Wireless Cellular & LTE 4G Broadband: Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP)
Wireless Cellular & LTE 4G Broadband: Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP)
Wireless Cellular & LTE 4G Broadband: Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP)
Module-5
Radio Resource Management and Mobility Management: PDCP overview, MAC/RLC overview, RRC overview,
Mobility Management, Inter-cell Interference Coordination (Sec 10.1 – 10.5 of Text).
User Plane
Header Compression and decompression of IP data flows with the RObust Header Compression (ROHC)
Protocol.
Ciphering and deciphering of user plane data.
In-sequence delivery and reordering of upper layer PDUs at handover.
Buffering and forwarding of upper layer Protocol Data Units (PDUs) from the serving eNode-B to the
target eNode-B during handover.
Timer based discarding of Service Data Units (SDUs) in the uplink.
Control Plane
It is used in both control and user plane to transport higher layer packets.
It is used to convey either user plane data containing a compressed/uncompressed IP packet or control
plane data containing one Radio Resource Control (RRC) message and a Message Authentication Code
for Integrity (MAC-I) field for integrity protection.
PDCP control PDU
It is used only within the user plane to convey a PDCP status report during handover and feedback
information for header compression.
It does not carry any higher layer SDU but rather is used for peer to peer signaling between PDCP entities
at two ends.
The RLC layer performs segmentation and/or concatenation on PDCP PDUs based on the size indicated
by the MAC.
RLC also reorders the RLC PDUs once they are received out of order possibly due to H-ARQ processes in
the MAC layer.
The RLC layer also supports an ARQ mechanism, which resides on top of the MAC layer H-ARQ and is
used only when all the H-ARQ transmissions are exhausted and the RLC PDU has not yet been received
without errors.
Functions of MAC
The MAC layer performs multiplexing and demultiplexing of the various logical channels on to the
transport channels.
At User Equipment (UE), the MAC layers only performs the task of multiplexing and prioritizing the
various radio bearers associated with UE.
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Dr. Navaneeth Bhaskar, Associate Professor, Dept. ECE, CIT Ponnampet
The MAC layer provides services to RLC layer through logical channels while it accesses the data transfer
services provided by PHY layer through transport channels.
Data Transfer Modes of RLC
Each RLC entity can be operated in three different modes:
The UM mode provides in-sequence delivery of data that may be received out of sequence due to the
H-ARQ process in MAC, but no retransmission of the lost PDU is required.
This mode can be used by delay-sensitive and error-tolerant real-time applications, such as VoIP.
The DTCH logical channel can be operated in the UM mode.
Acknowledged Mode (AM)
The AM mode is the most complex one, which requests retransmission of missing PDUs in addition to
the UM mode functionalities.
It is mainly used by error-sensitive and delay-tolerant applications.
An AM RLC entity can be configured to deliver/receive RLC PDUs through DCCH and DTCH.
The operation of the AM RLC entity is similar to that of the UM RLC entity, except that it supports
retransmission of RLC data PDUs.
Purpose of MAC and RLC Layers
The main services and functions of the RLC sublayer are:
ARQ Procedures
Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) is an error-control mechanism for data transmission which uses
acknowledgements (or negative acknowledgements) and timeouts to achieve reliable data transmission
over an unreliable communication link.
In an ARQ scheme, the receiver uses an error detection code, typically a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC),
to detect whether the received packet is in error.
If no error is detected in the received data, the transmitter is notified by sending a positive
acknowledgement. If an error is detected, the receiver discards the packet and sends a negative
acknowledgement to the transmitter, and requests a re-transmission.
An Acknowledgement (ACK) or Negative Acknowledgement (NACK) is a short message sent by the
receiver to the transmitter to indicate whether it has correctly or incorrectly received a data packet,
respectively.
To better support upper-layer services, LTE applies a dynamic and efficient two-layer retransmission
scheme.
The H-ARQ protocol is responsible for handling transmission errors by performing retransmissions based
on H-ARQ processes with incremental redundancy or chase combining, which is handled by the PHY
layer.
The ARQ protocol in the RLC layer is to correct residual H-ARQ errors, mainly due to the error in H-ARQ
ACK feedback.
ARQ procedures are only performed in the AM transfer mode by an AM RLC entity and the latency
associated with the RLC layer ARQ is much larger.
The reliability of the H-ARQ protocol is determined by the error rate of the feedback. It is costly to
achieve a sufficiently reliable H-ARQ-ACK feedback.
The solution adopted in LTE is to use a second-layer ARQ protocol, which is to correct the error event
due to H-ARQ feedback errors.
This additional ARQ protocol provides a much more reliable feedback protected by a CRC. This design
yields low latency and low overhead without sacrificing reliability.
ARQ retransmission is triggered by an ARQ NAK received at the transmit side of an AM RLC entity.
The ARQ NAK is received either by the STATUS PDU from its peer AM RLC entity or by H-ARQ delivery
failure notification from the transmit MAC entity, which can happen when the maximum number of H-
ARQ transmissions is exhausted without a successful transmission of the transport block.
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Dr. Navaneeth Bhaskar, Associate Professor, Dept. ECE, CIT Ponnampet
Radio Resource Control (RRC)
RRC layer takes care of RRC connection management, radio bearer control, mobility functions and UE
reporting and control.
