loss
MBMS Multicast Broadcast Multimedia Services
MBSFN Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network
MCS Modulation and Coding Scheme
MHA Masthead Amplifier
MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output
MOP Maximum Output Power
NACK Negative Acknowledgment
NLOS None Line Of Sight
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
PAPR Peak to Average Power Ratio
PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel
PC Power Control
PCFICH Physical Control Format Indicator Channel
PCH Paging Channel
PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel
PDF Probability Distribution Function
PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel
PDU Protocol Data Unit
PHICH Physical HAQR Indicator Channel
PMCH Physical Multicast Control Channel

iv
PS Packet Switching
PSK Phase Shift Keying
PUCCH Physical Uplink Control Channel
PUSCH Physical Uplink Shared Channel
QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
QoS Quality of Service
QPSK Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
RA Random Access
RACH Random Access Channel
RAT Radio Access Technology
RNTI Radio Network Temporary Identifier
RR Round Robin
RRC Radio Resource Controller
RS Reference Signal
SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access
SE Spectral Efficiency
SFM Slow Fading Margin
SFN Single Frequency Network
SIMO Single Input Multiple Output
SINR Signal to Interference Noise Ratio
SIR Signal to Interference Ratio
SISO Single Input Single Output
SPC Slow Power Control
SR Scheduling Request
TDD Time Division Duplex
TTI Time Transmission Interval
UE User Equipment
UTRA Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
UTRAN Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network
VoIP Voice Over Internet Protocol
WCDMA Wideband Code Division Multiple Access

v
List of figures
Figure 3.1 Radio frame structure in FDD mode.....................................................................................................13
Figure 3.2 Radio frame structure in TDD mode (5 ms switch-point periodicity) ..................................................14
Figure 3.3 Downlink resource grid [5]...................................................................................................................17
Figure 3.4 Cubic Metric for various transmission scheme combinations [9].........................................................20
Figure 3.5 SC-FDMA transmission model ............................................................................................................21
Figure 3.6 Distributed and localized frequency mapping for SC-FDMA..............................................................21
Figure 3.7 Uplink timeslot structure ......................................................................................................................22
Figure 3.8 Uplink resource grid [5]........................................................................................................................23
Figure 4.1 Resource element groups configuration for one (a) and more cell-specific reference signals (b) ........24
Figure 4.2 Cell-specific reference signal allocation in case of one antenna port (a), two antenna ports (b) and
four antenna ports (c) with normal CP...................................................................................................................31
Figure 4.3 Cell-specific reference signal in case of one antenna port (a), two antenna ports (b) and four antenna
ports (c) with extended CP.....................................................................................................................................32
Figure 4.4 MBSFN-specific reference signal (extended CP and 15 kHz spacing).................................................33
Figure 4.5 MBSFN -specific reference signal (extended CP and 7.5 kHz spacing)...............................................34
Figure 4.6 UE-specific reference signal (normal CP) ............................................................................................35
Figure 4.7 UE-specific reference signal (normal CP) ............................................................................................36
Figure 4.8 Time synchronization for uplink transmission [12] ..............................................................................37
Figure 4.9 Random Access burst ...........................................................................................................................37
Figure 5.1 Multipath effect in the urban environment (a) and the frequency-selective channel response (b) [6] ..39
Figure 5.2 3G ramping technique [12] ...................................................................................................................41
Figure 5.3 Inter Cell Interference affecting the cell-edge users .............................................................................45
Figure 5.4 HICIM concept .....................................................................................................................................46
Figure 5.5 OFDM frequency-time grid..................................................................................................................48
Figure 5.6 No ISI in the Line Of Sight case...........................................................................................................48
Figure 5.7 ISI in the multipath environment case ..................................................................................................49
Figure 5.8 Cyclic Prefix hardware implementation ...............................................................................................49
Figure 5.9 ISI mitigation in the multipath environment case.................................................................................49
Figure 6.1 General planning methodology.............................................................................................................51
Figure 6.2 BLER curves for AWGN channel ........................................................................................................55
Figure 6.3 Dependence between the interference margin and cell load.................................................................62
Figure 6.4 Cell range evaluation for different service types ..................................................................................68
Figure 6.5 Cell range evaluation for different clutter types and carrier frequencies (Scenario 2 64 kbps) .........69
Figure 6.6 Cell range evaluation for different channel bandwidths (15 users x 12.2 kbps) ...................................69
Figure 6.7 Cell range evaluation for different channel bandwidths (15 users x 512 kbps) ....................................70
Figure 6.8 Symbol constellations for QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM [6] ......................................................................71
Figure 6.9 Peak data rate achieved by the various modulation and coding schemes .............................................73
Figure 6.10 LTE spectral efficiency based on theoretical peak data rates and Shannon capacity bounds .............76
Figure 6.11 Downlink cell load (each user demands 1 Mbps effective throughput)..............................................77
Figure 6.12 Uplink cell load (each user demands 1 Mbps effective throughput)...................................................78
Figure A3.1 LTE Dimensioning Tool top panel ....................................................................................................90
Figure A3.2 LTE Dimensioning Tool layout .........................................................................................................91
Figure A3.3 LTE Dimensioning Tool simple wizard. Input data...........................................................................92
Figure A3.4 LTE Dimensioning Tool simple wizard. Output data........................................................................93

vi
List of tables
Table 2.1 Requirements for the evolved UTRA [2] ................................................................................................ 9
Table 2.2 Transmission concepts for evolved UTRA............................................................................................10
Table 3.1 Transmission concepts for evolved UTRA............................................................................................12
Table 3.2 E-UTRA accessible frequency bands.....................................................................................................13
Table 3.3 Downlink air interface parameters .........................................................................................................16
Table 3.4 Sampling rate vs. FFT size.....................................................................................................................16
Table 3.5 Time structures lengths ..........................................................................................................................17
Table 3.6 Downlink resource block limitations .....................................................................................................18
Table 3.7 Downlink resource blocks configuration ...............................................................................................18
Table 3.8 Uplink air interface parameters..............................................................................................................22
Table 3.9 Uplink resource block limitations ..........................................................................................................23
Table 4.1 Number of CCEs per PDCCH................................................................................................................26
Table 4.2 Maximum number of OFDM symbols for PDCCH...............................................................................26
Table 4.3 Maximum number of OFDM symbols for PHICH................................................................................27
Table 4.4 PUCCH formats .....................................................................................................................................35
Table 4.5 Timeslot occupation by the reference signal for PUCCH demodulation ...............................................38
Table 6.1 UE MOP Classes....................................................................................................................................52
Table 6.2 Downlink system overhead....................................................................................................................57
Table 6.3 Uplink system overhead.........................................................................................................................58
Table 6.4 Modulation efficiency............................................................................................................................59
Table 6.5 Coverage reliability specific parameters ................................................................................................64
Table 6.6 Cell area, site area and site-to-site distance formulas for different sectorization configurations for
hexagonal network layout ......................................................................................................................................65
Table 6.7 Scenarios configuration for the cell range evaluation ............................................................................67
Table 6.8 Peak data rates [Mbps] achieved by the various modulation and coding schemes ................................72
Table 6.9 The spectral efficiency based on the peak data rates without the overhead consideration.....................74
Table 6.10 The best fit parameters for LTE-specific Shannon formula.................................................................75
Table A2.1 Fields description ................................................................................................................................86
Table A3.1 Chart generation feature......................................................................................................................93

Piotr Godziewski Performance Gain Analysis for 3G Long Term Evolution Networks

7
1 Introduction
The following masters thesis raises an issue of a new cellular network concept which
concerns the evolution process of 3
rd
Generation (3G) solutions which are WCDMA
(Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access)
and HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). The thesis is about Long Term Evolution,
sometimes called Evolved UTRA (Universal Terrestrial Radio Access) or Evolved UTRAN
(Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network). Such a matter has been chosen because of the
authors interest in mobile communication aspects and the current employers request.
The main purpose is to consider the performance improvement as a coverage and
capacity capabilities of the new system. The essential expectations formulated by 3GPP
(Third Generation Partnership Project) are shortly presented in Chapter 2 in which the main
requirements for LTE (Long Term Evolution) are highlighted compared to the previous 3G
releases. The most important literature researchs results are described in Chapters 3 and 4
where the evolved air interface and new physical channel structures are introduced. Although
the problems introduced in Chapter 5 relate directly to the physical layer, they have been put
in the separate section because of the huge impact on the general network performance and a
little bit different level of complexity.
The detailed description of physical layer aspects is made in order to provide the
principles for the performance estimation. According to the fact that considerations will focus
on both coverage and capacity issues it has been decided to prepare the dimensioning
methodology related to the initial planning phase. Therefore all the elements of link budget as
well as capacity analysis must be taken into account. Whereas Chapter 3 and 5 stay crucial in
the case of link budget consideration, Chapter 4 is the basis of capacity evaluation. Obviously,
there are connections between these two domains. The detailed explanation of the created
dimensioning proposal, including algorithms, formulas and parameters description can be
found in Chapter 6.1.
The thesis subject requires an efficient manner of performance evaluation. The
mentioned methodology remains useless until there is no computer implementation. That is
why additional software has to become a part of this thesis. Such a planning tool would be
created based on the authors dimensioning proposal in order to use it for the performance
gain analysis. It is also supposed the tool will support some elements of this process in an
automated manner by the dynamic charts generation. The most important characteristics such
as cell range vs. bandwidth, cell range vs. clutter type or load vs. number of users should help
the beginners to start their own study on E-UTRA (Evolved UTRA) performance without the

8
expert knowledge about cellular network dimensioning and LTE physical layer. Besides, the
software needs to comply such features because they can be used for showing the eventual
performance gain of the evolved technology. On the other hand, the planning tool is to
perform the entire site count and provide the required network configuration that is number of
cells, number of sites and site-to-site distance with respect to outdoor and/or indoor
environment.
The performance evaluation relies on the tools output and additional calculations in
some cases. The coverage and capacity aspects are separated in Chapters 6.2 and 6.4. The
considerations focus on the influence of the new physical layer on achievable cell range, cell
throughput and number of served users. It seems the most interesting issues should be the
scalable bandwidth, adaptive modulation and OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing).
The final remarks and future research proposal can be found in Chapter Bd! Nie mona
odnale rda odwoania..

9
2 Requirements for the evolved UTRA
The Long Term Evolution is used as a term for the specific Study Item accomplished by
3GPP. The exact name of the mentioned project has been agreed as Evolved UTRA and
UTRAN [1]. This name pinpoints at the aspect of taking 3G technologies beyond the current
state of deployment and making them to be more evolved. The perspective of the necessary
changes regards next several years, [2] concerns even over 10 years. According to this fact,
the expected gain of deploying a new technology must significantly exceed the performance
given by UTRAN techniques including HSDPA and HSUPA. The meaning of performance is
widely defined because of refereeing not only to the end-user quality (such as throughput and
packet latency), coverage and capacity but also to cost reduction issues which stay very
important for the market operators and vendors.
The most crucial change in comparison to 2G/3G networks is the CS (Circuit Switched)
domain exclusion from any further consideration affecting the evolved UTRAN. All services
both typically packet-based (e.g. HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol, FTP - File Transfer
Protocol) and voice connections will be supported by the PS (Packet Switched) domain with
the assumption that the quality of VoIP (Voice over IP) connections will be at least as good as
the voice traffic realized by UTRAN CS domain.
The possible advantage of LTE over todays cellular networks should be mainly visible
as increased quality in services provisioning to the end-users. The related objectives are
shown below in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1 Requirements for the evolved UTRA [2]
Parameter Target values
Peak data rate per cell
100 Mbps in DL
50 Mbps in UL
Spectrum efficiency
3-4 x Release 6 HSDPA in DL**
2-3 x Release 6 HSUPA in UL*/***
U-plane latency <10 ms
C-plane latency <100 ms
Bandwidth 1.25-20 MHz
5%-ile CDF (Cumulative Distribution
Function) user throughput
2-3 x Release 6 HSDPA in DL
2-3 x Release 6 HSUPA in UL*
Averaged user throughput
3-4 x Release 6 HSDPA in DL*
2-3 x Release 6 HSUPA in UL*
Mobility 0-350 (500) km/h
*E-UTRA working with 1TX-2RX (watch for the different meaning in case of DL and UL)
**E-UTRA working with 2TX-2RX
***Release 6 working with 1TX-2RX

10
It must be noticed that, according to the scalable bandwidth size, the values of
100/50 Mbps respectively for DL and UL are relevant for the widest 20 MHz bandwidth and
multiple antenna schemes applying two receive antennas and one transmit antennas at an UE
(User Equipment) (2RX/1TX).
As for the terminal speed, the whole network concept should be optimized for the range
of 0-15 km/h but should also support 15-200 km/h. However services providing for mobiles
moving with the velocity even up to 350 or 500 km/h should be possible (the upper speed
bound depends on the frequency used).
Apart from the bandwidth scalability and the multiple antennas concept several new
solutions such as different transmission scheme and controlling information optimization have
been introduced. All of these changes and proposals are studied in details in Chapters 3 and 4.
2.1 Coverage issue
From the system operators point of view the coverage aspect is one of the most important
elements determining if any technology remains cost-effective. It must be noted that the
cellular networks kept in many varied scenarios need to offer a wide range of deployment
possibilities from small indoor or outdoor picocells to macrocells covering large rural areas.
Thus the coverage capability should be increased in comparison to the old technologies.
Table 2.2 shows the impact of three different cell deployment scenarios on the
requirements described in Table 2.1.
Table 2.2 Transmission concepts for evolved UTRA
Cell range target
Requirement
<5 km <30 km <100 km
User throughput Met completely Slight degradation Best possible
Spectral efficiency Met completely High degradation Best possible
Mobility Met completely Met completely Best possible

As it can be seen in Table 2.2 a cell range up to 100 km is to be supported to fulfill all the
requirements according to the user throughput. The spectral efficiency and supported mobility
must be defined for the two cases (<5 and <30 km). This fact can lead to the conclusion that
E-UTRA design targets on the deployment scenarios with a cell range not exceeding 30 km.

11
2.2 Requirement for co-existence with other technologies
In spite of the fact that neither hardware nor band protection nor interworking aspects are
the subject matter of this thesis a few words should be said about these issues. From the point
of cost optimization the direction of UTRAN evolution should not lead to leave the current
infrastructure and spectrum plans completely useless. Generally speaking co-existence and/or
co-location with GERAN (Global System for Mobile communications Radio Access
Network) and/or UTRAN in the same geographical area should be fully supported. Moreover
3GPP RAT-interworking (Radio Access Technology interworking) including handover
from and to GERAN/UTRAN with the set interruption times and the necessity of the
additional inter-technologies measurements has already been agreed. More details on how co-
existence should look like can be found in [2].

12
3 Physical layer
Several transmission concepts have been proposed in downlink and uplink according to
[3]. All the considered ideas are shortly introduced in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Transmission concepts for evolved UTRA
Duplex method
Transmission direction Radio access method
FDD TDD
OFDMA (Orthogonal
Frequency Division
Multiple Access)
Yes Optional
MC-WCDMA
(Multicarrier Carrier
Wideband Code Division
Multiple Access)
Yes No
Downlink
MC-TD-WCDMA
(Multicarrier Carrier Time
Division Wideband Code
Division Multiple Access)
No Yes
SC-FDMA (Single
Carrier Frequency
Yes Optional
OFDMA Yes Optional
MC-WCDMA Yes No
Uplink
MC-TD-SCDMA
(Multicarrier Carrier Time
Division Spatial Code
No Yes

It has to be mentioned that final OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access) proposal has been chosen for the downlink and SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency
Division Multiple Access) for the uplink. There are also two different frame structures
defined because of supporting FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division
Duplex) duplex modes.
Quite important assumption of 3GPP standardization bodies is making the evolved
system very flexible through the possibility of operations in the various frequency bands
including currently occupied 3G spectrum. Based on [4] the initial frequency bands for LTE
system deployment are shown in Table 3.2. Three ranges are marked out what means that they
will establish the initial target deployment bands.

13
Table 3.2 E-UTRA accessible frequency bands
Duplex mode Popular name Frequency range
IMT Core 1920-1980 / 2110-2170
PCS 1900 1850-1910 / 1930-1990
GSM 1800 1710-1785 / 1805-1880
AWS (United States) 1710-1755 / 2110-2155
850 (United States) 824-849 / 869-894
850 (Japan) 830-840 / 875-885
IMT Extension 2500-2570 / 2620-2690
GSM 900 880-915 / 925-960
1700 (Japan) 1750-1785 / 1845-1880
FDD
3G Americas 1710-1770 / 2110-2170
TDD 1900 1900-1920
TDD 2.0 2010-2025
PCS Centre Gap (1915)1910-1930
TDD
IMT Extension Centre Gap 2570-2620

3.1 Radio frame structure
The whole E-UTRA radio interface transmission is performed using radio frames, each
10 ms long. Supporting both duplex tactics has forced the adaptation of two different radio
frame types, called Type1 and Type2 respectively for Frequency and Time Division Duplex
[5]. Every radio frame, aside from the chosen duplex mode, is divided into constant number
of subframes and consists 10 of them in the case of FDD and TDD.

