Fundamentals of Communications

16: Cellular Radio Principles

EE3158
Professor Ian Groves
ian.groves@kcl.ac.uk www.ctr.kcl.ac.uk/members

Cellular Radio
      Frequency Re-use Interference limitation Cell repeat patterns Frequency Planning Coverage / capacity / growth Handover

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 2

Radio Systems
 Fixed telephone network runs wires to every household  Suppose we give every household their own allocation of radio spectrum using analogue speech of 4 kHz bandwidth (single sideband)  12.5 million households (UK only)x 4 kHz = 50 GHz!  Clearly impractical!
 no other services possible using radio transmission  whole range of radio transmission modes to address  and most of the spectrum unused most of the time!  remember Erlang and traffic statistics

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 3

Capacity Limited
 Early Mobile Radio Networks
    used a single high power radio transmitter to cover a large area few channels for many people range limited by thermal (and man made) noise example 100 W Tx at 30m, 30 km range, 25 kHz FM, 2 m Rx:
     kTB = 1.3803x10-23 x 290 x 25,000 = -130 dBm. transmit power 10log(100/10-3) = 50 dBm path loss over say 30 km: 40 log 30,000 - 20 log 60 = 143 dB receive signal = +50 - 143 = -93 dBm receive S/N ratio = 37 dB (17 dB system plus 20 dB fade margin)

 1976 Bell Mobile Phone service in New York had 12 channels, serving 543 customer, waiting list of 3,700 and market of 10 million!! - CAPACITY LIMITED
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 4

Cellular systems
 Apart from the capacity limitation of these early systems, the other characteristic was that the carrier frequency was only re-used many tens or hundreds of km away so that no co channel interference would arise. [co channel = same frequency)  Cellular systems are based on the concept of dividing the geographic service area into a number of cells and placing a low power transmitter in each of these, usually at the geographic centre.  The transmit frequencies are re-used across these cells and the system becomes interference rather than noise limited as we shall see.
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 5

Cellular Basics
 Some consequences arise:
 the need for careful radio frequency planning colouring in hexagons!  a mechanism for handling the call as the user crosses the cell boundary - call handover  increased network complexity to route the call and track the users as they move around

 But one significant benefit:

 very much increased traffic capacity, the ability to service many users

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 6

Cellular System Definitions

 Mobile Station
 users transceiver terminal (handset, mobile)

 Base Station
 fixed transmitter usually at centre of cell

 Mobile Switching Centre

 handles routing of calls in a service area  tracks user  connects to base stations and PSTN

 Control Channels
 radio channels for set up of call, call request etc
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 7

Cellular System Definitions 2

 Downlink or Forward Channel
 radio channel for transmission of information (e.g.speech) from base station to mobile station

 Uplink or Reverse Channel

 radio channel for transmission of information (e.g.speech) from mobile station to base station

 Handover or handoff
 process of transferring mobile station from one base station to another, may also apply to change of radio channel within a cell

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 8

Cellular System Definitions 3

 Paging
 a message broadcast over an entire service area, includes use for mobile station alert (ringing)

 Roaming
 a mobile station operating in a service area other than the one to which it subscribes

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 9

Frequency Reuse
 Cellular relies on the intelligent allocation and re use of radio channels throughout a coverage area.  Each base station is allocated a group of radio channels to be used within the small geographic area of its cell  Neighbouring base stations are given different channel allocation from each other  If we limit the coverage area within the cell by design of the antennas, we can re-use that same group of frequencies to cover another cell separated by a large enough distance to keep interference levels within tolerable limits.
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 10

Radio Planning
 The design process of selecting and allocating channel frequencies for all cellular base stations within a system is known as frequency re-use or frequency planning.  Most cell planning is carried out on the basis of tessellating hexagons
 real cells are never hexagonal in shape  however most theoretical treatment find them a convenient tool since hexagons:
 are a geometric shape that approximates a circle  tessellate a plane

 represent contours of equal transmit power

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 11

Cellular Re-use Concept

 A 7 cell cluster - outlined in bold  Cells with the same letter use the same frequency groups
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 12

Geometry of Hexagons

 Hexagonal cell geometry and axes

EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 13

Geometry of Hexagons 2
   

axes u,v intersect at 60o unit scale is distance between cell centres if cell radius to point of hexagon is R then 2Rcos30o = 1 or
R= 1 v) from the origin 3 To find the distance of a point P(u,
2 2 2

use x - y to u - v co - ordinate transformations : r ! x y

x ! u cos 30 o y ! v  u sin 30
o 1

r ! (v 2  uv  u 2 )
EE3158 Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 14

