WCDMA Air Interface Training

Part 2
CDMA Power Control,
RAKE Receiver,
and Soft Handover

2/038 13 - EN/LZU 108 5306 Rev B Part 2: 1 of 15 WCDMA Air Interface

1
 CDMA Reception Issues

• Unequal received power levels degrade SSMA performance

Near-Far Ratio, terrain, RF obstacles, “Turn-the-Corner” effects, ...

• Multipath fading cancellation

• Time of Arrival delay spread

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As with all radio transmissions the CDMA signal will be subjected to multiple
reflections, diffractions and attenuations caused by natural objects such as
buildings, hills etc resulting in what is known as multipath propagation. This
will have two effects on the received signals at each end.
1. The bit energy for a single chip will be split by the various paths and arrive
at different time intervals. The delay between these various arrivals is typically
1 to 2 µs in urban and suburban areas and up to 20 µs in hilly areas.
Since the WCDMA chip rate is 3.84 Mcps then the time duration of each chip
will be 1/3.84·106 = 0.26 µs. If the time difference in these multi path
components is at least 0.26 µs the WCDMA receiver can combine these to
obtain multipath diversity. How this is achieved will be explained later.

2. For certain time delay positions there are usually many paths nearly equal in
length along which the radio signal travels. For example paths with a length
difference of half a wavelength ( at 2 GHz = 7 cm) will result in both signals
canceling each other out. This type of fading is known as fast or Rayleigh
fading and takes place as the receiver moves across even short distances.

2
 CDMA Power Control
Open-Loop Power Control Increase
Transmit Power
by 1 dB
Measure
received power No
from BS
Compute
Initial Transmit Access
Transmit Access Preamble Acknowledged?
Read BS transmit Power Yes
power from Broadcast
Channel

Outer-Loop (slow) Power Control Inner-Loop (fast) Power Control

Raise Rx Increase UE
Power Target Transmit Power
No No by 1 dB

UE Begins Received
FER/BLER
Uplink TCH power
Acceptable?
Transmission > target?

Decrease UE
Yes Yes
Lower Rx Transmit Power
Power Target by 1 dB

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Power control is necessary to overcome what is known as the near-far problem,

that is as a mobile moves closer to the Base Station it must reduce its power to
avoid causing interference to other mobiles.

In the uplink the base station measures the received Signal-to-Interface Ratio
(SIR) and compares this to a target SIR. If the measured SIR is below the
target the base station will request the mobile to increase its power and
decrease it if the measured SIR is above the target. This type of power control
is known as fast or inner-loop power control and is capable of adjusting the
transmit power in steps of 1 dB at a rate of 1500 times per second. This also
helps to overcome, or reduce, the fast (Rayleigh) fading.

Two other types of power control are also used in WCDMA, they are slow or
outer-loop and open-loop.
Outer-loop power control is used to adjust the target SIR in reaction to changes
in the frame error rate (FER) or block error rate (BLER) after decoding. If the
FER/BLER increased the target SIR will be increased in the hope of reducing
this in the next frame/block. This process will continually change the target
SIR to maintain a minimum acceptable FER/BLER.
Open-loop power control is used to provide an initial course power setting of
the mobile at the beginning of a connection since closed loop can only start
after a connection has been established. This is necessary since a mobile
transmitting a strong signal close to a base station at connection could produce
enough interference to wipe out other connections. The mobile estimates the 3
minimum power required to make the connection by working out the path loss
 CDMA Power Control
BS Inner-loop power control Outer-loop power control
Receive Power (Initial receive power target) (Updated receive power target of inner-loop)
800 updates/sec (IS-95, cdma2000)
Open-loop Power Control 1500 updates/sec (WCDMA)
Access Preambles

time
Preambles RACH DPCH

BS Receive Power Target

The PRACH is “power controlled” by means of preamble ramping i.e. UL open loop PC