Radio frame in FDD mode

Figure 3.1 Radio frame structure in FDD mode
If a single subframe is considered than another time unit appears, called timeslot. A
timeslot is exactly the half of one subframe. 20 timeslots each 0.5 ms long are numbered in
the range of 0-19 within a radio frame and two subsequent units determines subframe.

14

Radio frame in TDD mode

Figure 3.2 Radio frame structure in TDD mode (5 ms switch-point periodicity)
Time division duplex causes the necessity of supporting downlink and uplink
transmission directions in every single radio frame. In the case of 3GPP LTE air interface
10 ms radio frame is divided into two half-frames each of 5 ms long. Five subframes
determine every single half-frame. Therefore the number of subframes is the same for FDD
and TDD scenarios. They are numbered from zero to nine and the part of them has been
strictly assigned to some tasks. Two alternative approaches actually exist as a consequence of
two switching-point periodicity possibilities (5 ms and 10 ms).

Time Transmission Interval (TTI)

Minimum TTI is as long as a single timeslot (0.5 ms). On the other hand, various TTI
durations can be set in a semi-static or dynamic way [3]. The first solution assumes forcing
TTI by the signaling information from the higher layers. It would allow to allocate more than
one timeslot during TTI in order to keep QoS (Quality of Service) requirements. Different
scenario is in the case of completely dynamic TTI duration, for which it can be changed for
both initial transmission and retransmissions as well.
One of the potentially advantages of applying dynamic TTI would be decreasing of the
signaling overhead. The packet data latency is also quite important issue and it is strictly
connected with the degree of segmentation. Dynamic TTI implementation is capable of
preventing too large IP (Internet Protocol) packet segmentation and making latency
performance better.
The responsibility of determining TTI length is on the side of a Node B, but it is still the
assumption.

15
3.2 Channel bandwidth
Before any details about the downlink transmission scheme, it must be remarked that
many different channel bandwidth sizes are supported, compared to WCDMA and
GSM (Global System for Mobile communications)/EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM
Evolution) systems where the only available channel bandwidths are respectively 5 MHz and
200 kHz. Contrary, LTE can use 1.25, 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz channels. Increasing the
channel size will obviously cause improving the achieved system capacity. On the other hand
the wider transmission spectrum the more complexity of the radio equipment, because of
higher sampling rates, which directly influence on a hardware signal processing [6].
Unfortunately this is not the only disturbing issue. If the transmission using the wide
bandwidth is taken into consideration, one may expect the time dispersion problem. The
mentioned effect appears as a frequency selectivity channel. It is clearly that every multipath-
propagated signal is damaged in some way by the frequency selectivity but there are some
well-checked methods against that. One of them is the receiver side equalization [7] which
has already been implemented in the hardware operating in WCDMA systems. Although such
a technique gives a great opportunity for improving the signal quality in the time dispersion
environment, the quite rational equipment complexity is preserved only up to 5 MHz, whereas
one of the main requirements for E-UTRA air interface is to operate with the wider bandwidth
sizes much more than 5 MHz. This crucial assumption goes to the necessity of designing
some specific transmission scheme for the evolved network concept. The result of coming up
against such problems is choosing two kinds of FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access)
which are OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) in downlink and
SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access) in uplink.
3.3 OFDMA-based downlink
Radio access technique which is admitted to be the appropriate one in downlink in the
case of E-UTRA is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access. 3GPP standardization
body did not introduce any crucial changes in already well known OFDMA scheme [3]. By
looking on the fundamental radio parameters in Table 3.3 it is easy to see that the self-evident
property is a high level of the radio link flexibility.

16
Table 3.3 Downlink air interface parameters
Channel bandwidth 1.25 MHz 2.5 MHz 5 MHz 10 MHz 15 MHz 20 MHz
FFT size 128 256 512 1024 1536 2048
Number of occupied
subcarriers
76 151 301 601 901 1201
Sampling frequency 1.92 MHz 3.84 MHz 7.68 MHz 15.36 MHz 23.04 MHz 30.72 MHz
Subcarrier spacing 15 kHz

As it was mentioned before the channel bandwidth is scalable. Through the differential
FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) size which directly impacts on the frequency division process
and the number of sub-carriers, it is possible to obtain a constant value of 15 kHz of the
spacing between subcarriers among all the operating modes. Equation (3.1) shows a direct
dependence between a sampling rate f
sampling
and FFT size N.

N
f
f
sampling
= (3.1)

Table 3.4 contains very simple calculation according to the above relation.
Table 3.4 Sampling rate vs. FFT size
Subcarrier
spacing
[Hz]
FFT size Sampling frequency
[Hz]
Sampling period
[s]
128 1920000 0.520833
256 3840000 0.260417
512 7680000 0.130208
1024 15360000 0.065104
1536 23040000 0.043403
15000
2048 30720000 0.032552

The highest sampling frequency corresponds to the smallest time period of the
elementary signal representation part in the time-domain which is noted in [5] as the smallest
time-domain unit T
u
. Multiplying this value by an additional factor leads to obtain lengths of
many time structures, the examples of which are listed in Table 3.5.

17
Table 3.5 Time structures lengths
Time structure
name
Size
Radio frame 10 ms = 307200 x T
u

Timeslot 0.5 ms = 15360 x T
u

Half-frame (TDD) 5 ms = 153600 x T
u

Before going into particulars about how exactly the information bits are handled by the
LTE radio downlink some additional technical terms need to be introduced. Moreover, there
is a necessity of adapting a specific signal representation in the frequency and time domain
simultaneously. It is done by so-called resource grid [5]. Figure 3.3 relates to the signal
structure in the case of a single downlink timeslot with respect to the frequency and time
domain.

DL
symb
N
slot
T
0 = l 1
DL
symb
= N l
R
B
s
c
D
L
R
B
N
N
R
B
s
c
N
RB
sc
DL
symb
N N
) , ( l k

Figure 3.3 Downlink resource grid [5]
Consecutive columns express the successive time moments while the rows refer to the
exact parts of the frequency domain. The system deals with following OFDM symbols (sets

18
of sub-carriers carrying modulated and coded bits). The elementary and undivided part of
such a graphical representation is a resource element and it is determined by two indexes:
k sub-carrier sequential number among the system spectrum,
l OFDM sequential number among the timeslot.
In the case of multi-antenna configuration a single antenna port has exactly one resource
grid representation assigned and the differentiation is done through the reference signal which
is circumstantiated further in Chapter 4.1.7. Hence the resource element is fully defined by the
complex value a
k,l
(p)
with p stands for the antenna port number.
The group of sub-carriers forms a resource block which covers all the consecutive
symbols in the time domain among the timeslot. Generally speaking, the set of resource
elements belonged to the different OFDM symbols determine a resource block. Every
resource block must be same-sized in both the time and frequency domain.
The resource block duration (limited by the timeslot length) and the available spectrum
which can be assigned to it are listed in Table 3.6.
Table 3.6 Downlink resource block limitations
Domain
Number
of OFDM symbols
Number
of sub-carriers
Frequency N/A
12,
24 (extended CP and 7.5 kHz
spacing)
Time
7 (normal CP),
6 (extended CP),
3 (extended CP and 7.5 kHz
spacing)
N/A

One can see that 12 consecutive sub-carriers correspond to 180 kHz spectrum. According
to the scalable channel bandwidth the number of resource blocks can be different for the
various channel scenarios however it must fulfill the condition (3.2).

100 6
DL
RB
N (3.2)

The particular values of available resource blocks within the chosen channel bandwidth
DL
RB
N are shown in Table 3.7 [8].
Table 3.7 Downlink resource blocks configuration
Number of resource
blocks
6 12 25 50 75 100


19
Although [8] does not consider 1.25 and 2.5 MHz channel sizes the necessary resource
block configurations has been easily obtained based on the number of occupied subcarriers
N
occupied_subcarriers
(see Table 3.3) using formula (3.3).

)
12
(
_ DL
RB
s subcarrier occupied
N
RoundUp N = (3.3)

The specification [5] also mentions about the virtual blocks and two types of them which
are localized and distributed.
The matter of mapping these structures into the physical resource blocks in the case of
localized ones is quite simple, because of the following relation 3.4, which shows the direct
mapping between virtual and physical resource blocks, where n
PRB
and n
VRB
stand for the
indexes of physical and virtual blocks respectively.

VRB PRB
n n = (3.4)

The second type of mapping gives the possibility to apply different mapping style within
timeslots of the same radio frame. Thus the general relation function can be expressed as
follows (equation 3.5) where n
s
stands for the timeslot index related to the radio frame.

) , (
s VRB PRB
n n f n = (3.5)

The particular timeslot number determines the way of mapping process. Other words, the
most important property is that the consecutive virtual blocks do not refer to the consecutive
physical resource blocks. Hence better frequency diversity may be achieved and the user can
be assigned to the best-quality parts of the channel.
3.4 SC-FDMA based uplink
FDMA concept has been proposed in uplink transmission [3] however it consists in a
specific kind of Frequency Division Multiple Access, called Single Carrier FDMA also
known as DFT-SOFDM (Discrete Fourier Transform Spread OFDM).
SC-FDMA adaptation involves very important advantages for mobile hardware
realization. The comparison between the common OFDMA and the mentioned Single Carrier
approach can be achieved based on the Cubic Metric (CM) results [9]. The use of Cubic
Metric instead of PAPR (Peak to Average Power Ratio) has been suggested in [10]. The

20
mathematical representation of PAPR and CM is based on the normalized signal power CDF
(Cumulative Distribution Function). However, whereas the peak power has a great impact on
PAPR, Cubic Metric depends on the whole distribution. It additionally models amplifier non-
linearity and its influence on the adjacent channel leakage ratio. Generally speaking, Cubic
Metric does not consider the highest power values, which are characterized by very low
probability. Small CM values cause the small requirement for the amplifier power back-off
which directly impacts on the mobile hardware complexity. Figure 3.4 shows SC-FDMA
getting the better of OFDMA due to the ability of saving signal power variations at a small
and quite constant level. The difference between BPSK (Binary Phase Shift Keying) SC-
FDMA and OFDMA curves comes up to 4 dB. Thus the SC-FDMA-based devices will be
more power-efficient, therefore the link budget consideration should prove a better
performance.

Figure 3.4 Cubic Metric for various transmission scheme combinations [9]

21

Figure 3.5 SC-FDMA transmission model
The essential information of SC-FDMA transmission scheme is depicted in Figure 3.5.
Contrary to the conventional OFDM transmission this approach is characterized by the
additional DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) module. The number of parallel streams
produced by the DFT pre-coder is determined by its size M however it does not correspond
with the total uplink spectrum FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)/IFFT (Inverse FFT) size N since
the DFT output is passed through the frequency mapping module. Hence the mapping
procedure finally determines the position of the DFT output bits within the available uplink
bandwidth. If the consecutive DFT output streams are placed at the consecutive FFT sub-
carriers then it is a localized mapping mode. Zero sub-carriers separating the DFT outputs
lead to distributed mapping (see Figure 3.6).

Figure 3.6 Distributed and localized frequency mapping for SC-FDMA

22
The output block after IFFT and CP insertion includes the user bits located at the given
channel part.
The basic radio parameters (see Table 3.8) are quite similar to these introduced in
Chapter 3.3 in order to save as much as possible common settings in downlink and uplink
simultaneously. Therefore both schemes need to adopt a scalable FFT size implementation to
provide constant value of the sub-carrier spacing (common for UL and DL). However there is
a possibility that in the case of SC-FDMA uplink direction the system will need to handle two
types of DFT blocks which are Short and Long Blocks (SB and LB). The time localization of
these structures inside a 0.5 ms timeslot is the issue of Figure 3.7 [3].
Table 3.8 Uplink air interface parameters
LB 128 256 512 1024 1536 2048
FFT size
SB 64 128 256 512 768 1024
LB 75 150 300 600 900 1200
Number of occupied
subcarriers
SB 38 75 150 300 450 600
Sub-carrier spacing 15 kHz

Figure 3.7 Uplink timeslot structure
Every symbol is preceded by the Cyclic Prefix (CP) and the Short Block length is exactly
a half of the long one which gives 33.33 s. The purpose of two shorter blocks among the rest
has been marked in [3] as sending the reference signal for coherent demodulation. On the
other hand, such a representation can be replaced with the time-frequency grid which is
already known from DL. One should note that a single resource block can be occupied only
by one user and which one it will be is determined through mapping the DFT output into the
physical sub-carriers. After adopting UL nomenclature such a grid could be defined as in
Figure 3.8.

23

UL
symb
N
slot
T
0 = l 1
UL
symb
= N l
R
B
s
c
U
L
R
B
N
N
R
B
s
c
N
RB
sc
UL
symb
N N
) , ( l k
0 = k
1
RB
sc
UL
RB
= N N k

Figure 3.8 Uplink resource grid [5]
Since the uplink transmission also consists of the resource blocks containing resource
elements the appropriate constraints are shown in Table 3.9. Generally speaking they are the
same as for downlink however there is no 7.5 kHz sub-carrier spacing considered. The
number of resource blocks for the given system bandwidth can be obtained from Table 3.7.
Table 3.9 Uplink resource block limitations
Domain
Number
of SC-FDMA symbols
Number
of sub-carriers
Frequency N/A 12
Time
7 (normal CP),
6 (extended CP)
N/A


24
4 Data and control information
The physical resources offered by any network are always limited. They depend on many
different system-specific parameters. The most important one is the channel bandwidth size
which informs about the available frequency spectrum. The chosen radio access method as
well as any other physical layer features have also a great impact on the effective use of
resources. However, one should notice that, apart from the user traffic, the system needs to
perform signalling. Since the controlling information has to be exchanged using air interface
it will reduce the sets of resources that can be assigned to user traffic. That is why the
following chapter contains the detailed description about mapping between the resource
elements and physical channels defined by 3GPP standardization body.
4.1 Downlink
For proper understanding of the controlling information mapping onto the physical
resources the term of resource element groups should be explained [5].
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s
Resource-element group
Timeslot 1
l=0 l=1 l=2 l=3 l=4 l=5 l=6 l=0 l=1 l=2 l=3 l=4 l=5 l=6
Timeslot 1
(a) (b)
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s

Figure 4.1 Resource element groups configuration for one (a) and more cell-specific reference signals (b)
A resource-element group is composed by the resource elements which are located in a
single resource block within a particular OFDM symbol. This restriction makes the notation
quite easy because the l index, which defines the symbol number within a timeslot, remains
the same for all elements belonged to the specific group. There is no possibility of
multiplexing data and control information in the same OFDM symbol thus the symbols
assigned to the resource-element groups establish a kind of controlling region. It has been

25
limited to the first three symbols per a subframe. Furthermore the configuration of them (the
resource-element group number per resource block) depends on the cell-specific reference
signal number and is depicted in Figure 4.1. Cell-specific reference signal aspect is introduced
in details in Chapter 4.1.7.1, however it refers directly to the number of antenna ports in use.
The exact purposes of each control channels are described in the next few sections.
Generally speaking, the controlling region is used to carry ACK (Acknowledgment)/NACK
(Negative Acknowledgment) messages due to the uplink transmission, the uplink scheduling
grants and a downlink assignment information.
4.1.1 Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH)
The purpose of this channel is to establish a control link in direction from a Node B to an UE
and allowing a base station to send the essential information for regular system operation. In
the chapter dedicated to the Power Control issue (see Chapter 5.1.1), PDCCH is indirectly
mentioned while the aspect of the Random Access (RA) procedure appears, because it is the
channel responsible for delivering the radio resource assignment information to an UE (so-
called uplink scheduling grant). The precise allocation in DL-SCH (Downlink Shared
Channel) and HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request) information related to it are also
carried on PDCCH. The Long Term Evolution network will support multiple control channels
within a subframe and for that reason it is needed to distinguish them by different sets of
RNTIs (Radio Network Temporary Identifiers). Each UE is obliged to watch for a certain set
of PDCCHs. Mapping onto the resource elements differs a little bit from the other physical
channels, because of a specific method of creating control channels. Each one is a kind of
Control Channel Elements (CCEs) aggregation. While the modulation for all CCEs is QPSK
(Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) only, the possibility of differently rated PDCCHs is assured
by changing the coding rates for the various CCEs. The important fact is that the aggregation
can be applied only to the consecutive channel elements. They are numbered from zero and
upwards and contain the resource elements situated on the first three OFDM symbols in a
subframe (see Table 4.2). This constraint determines the maximum number of symbols
dedicated for PDCCH as three per subframe (two timeslots). Table 4.1 shows the number of
occupied CCEs in the case of the given PDCCH format [5]. The number of assigned bits has
not been defined yet in the standard.