Geometry of Hexagons 3
 Using this equation to locate co-channel cells, we start from a reference cell and move i hexagons along the u-axis then j hexagons along the v-axis. Hence the distance between co channel cells in adjacent clusters is given by:  D = (i2 + ij + j2)1/2
 where D is the distance between co channel cells in adjacent clusters.  and the number of cells in a cluster, N is given by D2

 N = i2 + ij + j2  since i and j can only take integer values we find values for N
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 15

Cell Clusters
e-use co ordinates um er of cells in reuse attern 1 3 1 13 1 1 ormalised re eat distance SQ ( ) 1 1. 3 .6 6 3. 6 3.6 6 .35 .583

i 1 1 1 1 1

j 1

3 3

since D = SQ

( )

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 16

Cochannel Cell Location

 Method of locating co channel cells  Example for N=19, i=3, j=2

EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 17

Cell Planning Example

 Suppose you have 33 MHz bandwidth available, an FM system using 25 kHz channels, how many channels per cell for 4,7,12 cell re-use?
   

total channels = 33,000/25 = 1320 N=4 channels per cell = 1320/4 = 330 N=7 channels per cell = 1320/7 = 188 N=12 channels per cell = 1320/12 = 110

 What do we deduce?
 smaller clusters can carry more traffic  how much? Erlang B at 2% blocking
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 18

Cochannel Interference
 Now consider a mobile at the edge of cell, distance R from transmitter (downlink only).
 Average first tier co-channel cell is distance D away

 Power law of E (typically 4 from lecture 15)

     Assume equal transmit powers (wanted) signal level = k R-E, interference (single user) = k D-E S/I = 10 E log(D/R) now D/R = (3N)1/2 hence S/I = 20 log 3N for E=4

 SIGNAL TO INTERFERENCE LEVEL IS INDEPENDENT OF CELL RADIUS!

EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 19

Cochannel Interference2
 worst case single interferer model transmitter is D-R away
 S/I = 10 E log (S RT(3N)-1)

interfering

 and we can compute

Cells / Cluster 3 Single Interferer S/N 12. 15. 22.2 28.

12

 an FM system requires around 18 dB minimum S/I to operate satisfactorily so we choose N=7

EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 20

Cell Size
 System performance depends on cluster size and is independent of cell radius so what cell radius do we choose?
     Depends on traffic we wish to carry Population density of users say P people/km2 Average busy hour traffic per user T Erlangs So traffic is PT Erlangs / km2 If our cell has C radio channels ( and C>100) we can approximate the Erlang B formula to give traffic in Erlangs as E = 0.9 C

 Cell supports 0.9 C / TR2 Erlangs per km2  whence R = (0.9C/TPT)1/2

EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 21

Cell Size 2
 Example 12 million people in city of radius 30 km, average traffic in busy hour 15 milli Erlangs.  Population density 12,000,000/Tx30x30 = 4250/km2  Traffic = 4250 x 15 / 1000 = 63.75 Erlangs /km2  7 cell repeat from slide 18 example 188 channels  Traffic per cell = 188 x 0.9 = 169 Erlangs  Traffic density per cell 169 / T R2  whence R = (169/63.75x T)1/2 = 0.9 km  so you would need some 1070 cells to cover the city

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 22

System Growth
 When the system grows - more customers you need more smaller cells to carry the traffic requiring a new cell and frequency plan
 Cell splitting
 need for re-tuning - tedious (and expensive) if a technician needs to visit every base station!

 Typical approach is to sectored cells

 e.g. tri-sector to give 21/7  or 6 sectors to give a 24/4 pattern

EE3158

Lecture 16

Fundamentals of Communications

Slide 23

System Growth 2

 typical city cellular radio cell plan different cell sizes and clusters.
EE3158 Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 24

Revision
        cellular mobile uses many small cells hexagonal planning, clusters of cells cell repeat patterns 3,7,12 etc... re-uses frequencies to obtain capacity is interference not noise (kTB) limited S/I is independent of cell radius choose cell radius to meet traffic demand N=7 is a good compromise between S/I and capacity.
Lecture 16 Fundamentals of Communications Slide 25

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