2/038 13 - EN/LZU 108 5306 Rev B Part 2: 4 of 15 WCDMA Air Interface

If we look at this scenario from the perspective of the mobile output power we
can see the three power controls in action.
At initial connection the mobile makes four attempts known as access pre-
ambles at increasing power levels until the base station receive power target is
achieved. This will be signaled by the Base Station with an acquisition
indicator channel. Then the UE sends the message on RACH. Connection is
then established and inner or fast power control can take over to maintain this
target. As you can see this is constantly adjusted at a rate of 1500 times per
second. In the case of IS-95 this rate was only 800 times per second.
At some time later the base station receives a command to increase the receive
power target as part of the outer loop process. In other words the FER has
increased. Inner-loop power control will then be used to ramp the mobile
power up to achieve this new level and maintain this.

4
 Multipath Fading
Time between fades is related to
• Fast (Rayleigh) Fading • RF frequency
• Geometry of multipath vectors
• Vehicle speed:
Up to 4 fades/sec per kilometer/hour
Composite
Received
msec
Signal
Strength

Deep fade caused by destructive summation

of two or more multipath reflections

time (mSec)

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Fast (Rayleigh) fading is related to RF frequency, the geometry of multipath

vectors and vehicle speed.
As a rule of thumb there will be up to four fades per second per kilometer per
hour of travel. For example a mobile traveling at 10 kph will experience 40
fades per second.
As can be seen from the graph above the signal at the receiver will be less than
ideal making error-free reception of data bits very difficult. The
countermeasures used to overcome fading in WCDMA are:
• Strong coding (viterbi or convolutional) and interleaving used to recover any
bit errors at the receiver (which was explained in the previous chapter).
However this is not enough.
• Rake Receiver used to combine the the energy of the most significant
multipath components.
• Fast power control used to overcome the fast (Rayleigh) fading.
In essence the WCDMA receiver should be able to identify the time delay
position at which significant energy arrives and assign a separate receiver to
each, this is the job of the RAKE receiver, each separate receiver is called a
Rake finger. The outputs from the fingers should be combined to produce a
result that is unaffected by the fading experienced in the air interface. In
reality this is not possible and CRC, FEC and interleaving performed at the
Transmitter should enable the Receiver to correct any subsequent bit errors.

5
 The RAKE Receiver

• CDMA Mobile Station RAKE Receiver Architecture

Ø Each finger tracks a single multipath reflection
Also be used to track other base station’s signal during soft handover

Ø One finger used as a “Searcher” to identify other base stations

Finger #1
Sum of
individual
Finger #2 multipath
components
Combiner

Finger #N
Power measurement
of Neighboring
Base Stations
Searcher Finger

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The diagram above shows the block diagram of a Rake receiver. As you can
see, a number of Rake Fingers which contain correlators are used to track the
different multipath reflections from one PN code. The number of fingers has
not been defined, however typical numbers will be in the order of 5 to 10. The
output of the fingers is fed into a combiner. One of three different types of
combining processes is employed to produce an output that is the sum of the
individual mulitpath components.
In order to achieve this tracking the finger will simply correlate the signal with
the same PN code but at a different phase shift. Since this is similar to using a
different code the finger could quite easily be used to track another Base
Station. This is exactly what happens in the case of Soft or Softer handover,
which will be explained later.
As you can see there is one finger that is not fed to the combiner. This finger
correlates the received signal with the PN code of known neighboring Base
Stations to measure their power. This information is used in determining when
to perform handovers. This finger is known as the “Searcher Finger”.