26
Table 4.1 Number of CCEs per PDCCH
PDCCH format Number of CCEs Number of PDCCH bits
0 1 FFS
1 2 FFS
2 4 FFS
3 8 FFS

Table 4.2 Maximum number of OFDM symbols for PDCCH
Subframe
Number
of OFDM symbols for
PDCCH per subframe
1
st
and 6
th
subframe in case of Type 2 1, 2
MBSFN (Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network)
subframe on a carrier supporting PMCH (Physical Multicast
Control Channel) and PDSCH (Physical Downlink Shared
Channel)
1, 2
MBSFN subframe on a carrier not supporting PDSCH 0
All other subframes 1, 2, 3

4.1.2 Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH)
The presence of this channel is strictly connected with PDCCH. As was mentioned before
the number of OFDMA symbols dedicated for the PDCCH transmission can vary from 0 to 3
per a subframe. It is necessary to clearly signal this parameter for an UE and this is the target
for PCFICH.
Modulation applied to this channel is the same as for PDCCH (QPSK) but obviously the
consumed resources are much less. The whole information is mapped onto the resource-
element groups located in the first OFDM symbol in a subframe [5].
4.1.3 Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH)
Physical Broadcast Channel occupies a part of every four consecutive radio frames. Four
radio frames give the time range of 40 ms (10 ms per each one) and it should be noticed that
this delay is not signaled in any explicit way [11].
After the modulation process (QPSK possible only) and mapping the described channel is
allowed to occupy the resource elements in the first timeslot of the first subframe in every
radio frame. The elements dedicated for the cell-specific reference signals cannot be assigned
to any physical channel, so the highest antenna configuration should be assumed in the case of
physical resources reservation (up to four antenna ports of the Node Bs transceiver).

27
1920 bits (normal CP) or 1728 bits (extended CP) of PBCH could be sent within one
subframe.
4.1.4 Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH)
The PHICH object is to carry the ACK/NACK messages related to Hybrid ARQ
mechanism implemented in LTE.
The system supports multiple PHICHs. In spite of the clear similarity to PDCCHs every
single PHICH is differentiated by the following parameters pair (n
group
, n
seq
), in which n
group

denotes the number of PHICH groups while n
seq
is the number of orthogonal generating
sequences within the given group. It is a consequentiality of the many PHICHs aggregation
among the same resource elements. The channels mapped to the same elements constitutes a
group, in which various orthogonal sequences have been applied to the different PHICHs. The
modulation is always BPSK.
The duration of PHICH is determined by the higher layers and it influences on the
controlling region size defined by PCFICH (the current number of OFDM symbols used by
PDCCH). Therefore the PHICH requirement is the lower limit of the mentioned controlling
region size. The upper bounds will be defined through the rest of controlling data. Such an
approach leads to the following summarize shown in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3 Maximum number of OFDM symbols for PHICH
Subframe
Number
of OFDM symbols for
Normal PHICH per
subframe
Number
of OFDM symbols for
Extended PHICH per
subframe
1
st
and 6
th
subframe in case of type 2 1 2
MBSFN subframe on a carrier supporting PMCH and
PDSCH
1 2
All other subframes 1 3

4.1.5 Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH)
The current state of study on E-UTRA clearly indicates that the issue of MBMS
(Multicast Broadcast Multimedia Services) will be analyzed in details and the mechanism
related to the physical layer should be designed in order to support such a transmission
technique in the future. The most crucial movement following this long term trend is defining
Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH). The system should be able to behave like a Single
Frequency Network (SFN) with all of its advantages, first of all it is about boosting the
coverage performance and giving the possibility of serving multicast or/and broadcast
services among mobiles.

28
Mapping between the sets of resource elements and the complex-valued modulated
symbols of PMCH is the same as for PDSCH. However there are some additional constraints
defined for the layer mapping and pre-coding. The fourth antenna port is only available for
PMCH.
The particular case concerns a subframe on a carrier with the PMCH and PDSCH mixture
support. In this situation the resource elements occupied by PMCH and PDSCH are inside the
same subframe. Moreover only up to two first OFDM symbols per subframe can be fully
reserved for PDSCH transmission and MBSFN can not be assigned to them. If the mixture
carrier is considered than PMCH is not allowed to be allocate in subframes 0 or 5.
4.1.6 Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH)
This physical channel carries two transport channels which are DL-SCH (Downlink
Shared Channel) and PCH (Paging Channel). Generally speaking it is the head medium for
transmitting user data from a Node B to UEs.
The PDSCH allocation is strictly connected with the link adaptation mechanism and the
set of virtual blocks assigned to an UE. The next constraint applies to the fact that none of
elements already occupied by PDCCH, PCFICH, PHICH, PBCH or the reference signal can
be used. The choice of the resource elements dedicated for PDSCH starts with the first
timeslot of a subframe in increasing order of first the index k and then the index l. The
document [5] defines the allowable antenna port numbers which are as follows:
{0, 4, 5} for a single antenna port,
{0, 1}, {0, 1, 2, 3} respectively for two and four antenna ports.
Whilst the UE-specific reference signal is present, PDSCH can be transmitted using {0},
{0, 1} or {0, 1, 2, 3} antenna ports. In any different case PDSCH is mapped to {5}.
PDSCH data can be modulated with QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM transmission schemes.
4.1.7 Reference signal
The appropriate signal demodulation on the UEs side depends on the channel estimation
preciseness. The more accurate it is the more efficient demodulation is done which leads to
improve the information reception. The mechanism used for the mentioned purpose can be
realized by sending a kind of pilot signal in downlink. Predefined structure of such a
transmission would allow a receiver to compare the expected signal content with the one
received in the reality. LTE standard defines so-called downlink reference signal, which
should fulfill all the requirements in order to facilitate the instantaneous channel quality
estimation. The coherent demodulation is not the only incriminatory fact to implement the

29
described solution. The knowledge about the temporary channel quality is also needed for the
channel-dependent scheduling procedures which make the decisions about users multiplexing
based on the quality in the particular places of the time-frequency resource elements grid.
Because of the decision core, which is located in a Node B, the necessary information must be
passed from a terminal to a base station. The format of such CQI (Channel Quality Indicator)
reports is strictly determined and prepared based on the downlink reference signal
measurements. The equivalent targets among the WCDMA networks are accomplished thanks
to Common Pilot Channel (CPICH) used simultaneously by all UEs. Although adopting the
reference signal is not the only possible solution to generate CQI, the alternatives have not
been approved to be any better. It would involve some additional mechanism for a blind
channel estimation which goes to predict the future channel quality and report it to a base
station, however it could cause greater hardware complicatedly and it suppose to be worse
than the reference signal approach in the case of fast moving terminals (the information sent
to a Node B might not be up-to-date because of higher quality changes frequency than CQI
reports reception rate).
The estimation for the purpose of the coherent demodulation and CQI reporting should be
done based on the reference signal extraction from the resource elements within a single
resource block. It is acceptable to use neighbouring blocks or even those which are located in
the previous timeslots. On the hand there is an obviously constraint for TDD scenarios, since
the previous timeslot may have not been assigned to downlink transmission. For the time
being it is still under consideration [6].
Now, if the two essential objectives of the reference signal are well known, it is time to
focus on the technical realization. It has been said in the previous section that the reference
signal is transmitted with allowance for a predefined structure. The way to accomplish this
assumption is related with the cell identification method. There are 170 cell identity groups
defined in the system. Each group is achieved through 170 two-dimensional pseudo-random
sequences and each one of them contains three different cell identities put into effect by three
two-dimensional orthogonal sequences. Hence the reference signal shall be seen as a symbol-
by-symbol product of these two sequences. The great advantage of such a solution is the
chance of decreasing the interference between the signals coming from the cells belonged to
the same base station by assigning one particular cell identity group to one Node B and
distinguishing through the use of different orthogonal sequences which should obviously
reduce the inter cell interference [6]. There are three reference signal types.

30
4.1.7.1 Cell-specific reference signal
It is defined only for the network configuration with 15 kHz spacing between sub-carriers
and must be placed in all subframes used for non-MBSFN transmission.
Strictly mathematical approach is introduced in [5], however for the following thesis
purposes more accurate and clear should be a graphical representation with the resource grid
as a background.
The resource elements occupied by the cell-specific reference signals are diversified for
the different scenarios of multiple antennas configurations and two types of the Cyclic Prefix.
The spacing within a single OFDM symbol is independence and sets to six elements. If the
configuration with the number of antenna ports greater than one has been chosen, each port is
obliged to have its own reference for the coherent demodulation (it is marked by different
colours in Figure 4.2 and Figure 4.3). One more think must be noted. The elements reserved
for any of antenna ports cannot be reused again for either another reference signal or any
physical channel. Thus these elements will be set to 0.

31
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s

Subframe
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
lo
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
ie
r
s
RS used by the antenna port 0
REs that cannot be reused
Transmission on antenna port 0 Transmission on antenna port 1
(b)

R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
lo
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
ie
r
s

Figure 4.2 Cell-specific reference signal allocation in case of one antenna port (a),
two antenna ports (b) and four antenna ports (c) with normal CP
The reference signal allocation depicted in Figure 4.2 corresponds to the subframes with
the normal cyclic prefix. In the case of extended CP there is one less timeslot within each
subframe.

32
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s

R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s

Subframe
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s
REs that cannot be reused
Transmission on antenna port 0
(c)
Transmission on antenna port 1 Transmission on antenna port 2 Transmission on antenna port 3

Figure 4.3 Cell-specific reference signal in case of one antenna port (a),
two antenna ports (b) and four antenna ports (c) with extended CP

33
4.1.7.2 MBSFN-specific reference signal
This kind of reference signal is transmitted only in the case of the extended CP and
MBSFN-dedicated subframes and always on the antenna port {4} (the configuration with the
extended CP is the only one accurate for Multicast Broadcast Multimedia Services). The
allocation of MBSFN-specific reference signal is shown in Figure 4.4 and Figure 4.5).

Figure 4.4 MBSFN-specific reference signal (extended CP and 15 kHz spacing)

34

Figure 4.5 MBSFN -specific reference signal (extended CP and 7.5 kHz spacing)
4.1.7.3 UE-specific reference signal
The last type of reference signal can be present only if the PDSCH transmission is
realized using the antenna port {5} and such a situation is always signaled by the higher
layers. Since it is explicitly signaled that the UE-specific reference signal is valid for the
demodulation process then an UE knows exactly that it will be located in the resource blocks
carrying PDSCH only.
The mapping (see Figure 4.6) is done using the consecutive resource blocks intended for
PDSCH. It is worth to mention that the number of such blocks defines the bandwidth
available for user data transmission.

35
R
e
s
o
u
r
c
e

b
l
o
c
k

=

1
2

s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s

Figure 4.6 UE-specific reference signal (normal CP)
4.2 Uplink
The uplink controlling information allocation is much easier than in the case of downlink.
There are also controlling regions defined, however the details on them are introduced in
Chapter 4.2.1.
4.2.1 Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH)
Physical Uplink Control Channel is never used simultaneously with PUSCH or RACH
(Random Access Channel) by the particular UE. Due to the frame of Type 2 it will never be
transmitted in the UpPTS field. There is more than one type of PUCCH formats which are
shown in Table 4.4.
Table 4.4 PUCCH formats
PUCCH
format
Modulation
scheme
Number of bits
per subframe
1 N/A N/A
1a BPSK 1
1b QPSK 2
2 QPSK 20
2a QPSK+BPSK 21
2b QPSK+BPSK 22

The content of PUCCH is composed by the ACK/NACK responses referring to the
downlink transmission. Moreover it is also the medium for the Scheduling Requests (SR) and
CQI reports. The resources assignment is done based on the RRC (Radio Resource Control)

36
signaling. The number of available subcarriers for PUCCH (or PUSCH) can only change on
the boundaries of TTI.
For the further purpose of dimensioning proposal designing the mapping onto the
resource elements is crucial. First, it is important that none of the elements assigned to the
reference signal can be used by any other physical channels. A single PUCCH transmission
occupies one resource block of every timeslot in an uplink. The given assignment is valid
until a mobile is synchronized.
According to the user multiplexing within the available system bandwidth, some
mechanism must be implemented in order to allow a base station checking which of the
received PUCCHs is sent by the specific user. For this reason a code-based differentiation has
been proposed and hence it makes users PUCCH to be determined by two parameters, which
are the exact location of the used resource blocks and a code used for multiplexing. Figure 4.7
shows that the gain related to frequency diversity can be still obtained through locating
control data in a distributed mode. In this case eight resource blocks located at the band
boundaries are dedicated for four control channels.

S
y
s
t
e
m

c
h
a
n
n
e
l

Figure 4.7 UE-specific reference signal (normal CP)
4.2.2 Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH)
The available modulation schemes intended for PUSCH data are QPSK, 16QAM
(Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) or 64QAM. As was mentioned in Chapter 4.2.1 the
frequency diversity gain is one the most crucial advantages of FDMA, thus the data allocation
in the uplink channel can not be done without the frequency hopping. Two possibilities are
acceptable. The first one is based on the assignment information included in a scheduling
grant and it is just the straight mapping between the physical resource blocks and the virtual

37
ones. The alternative is when a scheduling grant includes the number of physical resource
blocks and the predefined frequency hopping sequence. These two parameters are then used
for the mapping purposes.
4.2.3 Random Access Channel (RACH)
The total transmission between a base station and a mobile is divided into timeslots and a
correct data reception takes place when receiving information is aligned with the mentioned
slots. To do so a terminal should not send any data without the confirmation that there is a
chance for a proper reception. Such a state is called time synchronization (see Figure 4.8) [12]
whereas the Random Access (RA) procedure is dedicated to make it work. Although there is a
broadcast signal covering the entire cell sending from the Node B, it is not enough to be used
for synchronization because of a time delay (time offset) between a sending and receiving
point. The offset could be larger than the implemented cyclic prefix and that it is why this
solution cannot be approved.

Figure 4.8 Time synchronization for uplink transmission [12]
From the point of complicatedness, RACH is one of the simplest physical channels. The
only possible transmission can be made based on the following formula (see Figure 4.9).

Figure 4.9 Random Access burst
A cyclic prefix precedes a sequence which is the key issue. The term of sequence used
above refers to the preamble. The Random Access preamble is composed based on the
Zadoff-Chu sequences with a zero correlation zone with the assumption that there is a defined
set of preambles which are available for the UE. A single preamble needs six resource blocks

38
and it is common for the frames of Type 1 and Type 2. There are also several different types
of preamble format (0-4) (see [5] for more details).
The decision about resource allocation is on the side of a base station scheduler. The
document [12] points at the possibility that a preamble may contain scheduling request
(frequency and time demands) sent by a mobile together with the RA burst (CP + sequence).
4.2.4 Reference signal
In the case of uplink transmission there is a necessity of two reference signal types usage
because both PUCCH and PUSCH need to be separately demodulated. That is why the
reference signal for PUCCH is strictly connected with PUCCH resources and the same
approach is applied for PUSCH.
The reference signal which is used for PUSCH demodulation is located among the same
resource blocks as the corresponding PUSCH data with one constraint that only 4
th
symbol
(l=3 on the uplink resource grid; see Figure 3.8) can be occupied.
Very similar situation is adopted for the demodulation signal of PUCCH. The same
resource blocks are chosen but according to different PUCCH formats there are several
possible configurations due to the number of occupied symbols in a timeslot.
Table 4.5 Timeslot occupation by the reference signal for PUCCH demodulation
Available values of l index for the reference signal elements
PUCCH
format
Normal CP Extended CP
1, 1a, 1b 2, 3, 4 2, 3
2, 2a, 2b 1, 5 3

39
5 Physical layer improvements
The crucial changes related to the LTE physical layer apply to the radio access methods,
which are OFDMA in downlink and SC-FDMA in uplink (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4). On the
other hand it is not enough to fully understand the planning methodology and all the
corresponding aspects. The details about air interface parameters have already been
introduced, however a few more general solutions need a precise explanation in order to
understand all the issues raised in Chapter 6.
5.1 Link Adaptation
The Link Adaptation algorithms determine a solution against the rapidly changing
channel quality comprehended as the frequency response. The strong need of practicing such
solutions can be well pointed by the scenario in which a moving mobile experiences the
multi-path effect. It is depicted in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1 Multipath effect in the urban environment (a) and the frequency-selective channel response (b) [6]
The main reason of suffering from the fast changing radio link quality has been marked
as a multi-path propagation which generally speaking is nothing else than receiving the signal
from many different paths. Final branches summing and demodulating can lead to significant
information degradation within the quality gaps (the lowest values in Figure 5.1 (b)).
Although this is one of the main crucial components of the whole problem, obviously this is
not the only one.
Additional losses of the instantaneous channel quality would also come from the
shadowing effect as well as increasing load in the neighbouring cells.

40
5.1.1 Power Control
The Link Adaptation realized through widely defined rate control has been verified as a
better solution than Fast Power Control (FPC) already implemented in WCDMA and
cdma2000 systems [6]. Controlling the power through adjusting an instantaneous radio link
transmit power in OFDMA-based networks will not bring such a gain as for the CDMA-based
approaches and therefore it will not be adopted in LTE. The prevention of multi-path
propagation effect should be effectively done by the Cyclic Prefix insertion so it applies only
to level of the evolved air interface. The nature of OFDM transmission scheme with an
additional CP should be fast-fading quite proof. That is why the preliminary analyses clearly
pinpoint the need of path loss and shadowing tracking in the system [3]. To do so the
mentioned Fast Power Control is unnecessary and if any comparison is to be made the best
one would be with the GSM Power Control mechanism. 2G approach implements two closed
loops, one loop per one transmission direction. Sending the power regulation information is
done with every 480 ms which corresponds approximately to 2 Hz and this fact makes such a
solution to be called Slow Power Control. It will be adopted in E-UTRA downlink and uplink.
5.1.1.1 Uplink
Closed loop for uplink transmission

One should note that in the case of uplink, the power control information always stands
for the power level over one particular DFT-OFDM symbol.
The basic proposal of Power Control mechanism consists in the power-up and power-
down commands being signalled by a Node B. The main purpose is to reduce the inter-cell
interference generated by the UEs located in neighbouring cells. Decreasing the interference
gets better the overall system throughput and that is why the implementation should not take
into consideration only the particular user demand but shall have the general view on every
mobiles condition in the entire area. This could be the reason of having the cell-edge
terminals with a smaller SINR (Signal to Interference Ratio) target than the regular users in a
cell although the cell-edge mobiles requirements seem to be higher [3]. The described
solution refers to the closed loop applied to the uplink connection which has been already
established.
The other cell interference mitigation is based on the overload indicator (OI), which
should be exchanged via the X2 interface (the network signalling layer). Such an indicator
would include the information about the ratio between the total inter cell interference power
(the power of interference caused by the UEs located in all neighbouring cells) and the

41
thermal noise power in the target cell. Therefore the scheduler could be able to lower the
transmission power of those mobiles which are closest to the overloaded cells and minimize
the noise rise. Besides, an additional indicator could be sent to the scheduler. It would inform
it about the precise allocation of the resource blocks that are most sensitive to the other cell
interference effect. Thus, it would be aware of the band parts in which the collision
probability is the highest and it might reallocate them.