It is also responsible for broadcasting system information and paging.
RRC States
In the RRC_IDLE state, the UE can receive broadcasts of system information and paging information.
There is no signaling radio bearer established, so there is no RRC connection.
In the RRC_IDLE state, the mobility control is handled by the UE, which performs neighboring cell
measurements and cell selection/reselection.
The system information mainly contains parameters by which E-UTRAN controls the cell
selection/reselection process, such as priorities of different frequencies.
The UE shall be allocated an ID that uniquely identifies the UE in a tracking area.
The UE also monitors a paging channel to detect incoming calls, and it specifies the paging Discontinuous
Reception (DRX) cycle.
RRC_CONNECTED State:
In the RRC_CONNECTED state, the UE has an E-UTRAN RRC connection and a context in the E-UTRAN, so
it is able to transmit and/or receive data to/from the network (eNode-B).
The UE monitors control channels (PDCCH) associated with the shared datachannel to determine if data
is scheduled for it.
The UE can also report channel quality information and feedback information to the eNode-B to assist
the data transmission.
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Dr. Navaneeth Bhaskar, Associate Professor, Dept. ECE, CIT Ponnampet
In the RRC_CONNECTED state, the network controls mobility/handover of the UE, while UEs provide
neighboring cell measurement information.
RRC Functions
Following are the main functions of the RRC protocol:
Broadcast of system information which is divided into Master Information Block (MIB) and a number of
System Information Blocks (SIBs).
The MIB includes a limited number of the most essential and most frequently transmitted parameters
that are needed to acquire other information from the cell and is transmitted on the Broadcast Channel
(BCH) logical channel.
SIBs other than SIB Type1 are carried in System Information (SI) messages.
SIB Type1 contains parameters needed to determine if a cell is suitable for cell selection as well as
information about the time domain scheduling of other SIBs.
SIB Type1 and all SI messages are transmitted on Downlink Shared Channels (DLSCH).
RRC connection control
RRC connection control which includes procedures related to the establishment, modification and
release of an RRC connection including paging, initial security activation, establishment of SRBs & radio
bearers carrying user data, radio configuration control & QoS control and recovery from the radio link
failure.
Measurement configuration and reporting
Other functions include transfer of dedicated NAS information and non-3GPP dedicated information,
transfer of UE radio access capability information and support of self-configuration & self-optimization.
Mobility Management
LTE mobility management functions can be categorized into two groups:
Intra-LTE mobility can happen either over the S1 interface or over the X2 interface.
When the UE moves from one eNode-B to another eNode-B within the same Radio Access Network
(RAN) attached to the same MME, the mobility takes place over the X2 interface.
When the UE moves from one eNode-B to another that belongs to a different RAN attached to different
MMEs or if the two eNode-Bs are not connected over an X2 interface, then the mobility takes place over
the S1 interface.
Mobility to other systems such as other systems (Inter-rat mobility)
The inter-RAT mobility essentially uses the S1-mobility with the only difference being that in this case
the PDCP context is not continued and the UE needs to re-establish its session once it moves to the target
non-LTE system.
S1 Mobility
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Dr. Navaneeth Bhaskar, Associate Professor, Dept. ECE, CIT Ponnampet
Mobility management over the X2 interface
Paging
Paging is a connection control function of the RRC protocol.
The paging message is used to inform the UEs in the RRC_IDLE or RRC_CONNECTED state about a system
information change.
The UE in the RRC_IDLE state monitors a paging channel to detect incoming calls.
The system information can be transmitted a number of times with the same content within a
modification period.
Upon receiving a change in notification contained in the paging message, the UE knows that the current
system information is valid until the next modification period boundary.
One Paging Frame (PF) is one radio frame in which the E-UTRAN can page the UE.
One PF may contain one or multiple sub frame in which a Paging message can be transmitted and each
sub frame is called a Paging Occasion (PO) which is configured by the E-UTRAN.
The paging information is carried on the Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) physical channel.
To reduce power consumption, the UE may use Discontinuous Reception (DRX) in the idle mode, so it
needs only to monitor one PO per DRX cycle.
After receiving the paging message, the UE can switch off its receiver to preserve battery power.
It is achieved by scrambling the codeword after channel coding with a pseudo-random sequence.
Without scrambling, the channel decoder might be equally matched to interfering signals as to the
desired signals on the same radio resource.
ICI randomization is applied in systems such as UMTS.
ICI cancellation
If a UE is able to decode the interfering signal, it can regenerate and then subtract them from the desired
signal which can be achieved from the multi user detector at UE.
The UE needs to know its transmission format to decode the interfering signal from neighboring cells.
ICI cancellation can also be performed in spatial domain with the statistical knowledge of interference
channels.
ICI coordination/avoidance
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Dr. Navaneeth Bhaskar, Associate Professor, Dept. ECE, CIT Ponnampet
It is achieved by scrambling the encoded symbols prior to modulation.
Instead of cell specific scrambling as used in Downlink, UE specific scrambling is used in Uplink as ICI
comes from multiple UEs in neighboring cells.
ICI cancellation
It is more applicable in Uplink than in Downlink as the eNode-B has higher computational capacity and
usually more antenna elements.
Uplink Power Control
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Dr. Navaneeth Bhaskar, Associate Professor, Dept. ECE, CIT Ponnampet