6
 The RAKE Receiver

• The CDMA Pilot Channel

Ø All CDMA standards include a full-time “Pilot” Channel
Broadcast by the Base Station
Unique to each cell (or sector)
Serves as precision coherent phase reference for Downlink channels

Ø Equivalent to a continuous-loop transmission of the Cell’s PN code

‘I’ PN
Code

FIR
Filter
Data I/Q Pilot Channel
All 0’s Modulator Output
FIR
Filter

Orthogonal
Code 0
‘Q’ PN
Code

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To make it possible for the Rake Receiver to track these various components it
must have some way of measuring the signal levels and phases. This is
achieved by the Base Station transmitting known pilot symbols in the
transmitted data. The Rake Receiver can look for these bits and use them to
determine the phase and signal strength of the channel.
Each Base Station transmits a separate pilot channel which is used by the
searcher finger in the soft handover process to determine the signal strength of
the Base station. The block diagram above shows how this is achieved at the
transmitter. A data stream of all 0’s is spread by orthogonal code 0 (pilot
code). The resultant output is split and spread by the PN code before being
passed to an I/Q modulator.
The whole process is equivalent to continuously transmitting the cell’s PN
code. This 38400 chip code is repeated every 10 msecs since the WCDMA
chip rate is 3.84Mchip/sec. As the Base station will also be scrambling all its
transmissions with the same PN code this channel also serves as a phase
reference for all other downlink channels.
As both an I and Q PN code is used the type of spreading is known as complex
spreading.

7
 CDMA RAKE Receiver Architecture
Carrier
Frequency
Tracking
Loop
Rake Receiver “Finger”

cos(2π f IFt) “I” PN

Code
(+1/-1) bit rate =
chip rate / SF

D
I/Q Integrate De- Viterbi/ Decoded
BPF LPF
Demod
ΣΣ over
‘SF’ chips
Σ Interleave
Data
Turbo
Decoder
Output
Bits
D
Orthogona
cos(2π f RFt) l
“Q” PN
Code Code CRC
(+1/-1) (+1/-1) Verification

Timing
Correlator
Adj.
Error
Indication
Pilot
Orthogonal
Code
(all zeros)

Other Rake Receiver Finger

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The diagram above shows a more detailed diagram of a CDMA Receiver

showing where the RAKE Receiver fits in.
The input RF signal is passed through a band pass filter and demodulated into
the I and Q components. These are then fed to the programmable delays of the
various Rake fingers. These delays will compensate for the delay of the
various mulitpath components of the transmitted signal. To adjust the delay of
these elements the signal is correlated with the internally generated PN code, I
and Q branches are recombined and correlated with the pilot orthogonal code.
Since this code is all 0's this step can be ignored resulting in a correlation
output that will depend on the time difference between the internal PN code
and that of the received signal. The delays are adjusted until a correlation peak
is obtained. At this delay this so called “sliding correlator” is said to be locked
to one of the multipath components of the received signal. With this delay all
other components will produce low level noise.
The ohrthogonal code of the desired data channel can then be used to recover
the wanted channel. The other fingers of the Rake receiver will be carrying out
the same process but locking to other multipath components. The result is that
each finger will produce the original data with some interference. These can
then be combined and sent to the de-interleaver, decoder and CRC verification.

8
 The RAKE Receiver
Composite Received Signal
2
18
16

3
14
12
10

1
8

6
4

time
2
0
-2
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

18 To Viterbi
2 Decoder
16

14

12 3
10
3 + Interference
8 1
6

n ⋅1/2-chip delay 4

-20

Correlator Ai
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

18

2
16
14

3
12

10 2 + Interference
1
8

m ⋅1/2-chip delay
4

∑
0
-2

Correlator Ai
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

18

2
16

14

12 3 1 + Interference
10

1
k ⋅1/2-chip delay
8

2
0

-2

Correlator Ai
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400

PN, Channelization Codes Equal Combining, ML Combining,

or Select Strongest

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The above graph illustrates this time alignment process. In this example the
composite received signal is made up of three mulitpath components at
different time delays and amplitudes. This signal is fed to the various delays
which will be centered on one of the multipath components. After correlation
the original data plus interference will be produced. The output from the
fingers can then be constructively combined since the phase difference
between the multipath components has been removed. This can be fed to the
Viterbi decoder.
The accuracy of the delay needs to be 1/2 a chip since any greater step than
this could result in some of the multipath components being missed or “jumped
over”. The total delay range will need to be able to cope with the maximum
delay between components which can be 1 to 2 µs in an urban or suburban area
to 20 µs in hilly or rural areas. Most Rake receivers can cope with a delay up to
50 or 100 µs.
Three different types of combining can be performed, depending on where the
Rake receiver is used. If equal combining is employed all the components are
simply added together, however the maximum likelyhood or maximum ratio
combining will apply a weighting to each result depending on the probability
of that result being correct before they are combined. Alternatively the
strongest signal can be selected, in which case all others are discarded.