Open loop for Random Access procedure

The situation differs a little bit in the case of Random Access procedure, which takes
place during attempting the uplink resources by an UE. Whilst the authors of [3] only propose
the open loop in an UE, authors of [13] mainly points at this exact solution. While the request
for the resource establishment is performed, the transmission power decision is up to an UE.
The initial value is passed through the PREAMBLE_TRANSMISSION_POWER parameter
included in the preamble of a Random Access burst. The whole approach relies on the path
loss measurements of the downlink broadcast channel signalled by a Node B. That is exactly
what one may call the open loop, the objective of which is obtaining power transmission due
to the measurements of a single links end [14]. Measuring the path loss variable based on the
broadcast signal could cause a kind of misinformation in the transmission power estimation
process, because of the shadowing variability between the downlink and uplink.
The alternative might be the transmission power value forced by a Node B. In this case
the transmission power value would be sent in response to mobiles Random Access burst
[12]. Contrary to the WCDMA networks, the ramping technique could be avoided in LTE.
The ramping technique (see Figure 5.2) results in the power-up action ( P ) after every
unanswered burst. The most important advantage is avoiding many powerful signals from the
UEs, which leads to the interference limitation especially in the highly loaded cells.

Figure 5.2 3G ramping technique [12]
The most disturbing after-effect of such a solution is decreasing the RA responses rate
because of very low SIR (Signal to Interference Ratio) on the base stations side. Afterwards,
many UEs attempting the uplink allocation will not be served successfully. One must also

42
note that in the case of UTRA air interface the RA preambles are sent in the same frequency
and timeslots as intended for the uplink user data (the result of CDMA technique). Hence,
there is a necessity of using the mechanism that could prevent the unwanted interference rise
between the multiplexed users. The situation is different when the OFDMA-based physical
layer is considered. In such a situation the RA attempts are orthogonal to the uplink data
transmission thus the power ramping seems to be unnecessary. On the other hand, it might be
suitable in the environment of the highly loaded neighbouring cells, in which many UEs use
the same parts of the channel bandwidth causing the orthogonality degradation. Another
premise of using power ramping is the possibility of users classes prioritization. The
differentiate criterion could be done due to the various ramping step sizes among the
terminals. If the narrow transmission bandwidth is under investigation it seems that increasing
power in a progressive way during RA procedure would be very good solution against the
instantaneous radio channel quality gaps caused by deep fading effects [12].
5.1.1.2 Downlink
At first some general assumption for downlink Power Control must be submitted. The
power levels determine by the Node B refer to the resource elements therefore the term EPRE
(Energy Per Resource Element) is used. Very sensitive part of downlink transmission is the
reference signal carried by the given resource elements among every 0.5 ms timeslot. The
power allocation related to these REs makes them to be power-constant among all the OFDM
symbols and subframes sent to the UEs.
Let the EPRE
PDSCH
sym/w/RS
denotes as the energy per resource elements assigned to
PDSCH on OFDM symbols which are simultaneously carrying the reference signals, the
EPRE for the resource elements assigned to PDSCH on OFDM symbols which are not
carrying the reference signals as EPRE
PDSCH
sym/w-o/RS
, and the EPRE for the resource elements
carrying the reference signals only as EPRE
RS
.

2
1
/ /
2
/ /
1
=
=
=
RS
RS o w sym
PDSCH
RS
RS w sym
PDSCH
EPRE
EPRE
EPRE
EPRE
(5.1)


43
The final ratio (see formulas (5.1)) is the cell-specific parameter dependent on 3-bits
cell-specific parameter signalled by the higher layers and the multiple antennas configuration
on the side of a Node B (1TX, 2TX, 4TX). The exact mapping between these three arguments
has not been finished yet by 3GPP standardization bodies, but it should appear in [13].
According to [3] downlink Power Control should be studied and implemented if need to
be in order to prevent the signal degradation caused by the shadowing and path loss.
5.1.2 Adaptive Modulation and Coding
AMC is applied for E-UTRA downlink and uplink shared data channel and it effects the
changes of a modulation scheme and channel coding rate. It is crucial that the same scheme
and rate must be applied for the group of resource blocks belonged to the one specific L2
PDU scheduled to one user during one TTI on a single MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple
Output) stream.
5.2 Interference Coordination
Every wireless technology suffers in some way from the signal quality changes because
of the radio propagation environment full of the undesired neighbouring signals. The generic
consequence is a widely comprehended interfering effect. Such an effect could be interpreted
from the point of network, site, cell, particular user equipment or base station. There is no
need to say that decreasing the interference makes the system performance better.
If the coverage capability is considered the crucial optimization aspect refers to the power
consumption. The users located at the cell boundaries affected by a high interference level in
the case of downlink transmission would demand greater and greater SINR (Signal to
Interference and Noise Ratio). With the assumption that the signal strength S remains the
same (the maximum BS transmission power per one user is already used) and the interference
level I raises rapidly, a base station will soon have no possibility to keep the SINR value at
the satisfied level. When the link adaptation mechanism is not able to switch the lowest
modulation scheme anymore, the further transmission may need a handover which requires
the additional system resources. A similar situation can be introduced for the uplink direction.
The rough power limitation on the mobile terminal side causes that it will not be long when
the signal is emitted with the maximum power and still, in spite of the best possible
modulation and coding scheme, it is not enough to receive it in a base station with the set
error rate. For the analytic representation of this effect the Interference Margin (IM) formula
has been defined [15] as the logarithmical dependence between the cell load and noise rise.

44
Expression (5.2) is valid for the CDMA-based networks and generally speaking it represents
the eventual margin of degradation caused by the interferer sources (home- and other-cell).

) 1 log( * 10 = IM (5.2)

Whereas (5.2) represents the situation for the 3G physical layer in both downlink and
uplink it cannon be used for LTE in the same manner.
5.2.1 Intra-cell interference
Intra Cell Interference refers to any interference caused by the active terminals within the
same cell. The 3G systems suffer from the cell breathing effect [16] because of working with
one frequency (frequency reuse = 1) and multiplexing the users based on the orthogonal codes
assignment. Let us assume an UE transmitting with the maximum output power located at the
cell-edge. In the case of any additional UEs present in the same cell and located closer to a
base station it appears that the transmission from the cell-edge terminal will not be received in
a satisfied way. The presence of other coded spread signals will increase the total interference
in a base station (SINR requirement cannot be further fulfilled). The only possible
instantaneous solution is to overcome the interference by decreasing the distance between a
cell-edge user and the base station whereas it is nothing else than lowering cell coverage
capability. Such a situation is remarkably apparent in the case of the CDMA-based networks
and refers to the intra-cell interference issue. It therefore involves very advanced load
balancing mechanism in order to prevent the negative consequences.
The OFDM-based systems get the better of the CDMA networks and the mentioned
occurrence should not be perceptible. The epexegesis stays in the nature of the OFDM
transmission scheme, for which the separate sub-carriers are orthogonal. Obviously, it refers
to the sub-carriers within one particular symbol. The unused ones remain without any
meaning for the signal reception whereas the occupied ones cannot interfere with each others
because they are orthogonal. That is why the number of multiplexed users in the frequency
domain does not influence on the interference level between them. There is a probability of
losing the subcarriers orthogonality however it still remains so small it does not demand any
additional compensation mechanisms. Apart from this aspect, a single resource element is
able to carry one users bits, which is completely different from the CDMA solution where
the multiplexed users occupy the same time and frequency resources.

45
5.2.2 Inter-cell interference
Former consideration on intra-cell interference does not concern the aspects on a large-
scale, the whole systems scope. Time to focus on the dependences among the cells served by
different base stations. Generally speaking, LTE, as the OFDM-based solution, does not need
any frequency reuse schemes. It means that all sites are allowed to work with the same
frequency as it is in the UTRA technologies. The proper work in a single cell is assured by the
orthogonal property of FFT processing applied to the frequency resources, which are equal to
the total system bandwidth in the case of frequency reuse = 1. Such a perfect situation is
usually reflected in the reality for those terminals which are not located at the cell boundaries,
while the cell-edge users suffer from the interference came from the neighbouring cells. The
reason of this effect is very simple. If the downlink direction is taken into account, the
probability of receiving the signal from the base stations other than the target one is very high
at the cell edge. Thus two users served by two different base stations may use the same part of
frequency band at the same time whilst the transmissions do not stay orthogonal. Now see
Figure 5.3. If only the part of transmission between Terminal B and Interferer BS is received
by Terminal A it leads to the orthogonality disturbance affecting the signal exchange between
Terminal A and Target BS. Moreover, the probability of using the same band parts rises when
the neighbouring cells are highly loaded.

Figure 5.3 Inter Cell Interference affecting the cell-edge users

46
Therefore, it seems that although the great advantages of OFDMA over CDMA, some
mechanisms against inter-cell interference should be the matter of further consideration. Such
a study has already been started and a few publications focus on it. A quite interesting
proposal [17] will be presented in the following chapter. The described solution is based on
two others discussed in [18,19] and it is called Hybrid Inter Cell Interference Mitigation
(HICIM).

Figure 5.4 HICIM concept
The concept is shown in Figure 5.4 which introduces two approaches, one for the low
loaded cells and the second one for the high cell loads scenarios. The part of the figure on the
right refers to the first approach which is about the band prioritization. The total available
frequency band across three neighbouring cells must be divided into sub-bands. Every sub-
band should be next prioritized with the cell identity marked by A, B, C letters in Figure 5.4.
It will be the criterion for the frequency allocation algorithm. In the case of low and steady
loaded cells the terminals will use the subcarriers from the sub-bands assigned to the given
cell with the highest priority. Until no base station requires more resources then having
already been set in the assigned sub-band, the solution remains very good method against the
interference. However, assuming fully loaded Cell A (the sub-carriers demand approaches the
total available frequency band) the cell-edge users from Cell B and Cell C will suffer from the
interference sources from Cell A, which are using the subcarriers initially reserved for Cell B
and Cell C. It has been already proved that the prioritization-based solution reduces the cell-
edge users performance in spite of improving the overall system throughput [17]. That is the
reason why it is mixed with the soft frequency reuse scheme (the left part of Figure 5.4).
When the system must deal with the highly loaded cells then the second approach should
be chosen as the frequency allocation method. The users in the centre regions of a cell are

47
forced to work with the subcarriers belonged to the major sub-band whereas the cell-edge
terminals have minor sub-bands at their disposal. The crucial assumption is that the minor
groups cannot overlap each others. The major group is reused in every cell and its size may be
dynamically changed based on the load measurements. The higher resource demands the
wider major group and the more subcarriers within it. It is a kind of sliding window
technique. Despite of the good performance for the highly loaded cells, the mentioned
approach needs to be optimized according to the ratio between the centre and cell-edge areas,
which the appropriate sub-bands will be assigned to [20]. If the cell-edge regions are too large
comparing to the areas occupied by the major group then the whole system performance will
suffer because of wasting the available free resources in the case of many active users in the
cells centres. Contrary situation does not bring any benefit for cell-edge mobiles, throughputs
of which will be decreased due to the small amount of resources. The process of controlling
the ratio could be done through the changes of the maximum transmission power per sub-
carrier. For highly loaded cells edges the allowable power consumption for minor groups
should be increased.
One should remember that the above described solution refers to downlink whereas
uplink inter-cell interference coordination is based on the load indicator sent via the X2
interface (the details can be found in Chapter 5.1.1.1).
5.2.3 Inter-symbol interference
In the section dedicated for intra-cell interference there was mentioned that the native
subcarriers orthogonality (due to the FFT processing) is totally enough to prevent the signal
degradation within a single OFDM symbol. The situation gets more complicated if the
neighbouring symbols are taken into account.
As a reminder, the interpretation of OFDM physical transmission is presented once again
below in Figure 5.5, where l stands for the consecutive symbols containing the constant set of
orthogonal subcarriers numbered by the index k.

48
... ... l-1 l l+1 ... ... ...
k
k-1
...
...
...
...
...
k+1
...
...
...
...
Time domain
a
k
(l)

Figure 5.5 OFDM frequency-time grid
Before detailed study on inter-symbol interference (ISI) the example in which it does not
appear will be introduced when the signal comes only from the single direct path (see Figure
5.6). Assuming that the demodulation window of size T
u
is perfectly aligned with the
beginning and the end of symbol duration, the transmission is received without any
interference. The content of neighbouring symbols stands invisible for the currently
demodulated one denoted as a
k
(l)
.

Figure 5.6 No ISI in the Line Of Sight case
Now, let us consider the multipath environment and the second signal path (see Figure
5.7), which is the one reflected from the building and reaching a receiver the moment after the
direct signal, because of a longer propagation distance. Both of rays are delivered to the
demodulator input. Although the demodulation window is aligned with the direct transmission
path it also covers some part of the previous symbol a
k
(l-1)
. Since the index k refers to the same
subcarrier the orthogonality is out of question and it leads to the original signal degradation
because of inter-symbol interference.

49

Figure 5.7 ISI in the multipath environment case
This effect is quite common in the multipath environments, in which the radio channel is
characterized as time-dispersive or frequency-selective. The solution chosen in order to
prevent such interference is to implement the cyclic prefix but it is not unique for 3GPP LTE.
Other OFDM technologies (e.g. DVB-H Digital Vide Broadcasting for Handsets) also apply
the similar approaches. The cyclic prefix is a kind of guard period inserted just before the
original symbol.
The duration T
CP
is a system dependent parameter. The conception of cyclic prefix
becomes more clearly through the hardware implementation explanation. The CP insertion is
a simple copy-paste operation applied to the end part of the original symbol T
U
. The copied
part is next placed before the symbol (see Figure 5.8).

Figure 5.8 Cyclic Prefix hardware implementation
Now, if only the time delay of reflected signal paths is equal or shorter than the CP length
then the demodulator will still proceed with the part of one symbol with the full orthogonality
preservation (see Figure 5.9).
a
k
(l)
a
k
(l+1)
a
k
(l-1)
a
k
(l-2)
... ...
Direct path
Modulation
window
T
u
... ...
Reflected path
Time delay
Cyclic prefix

Figure 5.9 ISI mitigation in the multipath environment case

50
Such a multipath-proof technique gives the great opportunity of improving the system
performance in the urban environments, where many reflected paths reach the receiver input.
Another consequence is the MBMS (Multicast Broadcast Multimedia Services) initiating
based on SFN (Single Frequency Network) concept. This idea requires a terminal to receipt
the signal from many different base stations so the robust multipath effects are ubiquitous.
That is why two types of CP length are proposed by 3GPP. The longer one (extended CP) will
be used for MBMS purposes and in the case of very large cell radius for which the time delay
could exceed the normal CP length.
Unfortunately there are also some disadvantages of the CP-based transmission scheme
[6]. The power consumption aspect has been marked out as very important many times. The
cyclic prefix does not carry any data or signalling information because it is duplicated based
on the original OFDM symbol part. In spite of this fact, the additional power resources are
consumed in order to send the cyclic prefixes over the air interface. The second drawback is
the obvious bandwidth wasting. That is why the ratio between the original symbol duration
and the CP length should be investigated in details.

51
6 Performance gain analysis
Every demand for a system setup needs to be preceded by planning procedures, which
usually consists of several milestones in order to model the system behaviour in the real
environment. Various aspects are taking into consideration throughout the entire process and
they are related to the traffic requirements, hardware opportunities, cost optimization, etc. The
general methodology is shown in Figure 6.1.

Initial
Dimensioning
Detailed
Planning
Optimization
Link budget
and capacity
estimation
Hardware, software,
geography
considiration, etc.
Updates and/or
upgrades

Figure 6.1 General planning methodology
As it seen the first step is the initial dimensioning which gives generic information on the
link budget and capacity capabilities of the considered network. The output can be next
passed on to the more advanced planning tools which help to design the network layout with
the allowance of hardware and/or software, terrains geography and any additional operators
requirements. The last step shown in Figure 6.1 is not always present before the system
deployment, however it is significant in the case of further performance improvements. All of
these stages can be fully or partly combined with the cost calculation according to the
customer specific requests.
The first stage called initial dimensioning is distinguished because of its meaning for
this thesis purposes. Creating a methodology and designing an efficient dimensioning
platform can lead to getting very useful analysis tool which gives the look on the potential
system performance. That is the approach adopted in this work. The substantial part of the
mentioned solution is introduced in details in Chapter 6.1, after which two sections (Chapters
6.2 and 6.4) are dedicated for the discussion on the output results, which are fundamental for
the final conclusions.

52
6.1 Dimensioning proposal
The calculation sheet dedicated to estimate the expected LTE performance gain is based
on the classical link budget layout [15,16]. It has been accepted that the most important output
of a link budget is a cell range the distance for which the user can still be served with the
assumed probability. The intermediate calculation steps need to be illustrated before details on
the final cell range evaluation.
6.1.1 Transmitting end modelling
The mathematical representation of a transmitting end considered in a link budget is the
EIRP (Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power). EIRP can be easily obtained from (6.1).

MHA F A out
L L G P EIRP + = (6.1)

The signal power at the transmitters output P
out
must be changed because of a radio
equipment, the gain G
A
followed from the antennas presence and the losses according to the
feeders attenuation L
F
and the eventual MHA (Master Head Amplifier) insertion L
MHA
. P
out

in downlink direction refers to the power that can be assigned to a single users traffic channel
whereas its opposite in uplink is defined as the maximum terminals emitted power. It has
been assumed that the value applying to the Node B is the same as for the UTRA air interface
(1.5 W per traffic channel is proposed in [16]). As far as the antenna gain, the practical values
can be obtained from the equipment vendors brochures [21,22]. Based on the 3GPP
specification [23] and the defined UE classes (see Table 6.1), the MOP (Maximum Output
Power) Class 3 is suggested for the evaluation purposes. 0 dBi of the antenna gain is proposed
similar to the assumption taken from [23].
Table 6.1 UE MOP Classes
MOP
Power
[dBm]
Tolarance
[dB]
Class 1 30
Class 2 27
Class 3 24 +1/-3
Class 4 21

L
MHA
should be considered only in the case of the Masthead Amplifier usage, which is
mounted at the base station and it improves the uplink performance, however brings a small
degradation for the transmitted downlink signal.

53
6.1.2 Receiving end modelling
The final output of this step is the receiver sensitivity, which defines the minimum signal
level that can still be successfully received. This level refers to the antenna connector and
should take into account the further demodulation and the kind of a provided service mapped
to the required output signal quality. All of these issues are introduced in equations below.
The lower sensitivity limit is the thermal noise power spectral density. Generally
speaking it is the level of a noise, below which it is impossible to separate the target
transmission, calculated based on the Boltzman constant k and the conductors temperature T
as presented in (6.2).

J E K
K
J
E T k N
T
21 04 . 4 293 23 38 . 1 = = = (6.2)

The N
T
value expressed in relation to 1 Hz frequency bandwidth using the logarithmic
scale is as shown in (6.3).

Hz
dBm N
T
174
001 . 0
log 10 |
\
|
(6.3)

Now, if the thermal noise spectral density is known, it can be used to determine the
thermal noise power at the receiver, which is obviously dependent on the frequency band
occupied by the equipment B. The add operation in (6.4) is applied to due the dB-scale of both
N
T
and B.
B N N
T
Rx
T
+ = (6.4)

Whilst the situation is quite simple for the UTRA air interface evaluation (the scrambling
code always occupies about 3.84 MHz [16] corresponding to 66 dB), it gets more complicated
if the evolved LTE interface is analysed. Neither the base station nor the UE needs to analyze
the total available bandwidth when a small number of terminals use a small number of
resource blocks narrowing the usable bandwidth at the same time. There should be nothing
wrong in adopting a very simple implementation, especially if it will not make the LTE
performance better. Assuming that the total system channel is considered for the thermal
noise power calculation, the worst case is always submitted due to the thermal noise rise at the
antenna connector. In spite of such a simplicity the following proposal focuses on the

54
mapping between the practically occupied bandwidth and the number of the resource blocks
in use.
One more restriction has to be investigated and it is the noise figure, the value of which
should be parameterized in the particular receivers specification. It informs about the additive
noise generated by various hardware components. The general relation between the receiver
noise power N
f
and the corresponding sensitivity level N
Rx
is shown in (6.5).

f
Rx
T
Rx
N N N + = (6.5)

The sensitivity must also comply the required signal quality. Once again, the LTE
approach differs from the former 3G dimensioning proposals. In the case of the UTRA air
interface there is the E
b
/N
0
parameter, which defines the energy per bit to the thermal noise
spectral power density ratio and refers to the point of a receiver input. Next to E
b
/N
0
, one
more coefficient, specific for the CDMA-based systems, called processing gain influences on
the sensitivity. However, neither E
b
/N
0
nor the processing gain is useful in the initial LTE
dimensioning. Thus the following (6.6) is proposed in order to estimate the receiver
sensitivity.

I
S
N S
Rx Rx
+ = (6.6)

As it is seen, an additional ratio is added to the already calculated noise floor N
Rx
. S/I,
usually called SIR (Signal to Interference Ratio) states for the ratio between the signal power
and the power of any interference which effects the transmission. Theoretically, the SIR value
should refer to the receiver input (similar to E
b
/N
0
). Whilst there is a lot of the available link
level simulator outcomes for the WCDMA-based systems, the situation is worse for LTE.
That is why for the purpose of this thesis the post-receive SIR values are used for the
purpose of this thesis [24]. The post-receive status informs about the point of measurement
the output of the receiver the CCTrCH (Coded Composite Transport Channel) decoder
input.
6.1.3 Capacity limitations
In order to evaluate the E-UTRA capacity capabilities, the calculation of a cell load are
included in the dimensioning proposal. The essential assumption applies to the homogenous
character of all active users in among the cells. It means that all mobiles are configured to use
the same modulation and coding scheme and BLER (Block Error Rate) target for the

55
particular transmission direction. The traffic demand defined by the required user data rate
also remains common.
These settings influence on the link budget (maximum allowable pathloss) as well. In the
previous section the issue of post-receive SIR has been raised. Obtaining the value is
possible through defining the modulation and coding scheme and the target
BLER (see Figure 6.2).
0,0
0,1
0,2
0,3
0,4
0,5
0,6
0,7
0,8
0,9
1,0
-2 3 8 13 18
SIR [dB]
B
L
E
R
QPSK 1/3
QPSK 1/2
QPSK 2/3
QPSK 3/4
QPSK 4/5
16QAM 1/3
16QAM 1/2
16QAM 2/3
16QAM 3/4
16QAM 4/5
64QAM 1/2
64QAM 2/3
64QAM 4/5

Figure 6.2 BLER curves for AWGN channel
The higher modulation order, the higher SIR requirement must be met for the specific
BLER. Hence, switching the transmission link to the successive schemes will cause the
receiver sensitivity degradation, which will limit the maximum pathloss in consequence and
finally decrease the cell range. It is must be remarked that LTE is the system, in the physical
layer of which the users are multiplexed and there is a possibility of assigning different MCSs
(Modulation and Coding Schemes) to different terminals. In spite of making the system more
adaptive, these facts make the case quite complicated from the point of a system planner.
Temporary capacity boost with the simultaneous cell range reduction can be now control by
the Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC). Obviously, single users traffic demand cannot
be the only controlling parameter for AMC because the chosen MCSs also influence on the
sub-carrier assignment due to the simple correlation between the MCS efficiency and the final
number of resource elements which are needed to carry modulated bits whereas it is strictly
connected with the frequency diversity gain.
Every link budget tool gives the information about the maximum allowable pathloss that
can affect a cell-edge user who is still served. This fact entails the possibility of estimating the
maximum radius of a cell, the load of which is known. The 2G dimensioning methods do not
involve the synchronous analysis of both coverage and capacity because there are no effects
such as the cell breathing. As it has been already explained in Chapter 5.2 there is a strict
dependence between the cell load and the area which can be served in the case of WCDMA-

56
based air interface. The character of the other cell interference for the OFDMA-based radio
access points at quite similar problem because of a single frequency among all sites. The
prevention methods are described in Chapter 5.2, however they are not implemented in the
dimensioning tool. Therefore the Interference Margin factor is adopted, which reflects the
potential noise rise according to the neighbouring cell load. The intermediate cell load
calculation is based on the suggestion published in [25], the authors of which present the
general load model for the OFDMA networks. In this proposals case the load for both
transmission directions is completely dependent on the physical resources consumed by the
data and controlling information. According to the various channel configurations, which give
many sets of total available resources T
s
, the quantitative value of occupied resources T
c
needs
to be normalized (see equation (6.7)).

s
c
cell
T
T
L = (6.7)

The numerator and denominator values are expressed as throughputs. Each transmission
direction has to be evaluated separately. Total system throughput can be defined as the
capacity T
RB
of all the available resource blocks N
RB
with the allowance for the overhead
information L
overhead
and the retransmission coefficient BLER. It is possible to write down the
following formula (6.8) [26].

) 1 ( BLER L T N T
overhead RB RB s
= (6.8)

L
overhead
stands for the percentage of pilot and controlling information within the channel
bandwidth, whereas BLER is the target Block Error Rate which determines the allowed
number of unsuccessful transmissions (e.g. 10% BLER allows maximum one block to be
failed among 10). Whilst BLER is constant for all active users, the overhead must be
evaluated. The detailed explanation of control channels purposes and resource elements
mapping has been introduced in Chapter 4. This section presents the calculation procedure
which seems to be the appropriate one. The corresponded equations are listed in Table 6.2 and
Table 6.3. A brief description is put next to every each of them.

57
Table 6.2 Downlink system overhead
Channel Overhead formula Description
PBCH
radioframe
RE
symbol
RE PBCH
PBCH
N
N
L
_
4
=
Four symbols within four radio frames can be
occupied. There are 72 resource elements per
symbol which are able to be assigned to
PBCH transmission.
PCFICH,
PDCCH,
PHICH
subframe
sym
PHICH PDCCH PCFICH
N
L
3
=
+ +

Aside from the number of antenna ports the
controlling region which is allowed to be
occupied by PCFICH, PDCCH, PHICH is
limited to the first three symbols in a
subframe.
Reference
signal (RS)
TS
sym
RB
sc
RS
N N
L
=
4

The cell-specific reference signal allocation
depends on the configured number of antenna
ports. According to the fact that the following
dimensioning procedure considers the SISO
(Single Input Single Output) scheme only, the
number of resource elements occupied by the
reference signal is equal to 4 per every single
resource block.

symbol
RE PBCH
N
_

- the number of resource elements within a symbol which are able to be
occupied by PBCH.
radioframe
RE
N
- the number of resource elements per radio frame
subframe
sym
N
- the number of symbols per subframe
RB
sc
N
- the number of subcarriers per resource block
TS
sym
N
- the number of symbols per timeslot


58
Table 6.3 Uplink system overhead
Channel Overhead formula Description
PUCCH
TS
RB
PUCCH
PUCCH
N
N
L =
It is assumed that one control channel is
assigned to one active user and it occupies a
single resource block within every timeslot.
PRACH
req
TS
RB
PRACH
f
N
L =
6

The frequency of requests arrival is expressed
by f
req
(e.g. f
req
=0.1 stands for 1 random access
burst per 10 timeslots). The request consumed
up to 6 resource blocks per timeslot.
Reference
signal
TS
sym
RS
N
L
1
=
The uplink reference signal occupies the same
resource blocks as the channel the
demodulation of which it is purposed for.
Thus the calculation of RS for PUCCH
demodulation is needless because it has been
already taken into consideration. Calculation
of RS for PUSCH demodulation refers only to
the resource blocks assigned to the PUSCH
transmission (RS occupies one symbol per
resource block which carries PUSCH).

PUCCH
N
- the number of PUCCHs
TS
RB
N
- the number of resource blocks within a single timeslot
req
f
- the arrival frequency of Random Access requests
RB
sc
N
- the number of subcarriers per resource block
TS
sym
N
- the number of symbols per timeslot

The presented approach leads to define the total system overhead in downlink and uplink
respectively as (6.9) and (6.10).

RS PHICH PDCCH PCFICH PBCH
DL
overhead
L L L L + + =
+ +
(6.9)

RS PRACH PUCCH
UL
overhead
L L L L + + = (6.10)

It must be noticed that all the above assumptions related to the system overhead are
made for the worst case and they should not be treated as a precise signalling percentage but
only an attempt of mathematical modelling from the point of the initial network site count.
The next parameter which needs to be known is the number of available physical
resource blocks N
RB
. It has been already presented in Chapter 3.3 and according to [23] it is

59
common for downlink and uplink direction (symmetric downlink and uplink frequency
bands). Let the resource block throughput be defined as its capacity during a set time period
(see equation (6.11)).

timeslot
RB
RB
t
C
T = (6.11)

Being aware that each resource block consists of the same number of resource elements
which are the smallest possible physical resource representatives it is possible to assume the
homogenous character of all resource blocks. The number of component resource elements is
equal to the product of available subcarriers within a resource block and OFDM symbols
within a timeslot, which gives
TS
sym
RB
sc
N N . The detailed information about
RB
sc
N and
TS
sym
N can
be found in Table 3.6 and Table 3.9. One more think must be determined. It is the capacity of
a single modulated symbol which is carried by a resource element. Therefore further
calculation requires the modulation efficiency computation based on (6.12), in which
output
bits
N
stand for the number of bits carried by a symbol and R
c
means a coding rate (e.g. R
c
=1/3
denotes three output bits for every one information bit). Table 6.4 introduces the efficiency of
available modulation and coding schemes.

c
output
bits
R N E =
mod
(6.12)

Table 6.4 Modulation efficiency
MCS Output bits Coding rate Modulation efficiency
QPSK 1/3 2 1/3 0.67
QPSK 1/2 2 1/2 1.00
QPSK 2/3 2 2/3 1.33
QPSK 3/4 2 3/4 1.50
QPSK 4/5 2 4/5 1.60
16QAM 1/3 4 1/3 1.33
16QAM 1/2 4 1/2 2.00
16QAM 2/3 4 2/3 2.67
16QAM 3/4 4 3/4 3.00
16QAM 4/5 4 4/5 3.20
64QAM 1/2 6 1/2 3.00
64QAM 2/3 6 2/3 4.00
64QAM 4/5 6 4/5 4.80

60
Now, equation (6.11) can be extended as follows (6.13) and expressed as the kilobits per
second.

timeslot
TS
sym
RB
sc
timeslot
RB
RB
t
N N E
t
C
T

= =
mod
(6.13)

Knowing the total system throughput T
s
and the traffic demand, which is defined as the
number of active users N
users
and data rate R
data
, it is easy to qualify if the requirement (6.14)
can be fulfil at all.

data users s
R N T < (6.14)

Rough inequality (<) additionally restricts the capacity capabilities. The right side of
(6.14) represents the consumed resources T
c
included in the load calculation formula (6.7), so
the load coefficient denotes the percentage of utilized throughput. That is why it cannot
exceed 100% in any scenario. It must be remarked that no power limitations have been
accounted for. Other words, if only the capacity limitations are fulfil and the user traffic is
below the cells capability (6.14) then for the purposes of link budget calculation it is assumed
that both the UE and the Node B emit theirs signals using the maximum output power (see
Transmitting end modelling section).
6.1.4 Maximum allowable pathloss calculation
The maximum allowable pathloss (MAPL) is one of the main link budget output values.
The previous sections dedicated to the transmitter, receiver and capacity modelling can be
treated as the intermediate steps towards the MAPL estimation. For the better understanding
of a pathloss factor the effect of the radio signal attenuation needs to be reminded. The overall
signal loss for downlink and uplink are introduced in (6.15) and (6.16) respectively.

B
Rx
F A DL
L IM S L G EIRP MAPL + = (6.15)

MHA B
Rx
F A UL
G L IM S L G EIRP MAPL + + = (6.16)

The total EIRP, antenna gain G
A
, feeder loss L
F
and receiver sensitivity S
Rx
have to be
conditioned to the transmission direction. The body loss L
B
obviously stays common for both
uplink and downlink while the Masthead Amplifier gain G
MHA
is specific only in the case of

61
boosting the uplink signal. The signal degradation caused by the human body vicinity is about
3 dB for the handset terminals and 0 dB for the PC cards. It is suggested to take into account
some additional losses if it is necessary (in-car users can be affected by the reduction even up
to 8 dB) [16]. The interference margin IM needs to investigated in details. As was mentioned
in Chapter 5.2, the 3G-specific noise rise due to the neighbouring cells load can be expressed
as the interference margin, which stands for the signal degradation due to the inter- and intra-
cell interference. The same section also proves that in the OFDM case home-cell interference
issue has nothing in common with the aspect known from the UTRA solutions. Furthermore
the orthogonality of subcarriers causes the possibility of assuming there are no intra-cell
interference and the classical IM formula 5.2 cannot be used. Since the intra-cell interference
coefficient will not be further complied the overall noise level should be decreased. Due to the
lack of any OFDM-specific simulator outcomes or proposals the problem has been solved by
the numerical scaling of dependence between the noise rise and cell load. The authors of [16]
analyzed the interference met in WCDMA cells and it seems that own-cell interference
dominates at about 60% area of a cell, whereas the rest (40%) is dominated by other-cell and
other-systems interference. The most important aspect is that this tendency remains valid even
for the various propagation models and cell sizes. This relation refers to the downlink case.
On the other hand there is a possibility of applying advanced interference mitigation schemes
to the LTE network which will additionally reduce the signal degradation among different
cells (see Chapter 5.2). According to the fact that uplink scheduling will not be so advanced in
the initial deployment phase (interference coordination by the power control commands; see
Chapter 5.1.1.1) one can assume higher noise rise for uplink. The conclusion of above
consideration is implemented as the scaling factor sf applied to the IM formula. The new one
is depicted in (6.17).