9
 Handover

• Inter-Radio Access Technology (IRAT) Handover

Handover from a CDMA system to an Analog, TDMA or another CDMA system
Traffic and Control Channels are Disconnected and must be Reconnected

• Inter-frequency Handover
When the MS must change CDMA carrier frequency during the Handover
Traffic and Control Channels are Disconnected and must be Reconnected

• Soft Handover
Unique to CDMA
During Handover, the MS has concurrent traffic connections with two BS’s
Handover should be less noticeable

• Softer Handover
Similar to Soft Handover, but between two sectors of the same cell
Handover is simplified since timing sectors have identical timing

2/038 13 - EN/LZU 108 5306 Rev B Part 2: 10 of 15 WCDMA Air Interface

As with all mobile communications networks CDMA must be capable of

handing over connections from one cell to another to maintain the connection
as the mobile is moving. Four different type of handovers are supported by the
CDMA system.
Inter RAT Handover (RAT = Radio Access Technology)
For example a call could move from a CDMA base station to a GSM base
station or to a Cdma2000 base station.
Inter frequency handover
This describes what happens when a connection is handed from one CDMA
carrier frequency to another. This type of handover is the type employed in
GSM systems.
Soft Handover
This type of handover is unique to CDMA. During this type of handover the
mobile is connected to two or more cells. This is achieved by using the fingers
of the Rake receiver. The advantage of this type of handover is that there is no
distinct break in connection and hence it should be less noticeable than a hard
handover and the likelihood of a dropped connection is reduced. The
disadvantage of this type of handover is that additional resources are required
for the same connection.
Softer Handover
This type of handover is similar to Soft handover, however this time the cells
belong to the same base station which have identical timing.

10
 CDMA Without Soft Handover

UE responding to BS1 UE responding to BS2

power control bits power control bits

BS1 Receive Power Target

time

BS2 Receive Power Target

time

Trouble zone: Prior to Hard Handover,

the MS causes excessive interference to BS2

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CDMA systems must use soft or softer handover to reduce interference caused
by near-far problems resulting from mobiles penetrating the coverage area of
adjacent cells without being power controlled while in that cell.

The diagram above shows what the effect of using hard as opposed to soft or
softer handover in a CDMA system would be. As the mobile moves away from
BS 1 towards BS 2 there will come a time before the hard handover is
performed, that the signal received at BS 2 exceeds its received power target
and will start to cause excessive interference to other mobiles in that sector.
Since the mobile is not connected to BS 2 it has no way of reducing this
power. This excessive interference at BS 2 and could result in wiping out
connections on BS 2.
Once the connection undergoes a hard handover to BS 2, power control
messages from BS 2 can be used to reduce the power to the power target and
reduce the interference, however this period of interference would be
unacceptable.
Soft and softer handovers allow the mobile to be taken into power control
before the received signal exceeds the target and eliminate this excessive
interference.
Results from the existing American CDMA system (IS-95) have shown that
each call uses an average of 1.9 resources for each connection. This high value
indicates that without soft or softer handover this near-far problem would be
very common.
11
 CDMA Soft Handover
• CDMA Soft Handover

Monitor Neighbor BS Pilots Add Destination BS Drop Originating BS

Ø One finger of the RAKE receiver is constantly scanning neighboring Pilot

Channels.