( )
sf
CellLoad IM = 1 log 10
10
(6.17)

The values of sf corresponding to downlink and uplink are respectively 3 and 3.3. Thus
the LTE-specific interference margin distribution is as presented in Figure 6.3.

62
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9
Cell load
I
n
t
e
r
f
e
r
e
n
c
e

m
a
r
g
i
n

[
d
B
]
no scalling factor scalling factor = 3 scalling factor = 3.3

Figure 6.3 Dependence between the interference margin and cell load
6.1.5 Coverage reliability
The consideration presented in Chapter 6.1.4 allows to estimate the maximum allowable
pathloss however it is not enough to accomplish the final site count. The coverage reliability
has to be determined precisely. To do so the slow fading effect, sometimes called the
shadowing, needs to be illustrated. The electromagnetic wave propagation in the wireless
environment involves the signal quality losses due to many obstructions such as buildings,
trees, inside walls, etc. One kind of them, which is the body loss, has already been accounted
for. Although the rest can also be described in the same manner, a more sophisticated
approach should be applied.
If the signal quality is expressed as the received signal power, it is possible to make the
mathematical representation of it as the Gaussian distribution with a local mean measured in
dBm and standard deviation in dB [16]. It follows from the nature of encountered
disturbances which are characterized by the lognormal distribution. Therefore it is necessary
to define the probability of receiving the signal above the set threshold. A planning tool has to
provide such a functionality in order to deliver the proper cell range outcomes, which should
always be presented with the cell area probability informing a planner about the chance that
the averaged received signal strength is better than the minimum level needed for the
appropriate signal reception within a cell.
The probability density function (PDF) of the normal distribution (the Gaussian
distribution) is written down below in (6.18) [27].


63

|
|
\
|
=
2
2
2
) (
exp
2
1
) (

x
x f (6.18)

The values of and are the parameters of the Gaussian-distributed random variable X.
If the PDF is defined, the probability of exceeding the given threshold is easy to obtain based
on the cumulative distributive function (CDF) for the integration range of (x
0
,) where x
0

determines the mentioned threshold (see equation (6.19)).

|
\
|
+ =
|
|
\
|
=
2 2
1
2
1
2
) (
exp
2
1
) (
0
2
2
0
0

x
erf dx
x
x P
x
(6.19)

) ( erf stands for the error function. It is allowed to interpret (6.19) as the point location
probability with respect to the cell-edge location in other words, the probability of receiving
the signal at the higher level than the threshold at the cell-edge. and parameters in the case
of coverage reliability estimation are the received signal level at the cell-edge P
rx
and the
standard deviation respectively. Although the cell-edge location probability is very useful
information for a network planner, a little bit accurate one might be the area location
probability. The cell area probability formula well-known as the Jakes formula [28] is defined
as (6.20).

(
|
|
\
|
|
\
|
|
\
|
+ =
b
b a
erf
b
b a
a erf P
cell
1
1
2 1
exp ) ( 1
2
1
2
(6.20)

Two more factors need to be explained (see equations (6.21) and (6.22)).

2
rx thr
P P
a

= (6.21)

2
log 10
10
e n
b

= (6.22)

The expression P
thr
-P
rx
corresponds to the difference between the threshold and the
received signal at the cell edge. It is called the shadowing margin or a slow fading margin

64
whereas n stands for the pathloss slope. The recommended values have been taken from [16]
and are listed in Table 6.5.
Table 6.5 Coverage reliability specific parameters
Standard deviation
Environment Pathloss coefficient
Outdoor Indoor
Open 3.2 8 -
Suburban 3.5 8 4
Urban 3.5 7 5
Dense urban 4 7 6

The slow fading margin has to be counted based on the cell-edge probability and the
standard deviation. By using the normal distribution CDF for the mean value =0 and the
standard deviation =1 it is allowed to ask about the value that will be exceeded with the
certain probability. Next, the standard deviation (see Table 6.5) must be taken into account by
multiplying it with the value obtained from the CDF. All values can then be used in (6.20) in
order to provide the cell area probability factor, whereas MAPL has to be reduced by the slow
fading margin (the lognormal fading: LFN).
In the case of indoor scenarios the penetration loss due to the signal degradation during
passing through walls must be consider with the corresponding standard deviation. The
shadowing phenomena variations are also different than for outdoor case. Furthermore, if a
site is to provide coverage in both outdoor and indoor environment, the outdoor standard
deviation stays on for the calculation [16]. Such circumstances involve the usage of the
combined standard deviation evaluated based on (6.23). The rest of shadowing and cell area
probability calculation remains without any changes.

2 2 2
n penetratio indoor outdoor combined
+ + = (6.23)

6.1.6 Cell range and site count
Assuming the homogenous network character, the final site count basis is the cell range
value r calculated by solving the propagation equation for the maximum allowable pathloss
MAPL with the involved shadowing margin LNF as it is shown in (6.24). L(d) stands for the
pathloss function followed from the chosen propagation model.

) (r L LNF MAPL = (6.24)

65

The exact formulas used in the site count calculation are introduced in Table 6.6.
Table 6.6 Cell area, site area and site-to-site distance formulas for different sectorization configurations for
hexagonal network layout
Number of sectors Cell area Site area Site-to-site distance
1 (omni)
2
2
3 3
r S
cell

= cell site
S S =
r D =
2
3

2
2
8
3 3
r S
cell

= cell site
S S = 2
r D = 2
3
2
8
3 3
r S
cell

= r D = 5 . 1
3 (rhomboidal layout)
2
2
3
r S
cell
=
cell site
S S = 3
r D
o
= ) 30 cos( 2
6
2
4
3
r S
cell
= cell site
S S = 6
r D =
2
3

Although a cell range is a sufficient output of a dimensioning tool, the number of sites
which need to be deployed on a certain area would also be quite useful (see equation (6.25)).

|
|
\
|
=
site
area
sites
S
S
RoundUp N (6.25)

6.2 LTE Dimensioning Tool
The dimensioning proposal introduced in Chapter 6.1 becomes useful after its computer
implementation. Due to the fact that the enhancements analysis will be based on the initial
planning results, it is not possible to perform such a study unless there is a suitable and
reliable dimensioning environment. Therefore the most important target is to create the
software which would implement all elements of the previously mentioned methodology.
Other requirements have been established as follows:
The tool should be easy in use user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) is
needed,

66
The calculation process should be divided into several parts, which correspond
with the steps described in Chapter 6.1,
Two work modes should be available for the experts and beginners,
The tool should support the comparison between E-UTRA and UTRA
technologies,
The projects created in the tool should be ready to save as files,
The tool should support the automated analysis.
All of these assumptions have been successfully applied to LTE Dimensioning Tool.
MS Excel has been chosen as the development environment. The Visual Basic for Application
code as well as GUI elements are easy to edit at any time (use Alt+F11 to access Visual Basic
for Application window).
The beginners, who are not familiar with the planning tools, are able to use the wizard,
which is based on a simple input/output layout (see Appendix 3). Those, who want to have the
initiative, should take advantage of LTE, AMC and ListOfValues sheets. The first one is the
main input/output part of the tool, moreover most of intermediate calculation steps are
accessible in order to make the modifications possible (see Appendix 2 for details about the
particular fields meaning). BLER(SINR) curves, which stay crucial for the planning
procedure (see Chapter 6.1) can be replaced by using the AMC sheet, whereas ListOfValues
includes the content of all list-boxes used in GUI.
Every project that has been created using LTE Dimensioning Tool can be saved as XML
file. However one should remember that the only saved values are the inputs corresponding
with the LTE link budget and capacity.
Whilst the LTE tab offers the network configuration as final results, four other tabs
provide the mentioned automated analysis. The process is based on the variable scanning and
the outcomes are presented as charts, which then can be copied and pasted to another
document. In order to use this feature, choose the appropriate sheet (see Appendix 3) and
click Plot, which generates a chart. Thus the coverage and capacity analysis can be supported
by the following characteristics:
Channel bandwidth vs. cell range,
Clutter type vs. cell range,
Number of users vs. cell load (downlink/uplink).
The comparison between E-UTRA and UTRA results is possible by choosing
3G Reference button from the top panel (see Appendix 3). The activated form contains the
useful WCDMA-specific link budget which has been elaborated for the thesis purpose.

67
LTE Dimensioning Tool can be used as a reliable E-UTRA initial planning platform with
the additional support for WCDMA based air interface dimensioning. Its analytic capabilities
are shown in Chapters 6.3 and 6.4.
6.3 E-UTRA coverage capabilities
The requirements laid down by the 3GPP standardization body do not clearly indicate the
possible cell range improvement however all other performance conditions should be met in
the case of the cell range up to 5 km. Let us compare the coverage outcomes based on the E-
UTRA and UTRA air interfaces. Four representative scenarios listed in Table 6.7 have been
chosen to analyze.
Table 6.7 Scenarios configuration for the cell range evaluation
Scenario LTE 5 MHz WCDMA
1 12.2 kbps; 1% BLER; QPSK 1/3 12.2 kbps; no SHO; FFM=4dB; EbN0=7dB;
voice
2 64 kbps; 10% BLER; QPSK 1/3 64 kbps; no SHO; FFM=4dB; EbN0=4dB;
data
3 144 kbps; 10% BLER; QPSK 1/3 144 kbps; no SHO; FFM=4dB; EbN0=2dB;
data
4 384 kbps; 10% BLER; QPSK 1/3 384 kbps; no SHO; FFM=4 dB; EbN0=1dB;
data

Scenario 1 corresponds to the speech service. That it is why 1% BLER is set to provide
the proper transmission reception. In spite of no possibility of BLER setting in the 3G case,
E
b
/N
0
rate can be treated equivalently in order to increase the required signal quality. No soft
handover (no SHO) is assumed for the WCDMA-specific scenarios and the fast fading margin
is about 4 dB [15], which should be suitable for slow moving mobiles (up to 3 km/h). The
activity factors are 0.58 and 0.67 respectively for DL and UL in the case of speech service
(1.0 in UL and DL for data services) [15].The E-UTRA channel bandwidth is set to 5 MHz in
order to be adjusted with the UTRA bandwidth.

68
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
1,2
1,4
1,6
1,8
2
12.2 kbps 64 kbps 144 kbps 384 kbps
Scenario
C
e
l
l

r
a
n
g
e

[
k
m
]
LTE 5 MHz WCDMA

Figure 6.4 Cell range evaluation for different service types
The results depicted in Figure 6.4 have been obtained for the outdoor, dense-urban
environment and all of them are downlink-limited (the smaller cell range has been obtained in
the downlink direction). The carrier frequency is the same for LTE and WCDMA
2100 MHz. As it is seen, the LTE performance is better then the 3G-based one especially in
the case of data services with the high traffic requirements. The reason might be found due to
the cell load aspect. For the same traffic requirement the LTE load formula gives the smaller
results then those for the 3G reference scenario, which are based on the equations presented in
[15]. Hence, the interference margin directly affecting the maximum allowable pathloss is
higher. Besides, the CDMA based air interface suffers from the fast fading effect and an
additional margin must have been accounted for. Notice also that the 3G calculations are done
without considering the macro-diversity gain obtained by the soft handover technique.
Moreover, the lowest modulation scheme (QPSK 1/3) has been chosen for LTE in order to
maximize the coverage area.
The coverage improvement is also observed with respect to the different clutter types and
carrier frequencies. If Scenario 2 is further considered the cell range up to 30 km for the open
area may be met by LTE on condition that the 900 MHz carrier is used (see Figure 6.5).

69
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Dense-urban Urban Suburban Open
Clutter type
C
e
l
l

r
a
n
g
e

[
k
m
]
LTE 900
LTE 1800
LTE 2100
LTE 2500
WCDMA 900
WCDMA 1800
WCDMA 2100
WCDMA 2500

Figure 6.5 Cell range evaluation for different clutter types and carrier frequencies (Scenario 2 64 kbps)
The variable channel bandwidth aspect is also remarkable since such a solution has not
been yet adopted to any of the currently deployed cellular networks. Since 3GPP makes the
channel size changeable the after-effect on the coverage performance should be study. The
simulation has been run for the low and high load case. Figure 6.6 represents the speech
service 12.2 kbps with 15 active cell-edge users whereas Figure 6.7 is plotted for the same
number of users served with 512 kbps. Both cases have been considered in the dense-urban
scenario with 2100 MHz carrier.
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
1,2
1,25 2,5 5 10 15 20
Channel bandwidth [MHz]
C
e
l
l

r
a
n
g
e

[
k
m
]
Indoor Outdoor

Figure 6.6 Cell range evaluation for different channel bandwidths (15 users x 12.2 kbps)

70
0
0,05
0,1
0,15
0,2
0,25
0,3
0,35
5 10 15 20
C
e
l
l

r
a
n
g
e

[
k
m
]
Indoor Outdoor

Figure 6.7 Cell range evaluation for different channel bandwidths (15 users x 512 kbps)
There is no big difference in the scenario characterized by the small resource occupation.
As one may expect the cell load is rapidly raising causing more interference and the coverage
degradation (there are no 1.25 and 2.5 MHz configurations in Figure 6.7 because the traffic
demand is too large for such small channel sizes). Unless the operator is able to deploy the
system with the wider channel, the capacity improvement can still be done by the network
itself through the Adaptive Modulation and Coding. However it will additionally make the
coverage worse, because the higher modulation orders the higher SIR requirement.

71
6.4 E-UTRA capacity capabilities
The evolved UTRA air interface supports multiple modulation schemes introduced in
Chapter 5.1.2 and in the section Capacity limitation in Chapter 6.1, where the mapping
method between BLER and SIR for the various schemes has been presented. Such a feature
influences on the capacity capabilities because there is no more one modulation scheme
defined but this strictly depends on the current signal quality and users requirements. It must
be noticed that the new physical layer provides the modulation differentiation among the
various resource blocks (see Chapter 5.1.2 for more details) however all results presented in
this section are obtained with the assumption of the equal modulation for all physical resource
blocks dedicated for the user traffic.
The LTE capacity study starts with the most elementary physical resources available for
the further consideration. To do so, a brief introduction to the digital modulation is needed.
Two kinds of modulation have been chosen by the 3GPP standardization bodies in order to
support downlink and uplink transmission. These are PSK (Phase Shift Keying) and QAM
(Quadrature Amplitude Modulation). The first one carries the data due to the changes of the
carrier frequency phase, which leads to create the modulation alphabet consisting of four
symbols. If four code-words are accessible, two bits can be represented by a single word (a
modulated symbol). QAM differs because of modulating the amplitude and phase of different
carriers. The quadrature term refers to these carriers which are staying out of phase with the
90
o
shift. In the case of 16QAM and 64QAM one symbol carries four and six bits
respectively. Figure 6.8 depicts the alternative constellations of symbols.

Figure 6.8 Symbol constellations for QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM [6]
The closer the symbols are placed in the constellation the higher probability of distortions
between them which leads to receive the different symbol than the original one. That is why
the SIR requirement is strictly dependent on the chosen modulation scheme and the bit error
rate which is to be achieved. Apart from the modulation alphabet there is one more important

72
parameter of every MCS. It is the coding rate which informs about the number of output bits
describing the input data. On the other words, it is the rate of the information bits to the output
ones. The overhead is the cause of the channel coding (the input information bits are
additionally coded in order to provide the mechanism that can survey the potential
transmission errors). It reduces the effective information data rate.
According to the above consideration the peak data rates achieved in the various LTE
channels (see Table 6.8) have been obtained based on (6.26).

RB
c
symbol
bits
RB
timeslot
TS
sym
RB
sc c
symbol
bits
N
ms
R N
N
t
N N R N
R

=

=
5 . 0
7 12
max
(6.26)

Table 6.8 Peak data rates [Mbps] achieved by the various modulation and coding schemes
Channel bandwidth
MCS
1.25 MHz 2.5 MHz 5 MHz 10 MHz 15 MHz 20 MHz
QPSK 1/3 0,67 1,34 2,80 5,60 8,40 11,20
QPSK 1/2 1,01 2,02 4,20 8,40 12,60 16,80
QPSK 2/3 1,34 2,69 5,60 11,20 16,80 22,40
QPSK 3/4 1,51 3,02 6,30 12,60 18,90 25,20
QPSK 4/5 1,61 3,23 6,72 13,44 20,16 26,88
16QAM 1/3 1,34 2,69 5,60 11,20 16,80 22,40
16QAM 1/2 2,02 4,03 8,40 16,80 25,20 33,60
16QAM 2/3 2,69 5,38 11,20 22,40 33,60 44,80
16QAM 3/4 3,02 6,05 12,60 25,20 37,80 50,40
16QAM 4/5 3,23 6,45 13,44 26,88 40,32 53,76
64QAM 1/2 3,02 6,05 12,60 25,20 37,80 50,40
64QAM 2/3 4,03 8,06 16,80 33,60 50,40 67,20
64QAM 4/5 4,84 9,68 20,16 40,32 60,48 80,64

73
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
1,25 2,5 5 10 15 20
P
e
a
k

d
a
t
a

r
a
t
e

[
M
b
p
s
]
QPSK 1/3
QPSK 1/2
QPSK 2/3
QPSK 3/4
QPSK 4/5
16QAM 1/3
16QAM 1/2
16QAM 2/3
16QAM 3/4
16QAM 4/5
64QAM 1/2
64QAM 2/3
64QAM 4/5

Figure 6.9 Peak data rate achieved by the various modulation and coding schemes
Notice that the results shown in Figure 6.9 refer to the theoretical data rate using the total
transmission bandwidth. The controlling overhead has not been taken into account. The
highest modulation scheme (64QAM 4/5) provides the data rate up to 80 Mbps however it
also requires SIR larger by 20 dB relative to QPSK 1/3 (see Figure 6.2). Therefore the overall
throughput gain has to be a kind of compromise between the coverage and capacity
capabilities.
One of the most important measures describing the digital communication system
performance is a spectral efficiency (SE) the unit of which is bps/Hz. It denotes the system
achievements according to the amount of data expressed in bits which is carried by the
bandwidth of 1 Hz during 1 s. Other words, it is the throughput per 1 Hz frequency range.
Thus it is possible to make the complex comparisons between the digital technologies which
usually vary the transmission technique, radio link access, achieved coverage, provided
services, etc. Using the peak data rate values R
max
(B), where B denotes the channel bandwidth
(see Table 6.8), one can obtain the spectral efficiency of every modulation and coding scheme
by computing (6.27).

B
B R
SE
) (
max
= (6.27)

No system overhead has been accounted for during calculating the R
max
values thus it
does not influence on the spectral efficiency SE. For that reason the outcome should be
comprehended only as a theoretical value with the assumption of the overhead absence.

74
Notice that the calculations for 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz of bandwidth will result in the same
numbers however in the case of 1.25 and 2.5 MHz it will slightly differ from the rest because
the ratio between the channel size and the number of available resource blocks changes. In
spite of that the spectral efficiency for the channel wider than 5 MHz is introduced in
Table 6.9.
Table 6.9 The spectral efficiency based on the peak data rates
without the overhead consideration
MCS SE
[bps/Hz]
QPSK 1/3 0.56
QPSK 1/2 0.84
QPSK 2/3 1.12
QPSK 3/4 1.26
QPSK 4/5 1.34
16QAM 1/3 1.12
16QAM 1/2 1.68
16QAM 2/3 2.24
16QAM 3/4 2.52
16QAM 4/5 2.69
64QAM 1/2 2.52
64QAM 2/3 3.36
64QAM 4/5 4.03

The study on the spectral efficiency which provides the reliable system evaluation can
also be done with respect to the maximum capacity bound which is determined by the
Shannon formula [29] (see equation (6.28)). C denotes the maximum capacity of the channel
limited by the bandwidth B expressed in Hz, while the signal quality is measured as Signal to
Noise Ratio (SNR) measured in watts.

( ) SNR B C + = 1 log
2
(6.28)

The value obtained from equation (6.28) cannot be ever exceeded in the real environment
according to the Shannon-Hartley theorem [30]. Thus it is worth to analyze how efficient is
the LTE physical layer when compared to the upper bounds. Moreover, the authors of [31]
present the modified LTE-specific Shannon formula based on the effective channel utilization
B
eff
and the SNR efficiency SNR
eff
. The first mentioned coefficient corresponds to the
frequency resources reduction because of the aspects such as the cyclic prefix insertion, the

75
pilot and signalling overhead and the filter realization. The second one is related to the
essence of the Shannon theorem which says that the expression log
2
(1+SNR) is fully useful in
the case of the infinite code block size in an AWGN (Addititive White Gaussian Noise)
channel [30]. Since the LTE scheduling mechanism can change the instantaneous transport
block size the additional correction factor SNR
eff
should be applied to (6.28). The modified
formula is shown in (6.29).

|
|
\
|
+ =
eff
eff LTE
SNR
SNR
B SE 1 log
2
(6.29)

Note that (6.29) is used directly for the spectral efficiency evaluation. The authors of [31]
have tried to obtain the parameters (B
eff
, SNR
eff
) which would describe the reality as much as
possible. The adjustment has been done with respect to the link level simulator outcomes and
the final results are shown below in Table 6.10.
Table 6.10 The best fit parameters for LTE-specific Shannon formula
RR FDPS
Scenerio
B
eff
SNR
eff
B
eff
SNR
eff

SIMO in AWGN channel 0.75 1.25 0.75 1.25
SISO 0.56 2 0.62 0.62
SIMO 0.62 1.8 0.67 0.78

B
eff
denotes the percentage of the overall system channel which is used to carry the user
traffic. The detailed explanation of the above parameters can be found in [31], the authors of
which have also cleared the reasons of modifying the classical Shannon capacity formula.
In order to show the great improvement of the LTE capacity capabilities the following
calculations have been made. Based on (6.29) the upper capacity bound has been established
using B
eff
=1 and SNR
eff
=0 dB (1 W). The used SNR values for the particular MCSs have been
obtained from the curves presented in Figure 6.2 for the target BLER of 10%. Hence the
sample calculation in the case of QPSK 1/3 is as shown in (6.30) and (6.31).

dB BLER Estimate SNR 25 . 1 %) 10 ( = = = (6.30)

Hz
bps
SE
SNR
81 . 0 ) 75 . 0 1 ( log 10 1 log
2
10
2
= + =
|
|
\
|
+ = (6.31)


76
Next, the LTE-specific Shannon formula has been applied in order to account for the
bandwidth and SNR efficiency. Since the performance evaluation process considers only the
SISO solution (1RX 1TX in uplink and downlink) the corresponding parameters might be
chosen. The question is what kind of scheduler should be selected. Frequency Domain Packet
Scheduling (FDPS) is much more advanced than the Round Robin algorithm. After the time
domain scheduler sets the number of multiplexed users, the frequency domain entity tries to
maximize the spectral efficiency due to the most suitable user data allocation. It is possible
because of the channel quality feedback (CQI) provided by the users. Therefore, in spite of
the hardware complexity the FDPS algorithm allows to achieve the additional multi-user
diversity gain. Apart from that, the mentioned scheduler type contributes to increasing the
SNR efficiency by reducing the SNR variability within an OFDM symbol.
0,00
1,00
2,00
3,00
4,00
5,00
6,00
Q
P
S
K

1
/
3
Q
P
S
K

1
/
2
Q
P
S
K

2
/
3
Q
P
S
K

3
/
4
Q
P
S
K

4
/
5
1
6
Q
A
M

1
/
3
1
6
Q
A
M

1
/
2
1
6
Q
A
M

2
/
3
1
6
Q
A
M

3
/
4
1
6
Q
A
M

4
/
5
6
4
Q
A
M

1
/
2
6
4
Q
A
M

2
/
3
6
4
Q
A
M

4
/
5
MCS
S
p
e
c
t
r
a
l

e
f
f
i
c
i
e
n
c
y

[
b
p
s
/
H
z
]
Theoretical Shannon Shannon(0,62; 0,62)

Figure 6.10 LTE spectral efficiency based on theoretical peak data rates and Shannon capacity bounds
The spectral efficiency based on the Shannon bound is depicted in Figure 6.10 as the red
curve which points out the maximum allowable values for the particular MCS in the case of
10% BLER. The blue solid one has been plotted with the allowance for the LTE-specific
formula with the assumption of (B
eff
; SNR
eff
)=(0.62; 0.62). The dashed line shows the values
obtain based on (6.27). The fact that both Shannon(0.62; 0.62) and Theoretical curves are
pretty much the same proves that the modified Shannon formula parameters are adapted quite
well. Therefore it can be used as a better alternative comparing to the classical Shannon
formula.

77
Some clear requirements for the LTE air interface performance have been introduced in
Chapter 2. The target cell throughputs for downlink and uplink are respectively 100 Mbps and
50 Mbps (an UE with two RX antennas and one TX antenna). The peak data rate in the case
of 20 MHz bandwidth and the highest MCS is about 80 Mbps. Note that the SISO (Single
Input Single Output) scheme is the only one considered and more advanced multiple antennas
solutions should double the achievable capacity. Let us however focus on the limitation
caused by the pilot and controlling overhead which will decrease the amount of resources
dedicated for the user traffic. Therefore a short study on the dependence between the number
of active users and the cell load has been made. The 100% load means that there are no more
physical resources available for any traffic and the cell is fully loaded.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1 6 11 16 21 26 31 36 41 46
Number of Users
C
e
l
l

L
o
a
d
QPSK 1/3
QPSK 1/2
QPSK 2/3
QPSK 3/4
QPSK 4/5
16QAM 1/3
16QAM 1/2
16QAM 2/3
16QAM 3/4
16QAM 4/5
64QAM 1/2
64QAM 2/3
64QAM 4/5

Figure 6.11 Downlink cell load (each user demands 1 Mbps effective throughput)


78
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1 6 11 16 21
Number of Users
C
e
l
l

L
o
a
d
QPSK 1/3
QPSK 1/2
QPSK 2/3
QPSK 3/4
QPSK 4/5
16QAM 1/3
16QAM 1/2
16QAM 2/3
16QAM 3/4
16QAM 4/5

Figure 6.12 Uplink cell load (each user demands 1 Mbps effective throughput)
Figure 6.11 and Figure 6.12 show the quasi-linear dependence. Since the traffic demand
is set to 1 Mbps, the downlink transmission throughput achieves up to 50 Mbps whereas 25
Mbps is possible in the uplink direction. Notice that these values relate to the total user traffic
per a single sector and they might be twice as large in the case of MIMO considerations.

79
7 Conclusions
The assumptions for the following master thesis, established in Chapter 1, have been
successfully fulfilled and in spite of many difficulties which were encountered, the principal
matter has been considered in details.
The study on subject has begun with the literature research, which unfortunately verified
some concerns related to the lack of circumstantial information about the E-UTRA air
interface. On the other hand the current standardization stage provides almost all needed data
in order to start the consideration applying to the evolved physical layer of the Long Term
Evolution network. The particulars have been divided into several sections. Chapter 3 can be
seen as a kind of introduction to the physical layer aspects. Two radio frame types have been
introduced, however only the FDD-specific one stays important for further considerations,
which set TDD mode aside. One can also find out that LTE will be deployed using the same
frequency bands as the current 2G/3G technologies with the additional advantage of scalable
channel size from 1.25 MHz to 20 MHz. Thus, it should become accessible for operators who
dispose wide frequency ranges as well as those who are more limited. Such an increase of the
available channel sizes was possible due to the OFDM techniques adaptation. That is why
Chapters 3.3 and 3.4 raise issues of OFDMA transmission scheme for downlink and
SC-FDMA proposal for uplink. The introduced resource units (e.g. resource elements,
resource-element groups, resource blocks) make the signal representation very clear.
Moreover the suggested resource grid allows to analyze the physical resources in time and
frequency domain simultaneously with user multiplexing considered.
Chapter 4 is unnecessary to understand the capacity limitations of the discussed system.
Apart from the purposes of every physical channel defined by the 3GPP standardization body,
the mentioned chapter includes a description of mapping procedure. It is needed to estimate
the resource amount dedicated to system signaling. The exact equations corresponding to this
issue have been formulated in Chapter 6.1.3 and they are crucial for the capacity evaluation.
It is assumed that LTE network should be much more adaptive compared to the previous
UTRA releases. The examples of mechanisms which make use of OFDM-based transmission
scheme have been discussed in Chapter 5. The Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC),
which is applied to the shared channels, caused a lot of problems during designing the
dimensioning methodology because of two facts:
It is allowed to assign various modulation and coding schemes (MCS) to the
resource blocks dedicated for different users,

80
The MCS assigned to the particular user can be changed for the consecutive TTIs
(Time Transmission Intervals).
Therefore, it has been assumed that all multiplexed users are homogeneous and
characterized by the same traffic demands and the chosen MCS. On the other hand, it was
possible to comply the service type in the tool implementation by mapping between the target
BLER (Block Error Rate) and the required SINR (Signal to Interference Noise Ratio) value
for the chosen modulation and coding scheme (see Chapter 6.1.3).
According to OFDM adaptation, the influence on interference has became an issue of
Chapter 5.2. It seems the transmission on multiple subcarriers gives a great opportunity to
design interference mitigation schemes exploiting the advantages of frequency division
multiple access. Whilst the home-cell interference does not appear in the case of
OFDMA/SC-FDMA, the other-cell interference can be efficiently decreased by using the
Hybrid Inter Cell Interference Mitigation Scheme in downlink and power control with load
indicator exchange in uplink (see Chapter 5.1.1.1). Due to the complexity of the first solution
one can suppose that downlink noise rise will be smaller than in uplink. Both values will be
much smaller compared to the WCDMA case. Therefore it has been decided to use the
WCDMA-specific formula with an additional scaling factor (see Chapter 6.1.4).
Although the planning methodology was only the intermediate step in the LTE
enhancements evaluation which was the main goal it is allowed to say this is the essence.
Designing the particular planning methods was undoubtedly the hardest part, however the
complete procedure has been made. First, the transmitter and receiver for uplink and downlink
are modeled by calculating output powers and sensitivities. It is worth to be mentioned that
the sensitivity estimation takes into account the effective bandwidth consumed by user traffic.
Next, the cell load is computed based on the defined traffic demand and MCS. It directly
impacts on the interference margin, which reduces the maximum allowable pathloss. After
considering shadowing effect (log-normal fading) site count for the given area can be
completed. Chapter 6.1 dedicated to this issue includes a detailed description of all the
algorithm elements.
The consequence of the mentioned methodology is LTE Dimensioning Tool, the
MS Excel workbook which implements the entire planning procedure. Its educational
character is undeniable because of the specific structure, which gives the possibility to modify
both the Visual Basic for Application code and the worksheets content. Quite interesting
feature is a set of predefined charts, which are allowed to be dynamically changed if the user
puts new input data. They provide automatic generation of the following characteristics (see
Appendix 3):

81
Channel bandwidth vs. cell range,
Clutter type vs. cell range,
Number of users vs. load (downlink/uplink).
Apart from such advantages, the tool is fully useful dimensioning platform based on the
current standardization stage. It is important that the detailed knowledge is not necessary,
because most of the LTE-specific parameters can be chosen from the lists of available values
(see Appendix 2). All of them have been gathered in the ListOfValues sheet in order to make
them easy to edit. The tool has been created in MS Excel thus it does not involve any
additional software except MS Office 2003/2007 (see Appendix 1).
All the required analysis have been performed using LTE Dimensioning Tool and it
seems that the requirements established by 3GPP can be met in the real deployment. Coverage
and capacity considerations are separated respectively in Chapters 6.2 and 6.4. The coverage
capabilities expressed as cell range show the advantage compared to the UMTS system.
Deploying LTE in the band of 900 MHz will allow to achieve a range up to 30 km in the case
of open environment. Such coverage capability might lead to the cost minimization. The fact
of home-cell interference compensation has a significant influence on the system
performance. More users can be multiplexed and served by a single cell without the undesired
effect of cell breathing, which appear in CDMA based networks.
The capacity considerations in Chapter 6.4 have been divided into two aspects. The first
one is a spectrum efficiency. Although the tool does not provide the direct simulation of
spectrum efficiency, it was possible to estimate its theoretical values (see Figure 6.10). One
should remember that all the results are obtained for the SISO (Single Input Single Output)
case which means one transmitting antenna and one receiving antenna. The second issue that
has been raised in Chapter 6.4 is the dependence between number of active users and cell
load. This calculations have been performed with full respect to all of the parameters
including the signaling overhead, the chosen MCS and traffic demand. The extracted results
seem to verify the given requirements for cell throughput (see Chapter 2). The values of 50
Mbps in downlink and 25 Mbps in uplink have been obtained based on the implemented SISO
scenario, therefore it is allowed to double them in the case of MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple
Output) solutions.
One can claim that the evolved UTRA technology is the right step towards faster, more
reliable, cheaper systems in the near future. Therefore the deployment should be continued
because of the great potential due to the new solutions applied to the air interface. Although
the System Architecture Evolution was not the matter of this thesis, it must be noted that it
should make the network architecture simpler, more clear and adapted to support the all-IP

82
traffic among all the entities. In the meanwhile, it is worth to focus on the evaluation of every
new feature introduced or proposed in the case of the Long Term Evolution release to make it
best as possible. This master thesis gives a great opportunity to start such a study.
A few aspects which turn up during the work require further work and finding better
solution. LTE Dimensioning Tool, in spite of its complexity, does not support the multiple
antenna schemes which have been proposed by 3GPP standardization body and thus it cannot
provide the outcomes related to the MIMO solutions. It will require the appropriate
modifications applied especially to the system overhead estimation. Moreover the AMC
mechanism could be implemented by defining different user classes, each one with its own
traffic demand and MCS. It would also be better if the link budget considerations are
performed separately at least for the physical control channels since they are not modulated
by the same MCSs as assigned to user traffic, thus the required SINR values are different.
Whilst the mentioned works are only a kind of extensions to the current version of LTE
Dimensioning Tool, much more sophisticated approach could be the detailed study on inter-
cell interference and the attempt of interference mitigation schemes modeling. The references
which appear in Chapter 5.2 include some suggestions about this issue. Completely different
way of future research might be the LTE system level simulator design and the analysis of the
entire network behavior.
While the standardization process is continued there will be increasingly more requests
for such investigations.