Ø When a neighboring Pilot Channel reaches the t_add threshold, the new BS
is added to the active set

Ø When the original Base Station reaches the t_drop threshold, originating
Base Station is dropped from the active set

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From existing CDMA systems it has been shown that Softer handover occurs
in about 5-15% of connections and Soft handover in about 20-40% of
connections.

12
 Soft Handover Add/Drop/Replace Thresholds

• Soft Handover Measurement and Decision

Eb / N 0 ∆t ∆t ∆t

Cell 1

T_REPLACE

T_DROP
T_ADD

Cell 2

Cell 3

time
Replace Cell 1
Cell 1 Add Cell 2 Drop Cell 3
with Cell 3
Connected

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The graph above shows the received signal to interference ratio Eb/No against
time of three cells. The various ‘t_add’ and ‘t_drop’ thresholds can clearly be
seen. The whole process of moving from connected only to cell 1 through soft
handover with cell 1 and 2 to soft handover with cell 2 and 3 to finally being
connected to only cell 3 can be clearly seen.
It should be noted that unlike hard handover this ‘t_add’ is is a couple of dB
lower than the serving cell, hence soft handover will occur before the signal
level at the neighbor exceeds that of the serving cell.

13
 CDMA With Soft Handover

UE responds to
power control commands
from both BS1 and BS2
UE responding to BS1 BS1 BS2 Action UE responding to BS2
power control commands 0 0 Reduce power power control commands
0 1 Reduce power
1 0 Reduce power
1 1 Increase power
BS1 Receive Power Target

1 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 11 1 1 1 11 1 1 1 1 2 11112
22 2 2 2 22 2 2
2 2 222 22
2 222
2
time

BS2 Receive Power Target

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
1 1 11 1
1 1 1 11
11 1 1 11 1 1 1
time

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If we look at this from the perspective of power control we can see how the
connection is controlled by both base stations during soft handover, thus
eliminating the near-far interference problem.
While connected only to BS1 the mobile acts only on power control commands
from that base station which maintains the receive power target for that cell.
As the mobile moves closer to BS2 there will come a point when the threshold
‘t_add’ is exceeded and BS2 is added to the active list. From this point on the
call is said to be in soft handover. It should be noted that from this point on the
mobile is responding to power control messages from BS 2 that is reduce
power. It is ignoring the power increase commands from BS 1 as increasing
power at this point would exceed the power target of BS 2 and hence cause
excessive interference in that sector.
To avoid interference the mobile will only increase it’s power when told to by
BOTH base stations and reduce it when requested to by EITHER. In other
words power control of the call was handed over from BS 1 to BS 2 at this
point.
If as in this example, the mobile started to move back towards BS 1 the
received power at that BS would start to increase above its target. The mobile
will start to respond to power control messages from this sector again. This
‘power control’ handover can occur 1500 times per second.
It should be noted that mobiles in soft handover will cause less interference in
the system and the more cells involved in the handover the lower the
interference. This is why soft handover is said to improve capacity since lower
interference will result in an increase in air interface capacity.
14
 CDMA Soft Handover
• Key points to remember about Soft Handover

Ø SSMA used to distinguish all transmitters in a Cellular CDMA system

Ø Fast power control is required to sustain SSMA performance

Ø When fast power control is used, soft handover is essential

Allows MS to operate in most conservative power control mode

Ø Soft handover provides performance benefits

“Seamless” coverage at cell fringes
Handover may be less noticeable to the user
Increases apparent system capacity when system is lightly loaded

Ø Soft handover also degrades system capacity

Uses redundant physical layer resources from adjacent or overlapping cells

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•SSMA is used to distinguish all transmitters in a Cellular CDMA system

That is PN codes are used to separate multiple transmitters on the same
frequency.
• Fast power control is required to sustain SSMA performance
Since these PN codes are not orthogonal and do not provide perfect separation
fast power control is required to maintain these interfering signals at an equal
level.
• When fast power control is used, soft handover is essential
to avoid excessive interference during handover.

15