83
8 References
[1] 3GPP RP-040461, Proposed Study Item on Evolved UTRA and UTRAN, TSG-RAN
Meeting #26, Athens, Greece, December 2004.
[2] 3GPP TR 25.913 V7.3.0, Requirements for Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA) and Evolved
UTRAN (E-UTRAN) (Release 7), March 2006.[4]
[3] 3GPP TR 25.814 V7.1.0, Physical layer aspects for evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio
Access (UTRA) (Release 7), September, 2006.
[4] Lasse W., UMTS/LTE flexible capacity within the harmonised bands, Ericsson, Warsaw,
20th

June 2007 (thesis found at: www.umts-
forum.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,1759/Itemid,12/)
[5] 3GPP TS 36.211 V8.2.0, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA);
Physical Channels and Modulation (Release 8), March, 2008.
[6] Dahlman E., Parkvall S., Skold J., Beming P., 3G Evolution HSPA and LTE for Mobile
Broadband, Academic Press , First Edition 2007.
[7] Proakis J.G., Digital Communications Fourth Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001.
[8] 3GPP TS 36.104 V8.0.0, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Base
Station (BS) radio transmission and reception (Release 8), December 2007.
[9] Holma H., Toskala A., HSDPA/HSUPA for UMTS. High Speed Radio Access for Mobile
Communications, John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
[10] 3GPP R1-040522, Comparison of PAR and Cubic Metric for Power De-Rating, TSG
RAN Meeting #37, Montreal, Canada, May 2004.
[11] 3GPP TS 36.300 V8.3.0, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) and
Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN); Overall description;
Stage 2 (Release 8), December 2007.
[12] Masson R., EUTRA RACH within the LTE system, Masters Degree Project, Stockholm,
2006.
[13] 3GPP TS 36.213 V8.2.0, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA);
Physical layer procedures (Release 8), March 2008.
[14] Nielsen T.T., Wigard J., Performance Enhancements in a Frequency Hopping GSM
Network, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston 2000.
[15] Laiho J., Wacker A., Novosad T., Radio Network Planning and Optimization for UMTS.
Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
[16] Nawrocki M. J., Dohler M., Aghvami A. H., Understanding UMTS Radio Network.
Modelling, Planning and Automated Optimisation. Theory and Practise, John Wiley &
Sons, 2006.
[17] Zhu J., Liu G., Wang Y., Zhang P., A Hybrid Inter-cell Interference Mitigation Scheme
for OFDMA based E-UTRA Downlink, IEEE, 2006.


84
[18] 3GPP R1-050833, Interference Mitigation in Evolved UTRA/UTRAN, TSG-RAN WG1
#42, London, England, August 2005.
[19] 3GPP R1-050629, Inter-cell Interference Mitigation, TSG-RAN WG1 Ad Hoc on LT,
Sophia Antipolis, France, June 2005.
[20] Liu G., Zhu J., Jiang F., Zhou B., Wang Y., Zhang P., Initial Performance Evaluation on
TD-SCDMA Long Term Evolution System, IEEE, 2006.
[21] Antennas for mobile communication. Catalogues/Brochures. Kathrein
(found at: http://www.kathrein.de/en/mca/index.htm)
[22] Base Stations Antenna Systems. CompScope, Andrew
(found at: http://aw.commscope.com/eng/product/antennas/bsa/index.html)
[23] 3GPP TR 36.803 V0.3.0, Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); User
Equipment (UE) radio transmission and reception (Release 8), May 2007.
[24] 3GPP TR 25.892 V6.0.0, Feasibility Study for Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) for UTRAN enhancement (Release 6), June 2004.
[25] Moiseev S.N., Filin S.A., Kondakov M.S., Garmonov A.V., Savinkow A.Y., Park Y.S.,
Yim D.H., Lee J.H., Cheon S.H., Han K.T., System Load Model for the OFDMA
Network, IEEE, August 2006.
[26] Elayoubi S-E., Fourestie B., Haddada O.B., Performance evaluation of frequency
planning schemes in OFDMA-based networks.
[27] Krysicki W., Bartos J., Dyczka W., Krlikowska K., Wasilewski M., Rachunek
prawdopodobiestwa i statystyka matematyczna w zadaniach, Wydawnictwo Naukowe
PWN, Wyd. IX, Warszawa 2002.
[28] Jakes W., Microwave Mobile Communications, John Wiley & Sons, 1974.
[29] Verdu S., Spectral Efficiency in the Wideband Regime, IEEE, June 2002.
[30] Shannon C. E., Communication in the presence of noise, IEEE, January 1949.
[31] Morgensen P., Na W., Kovacs I. Z., Frederiksen F., Pokhariyal A., Pedersen K. I.,
Kolding T., Hugl K., Kuusela M., LTE Capacity compared to the Shannon Bound, IEEE
2007.

85
Appendix 1 LTE Dimensioning Tool system requirements
LTE Dimensioning Tool is an integrate part of the following master thesis. It is created
using Microsoft Excel 2003. It has been tested for the following system configurations:
MS Windows XP with MS Office 2003,
MS Windows Vista with MS Office 2003,
MS Windows Vista with MS Office 2007.
The package language does not matter for the proper tool work, however it should be
noticed that the LTE Dimensioning Tool includes the English GUI only.
If the tool generates the #NAME? errors, the reason could be the disabled Analysis
ToolPak. In order to turn it on follow these steps:
Run MS Excel,
Choose Tools/Add-ons from the top menu,
Select Analysis ToolPak and click OK,
Restart the program and open LTE Dimensioning Tool.


86
Appendix 2 LTE Dimensioning Tool GUI description
According to many different notions used in the graphical user interface of LTE
Dimensioning Tool this annex should help you to understand the meaning of them for the
proper values insertion and checkbox selection.
Table A2.1 Fields description
Field name Description
Max TX Power
The maximum power which can be assigned to the traffic channel.
UL use the values corresponding to the appropriate UE Power Class (see Table
6.1) or 21 dBm for handset terminals or 24 dBm for PC cards.
DL in the case of comparison between LTE and WCDMA results, use 32 dBm for
LTE base station.
Total TX Power
The maximum power of a base station transmitter. This amount is always shared
between the traffic and control channels.
DL 43 dBm
Signalling Power Ratio
The percentage of the base station power amount to be consumed by the signalling
information.
DL 10%
Max TX Power per User
The maximum power of the base station dedicated for a single user.
DL 1.5 W
Antenna Gain
The gain of the antenna used in an UE or a Node B.
In the case of base stations antenna it should be kept in mind the dependency
between the chosen network layout and the antenna gain. If 3- or 6-sectors are
chosen the antenna gain should be increased because of a greater antenna directivity.
Feeder Loss
The loss occurred because of the hardware connection between the antenna and the
transmitter.
MHA Insertion Loss
Although MHA (Masthead Amplifier) is used to improve the uplink performance of
a base station, it also causes the additional loss in the downlink direction.
DL 0 dB if MHA is not present, about 3.3 dB if 5.5 dB MHA Insertion Gain is set
Body Loss
The vicinity of a human body may cause the additional signal degradation however
it is only applicable in the case of an UEs transmitter or receiver
DL, UL 3 dB for handset terminals, 0 dB for PC cards
Total EIRP
Total transmitter output power which is emitted with the allowance for the antenna
gain and the feeder loss
Diversity Antenna Gain
The gain of applying diversity techniques in the case of the base station receiver
and/or transmitter (multi-antenna solution) in order to mitigate the effects of
multipath fading.
DL, UL 0 dB in the case of comparison between LTE and WCDMA (no antenna
diversity)
MHA Insertion Gain
The gain of the Masthead Amplifier (Tower Mounted Amplifier) usage in order to
improve the uplink performance.
UL 0 dB if MHA is not present, 5.5 dB for macrocells planning, rural, suburban.
Bandwidth
The available system bandwidth which can be occupied by the traffic and
controlling transmission. The same for DL and UL.
LTE case 1.25, 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20 MHz. In the case of comparison between LTE
and WCDMA set 5 MHz
Bandwidth for User
Traffic
The bandwidth which is effectively used to carry the user traffic
Depends on the number of resource blocks used by the user traffic. (One single
resource block occupies 180 kHz).

87
Thermal Noise Density
The thermal noise power spectrum density in related to 1 Hz bandwidth
-174 dBm
FFT Size
The number of points of Fast Fourier Transform according to an OFDM air
interface. One should not understand this value as the number of available
subcarriers.
Depends on the chosen channel bandwidth.
Number of Resource
Blocks
The number of physical resource blocks available within the whole bandwidth.
Specified by 3GPP for the various channel bandwidth configurations.
Depends on the chosen channel bandwidth.
Noise Figure
The additional noise in the receiver caused by the component hardware equipment
(filters, synthesizer, etc.)
Noise Density The thermal noise density which is limited by the receiver filter bandwidth.
Noise Power The receiver noise floor with the allowance for Noise Figure
Required SIR
The Signal-to-Interference Ratio set automatically based on the chosen modulation
and coding scheme (MCS) and BLER (Block Error Rate). It is the SIR for the
overall condition of the total channel size. It does not refer to a single subcarrier.
SIR per one subcarrier needs to be mapped on Effective SIR using Exponential
Effective SIR Mapping EESM.
Required EbN0
The E
b
/N
0
stands for the ratio of the bit energy to the noise energy.
These are recommended values for the various services: 7 dB for voice 12.2 kbps, 5
dB for data 64 kbps, 2 dB for data 144 kbps, 1 dB for data 384 dB.
Processing Gain
The gain characterized for CDMA-based networks determines the ratio of the user
data to the CDMA chip rate after the de-spreading process.
Sensitivity
The receiver sensitivity at the antenna connector informs about the minimum signal
level at the receiver input for which the reception is still possible with the minimum
acceptable quality.
Cyclic Prefix
The guard interval between the consecutive OFDM symbols applied in order to
prevent the multipath effect.
Choose Normal CP in the case of non-MBMS dimensioning.
Number of Symbols per
Timeslot
The number of OFDM symbols transmitted during one timeslot.
Modulation and Coding
Scheme
The modulation and coding scheme defines the modulation order and the coding rate
for all resource elements dedicated for the data traffic of all users.
Modulated Symbol
Capacity
The number of information bits carried by a single symbol modulated based on the
chosen MCS.
Resource Block Capacity
The number of information bits carried by a single physical resource block with the
assumption that all resource elements are modulated in the same way.
Resource Block
Throughput
The number of information bits carried by a single physical resource block during
one second.
Pilot and Controlling
Overhead
The percentage of the available channel bandwidth corresponded to the pilot and
signaling data.
System Throughput
The throughput related to a single cell (sector) with the allowance for the system
overhead and the number of retransmissions.
Target BLER
The Block Error Rate for the considered service used in Adaptive Modulation and
Coding implementation in order to choose the corresponding SIR value.
Number of Active Users The number of active terminals at the cell-edge.
User Data Rate The traffic demand of a single cell-edge user.
Traffic Demand The total traffic demand of all cell-edge users in a cell.

88
Number of Used Resource
Blocks
The number of physical resource blocks which are assigned to the user traffic.
Cell Load The ratio between the traffic demand and the available system throughput.
Interference Margin The margin which informs about the possible noise rise according to the cell load.
Additional Gain/Loss The additional gain or loss which is next considered in pathloss estimation.
i factor
The other-to-own interference ratio.
Depends on the propagation environment, especially overlapping areas, the number
of sectors in the Node B and the traffic distribution.
UL 0.55 for macro omni sites, 0.65 for macro 3-sectors sites
DL 0.55 for macro omni sites, 0.65 for macro 3-sectors sites
Activity factor
The percentage of speech frames time occupied by the speech connection with
respect to the total connection time (applicable only in discontinuous transmission
DTX)
UL 0.67 for speech, 1.0 for data
DL 0.58 for speech, 1.0 for data
Orthogonality factor
Orthogonality factor indicates the signal degradation due to the multipath
propagation which leads to loosing the orthogonality between the codes.
The value 1 means the full orthogonality, whereas 0 means no orthogonality.
0.5 is recommended for the dimensioning purpose.
SHO Gain
The gain of soft handover used in order to mitigate the shadowing fading effect
though receiving the information from more than one Node B.
Recommended range of used values: 2-3 dB
Fast Fading Margin
The margin which stands for the power control headroom using to compensate the
loss due to the fast fading.
The value should be higher for slowly moving mobiles because there is a small
possibility of moving out of the area affected by the deep fades. These
recommended values: 4-5 dB for a velocity of 3 km/h, 1-2 dB for a velocity of 50
km/h, 0 dB for a velocity above 120 km/h.
Max Pathloss
The maximum value of pathloss which can affect the mobile terminal. This field
does not consider the coverage reliability estimation.
Cell Edge Probability The probability of receiving the signal above the set threshold at the cell-edge.
Standard Deviation The standard deviation of the slow fading margin (log-normal fading).
Slow Fading Margin The margin which makes allowance for the shadowing effect.
n factor Pathloss coefficient used for the coverage reliability estimation.
Penetration Loss The signal degradation caused by passing though the building walls.
Penetration Loss
Standard Deviation
The standard deviation of the penetration loss.
Combined Standard
Deviation
The standard deviation of the slow fading margin in the case of indoor environment.
Max Allowable Pathloss The maximum value of pathloss with the assumed cell area probability.
Cell Range
The range of a single cell covered by the Node B which assures the set cell-edge
user traffic.
Cell Area
The area of the cell characterized by Cell Range.
Depends on the chosen site layout.
Site Area The area covered by a single Node B.
Site-to-Site Distance The distance between the neighboring Node Bs.
Number of Cells The number of cells within the deployment area.

89
Number of Sites The number of sites within the deployment area.
Frequency The carrier frequency used by the system.
BS Antenna Height
The height of the Node B.
30 m is recommended.
MS Antenna Height
The height of the UE.
1.5 m is recommended.
Clutter Type The parameter determines the correction factor for the propagation model.
Site Configuration The number of cells (sectors) served by a single Node B.
Area Size The size of deployment area in order to calculate the number of required sites.

90
Appendix 3 LTE Dimensioning Tool guide
LTE Dimensioning Tool has been used to evaluate the expected performance gain of E-
TRA air interface and compare the results with the WCDMA-specific outcomes. The tool is
also useful in the case of the site count based on the link budget and the capacity estimation.
The top panel of the LTE worksheet gives the possibility of saving/loading the project,
enabling a simple dimensioning wizard and showing/hiding 3G reference form.

Figure A3.1 LTE Dimensioning Tool top panel
Save Project As XMLallows you to save all the input values you are watching at to a
XML file. The disk location is up to you. Such a file can be used to reconstruct the previous
project configuration by selecting Load Project From XML. If you want to compare the LTE
performance with the WCDMA-based system you should use the option of the Show/Hide 3G
Reference button which causes enabling/disabling the columns on the right side of the LTE-
specific form.
The layout of both LTE and 3G forms is depicted in Figure A3.2.


91

Figure A3.2 LTE Dimensioning Tool layout
The above layout is available after enabling the 3G Reference Scenario form. The entire
calculation process is divided into several main groups which are corresponding to the most
important steps of the initial dimensioning procedure. The white fields stand for the input
data, the values which can be changed by the planner. The rest of parameters are intermediate,
however some of them, marked by the green colour, determine the output results.
In the comparison mode there are several rows distinguished by the different pattern. It
means that there are no equivalent parameters for LTE and WCDMA.
The windows-based form is also available in order to provide a simple view of the input
parameters. The window is visible after clicking the Show Wizard button. It is shown in
Figure A3.3.

92

Figure A3.3 LTE Dimensioning Tool simple wizard. Input data
All values in the textboxes and checkboxes are taken directly from the LTE worksheet
and they can be changed. If the corresponding outcomes are needed, one should choose the
Calculate button and the tool will switch to the Output data tab (see Figure A3.4).


93

Figure A3.4 LTE Dimensioning Tool simple wizard. Output data
The whole dimensioning workbook contains several worksheets. The functionality of site
count is included in the LTE worksheet however the other ones also provide quite interesting
features which are listed in Table A3.1.
Table A3.1 Chart generation feature
Worksheet name Description
Bandwidth vs. Cellrange The scanning of Bandwidth value is available with
automatic chart generation for indoor and outdoor cell
ranges.
Clutter Type vs. Cellrange The scanning of Clutter Type value is available with
automatic chart generation for outdoor cell ranges.
Number of Users vs. DL Load The scanning of Number of Active Users value is
available and it is done for every possible modulation
and coding scheme to evaluate the cell load for the
particular MCS and the number of users. Automatic
chart generation is also implemented.
Number of Users vs. UL Load The same functionality as for the previous sheet,
however the uplink direction is taken into
consideration.

Three remaining sheets which are AMC, SystemOverhead and ListOfValues should not be
changed because they are fulfilled based on the current standardization phase.

Master Thesis

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Master Thesis

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Performance Gain Analysis for 3G Long

Term Evolution Networks

Potrebbero piacerti anche