Module 1 Notes (17EC81)
Module 1 Notes (17EC81)
Module 1 Notes (17EC81)
Course Objectives: This course will enable students to: · Understand the basics of LTE standardization phases and
specifications. · Explain the system architecture of LTE and E-UTRAN, the layer of LTE, based on the use of OFDMA
and SC-FDMA principles. · Analyze the role of LTE radio interface protocols to set up, reconfigure and release the
Radio Bearer, for transferring the EPS bearer. · Analyze the main factors affecting LTE performance including mobile
speed and transmission bandwidth.
Module – 1: Key Enablers for LTE features: OFDM, Single carrier FDMA, Single carrier FDE, Channel Dependent
Multiuser Resource Scheduling, Multi antenna Techniques, IP based Flat network Architecture, LTE Network
Architecture. (Sec 1.4- 1.5 of Text). Wireless Fundamentals: Cellular concept, Broadband wireless channel (BWC),
fading in BWC, Modeling BWC – Empirical and Statistical models, Mitigation of Narrow band and Broadband Fading
(Sec 2.2 – 2.7of Text).
Module – 2: Multicarrier Modulation: OFDM basics, OFDM in LTE, Timing and Frequency Synchronization, PAR, SC-
FDE (Sec 3.2 – 3.6 of Text). OFDMA and SC-FDMA: OFDM with FDMA, TDMA, CDMA, OFDMA, SC-FDMA, OFDMA and
SC-FDMA in LTE (Sec 4.1 – 4.3, 4.5 of Text).
Multiple Antenna Transmission and Reception: Spatial Diversity overview, Receive Diversity, Transmit Diversity,
Interference cancellation and signal enhancement, Spatial Multiplexing, Choice between Diversity, Interference
suppression and Spatial Multiplexing (Sec 5.1 – 5.6 of Text).
Module – 3: Overview and Channel Structure of LTE: Introduction to LTE, Channel Structure of LTE, Downlink OFDMA
Radio Resource, Uplink, SC-FDMA Radio Resource (Sec 6.1 – 6.4 of Text).
Downlink Transport Channel Processing: Overview, Downlink shared channels, Downlink Control Channels,
Broadcast channels, Multicast channels, Downlink physical channels, H-ARQ on Downlink (Sec 7.1 – 7.7 of Text).
Module – 4: Uplink Channel Transport Processing: Overview, Uplink shared channels, Uplink Control Information,
Uplink Reference signals, Random Access Channels, H-ARQ on uplink (Sec 8.1 – 8.6 of Text).
Physical Layer Procedures: Hybrid – ARQ procedures, Channel Quality Indicator CQI feedback, Precoder for closed
loop MIMO Operations, Uplink channel sounding, Buffer status Reporting in uplink, Scheduling and Resource
Allocation, Cell Search, Random Access Procedures, Power Control in uplink(Sec 9.1- 9.6, 9.8, 9.9, 9.10 Text).
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).
KEY enabling technologies and features of LTE
LTE design incorporates several important radio and core network technologies one among them is
OFDM:
OFDM is a technique of transferring large amount of digital data over a radio wave.
Here a large radio signal is split into several sub radio signals through which the data is transmitted
simultaneously at different frequencies to the receiver.
Here the data is transmitted parallel across various carriers within the overall OFDM signal being
split into a number of a parallel sub streams.
Why OFDM Technique is used for LTE?
• OFDM is a multicarrier modulation technique where a high bit rate data stream is divided into
several parallel low bit rate streams.
• Each bit stream is modulated on separate carrier’s .Splitting the data stream increases the symbol
duration of each stream such that the multipath delay is only a fraction of the symbol duration.
2] Reduced Computational complexity:
• OFDM can be easily implemented using fft as the computational requirements grow with data rate
or bandwidth.
5] Robust against narrowband interference: Since the interference affects only a fraction of the
In this topic we discuss the fundamental factors affecting the received signal in a wireless system
and how they can be modeled using the relative value of the parameters.
Here we introduce the overall channel model and discuss the large scale trends that affect this
model.
The overall model describing the channel in discrete time is a simple tap delay line(TDL):
h[k,t]=ℎ𝑜δ[k,t]+ℎ1δ[k-1,t]+… . +ℎ𝑣δ[k-v,t]
Here the discrete time channel changes with respect to t and has non negligible values over a span
of v+1 channel taps.
The channel is sampled at a frequency fs=1/T where T is the sample period.
Hence the duration of the channel is vT.
Assuming that the channel is static over a period of (v+1)T seconds the output of the channel can be
described as
𝑗=∞
PATHLOSS:
The main difference between the wired and wireless channel is the amount of power that actually
reaches the receiver.
If an isotropic antenna is used the propagated signal produces a spherical wave front so the energy
received at the antenna is inversely proportional to the spherical surface area 4𝜋𝑑2 where d is the
distance.
The Friis formula or the free space path loss formula is given as
𝑃𝑟 = 𝑃𝑡 × L2𝐺𝑡𝐺 𝑟/(4𝜋𝑑2) Where Pr and Pt are the received and transmitted powers.Here we can
see that Pr𝖺 𝜆2 which means that Pr𝖺 1/ƒ2𝑐.
Hence higher frequencies suffer greater power loss than lower frequencies. Hence lower frequencies
are desirable and more crowded.
Therefore bandwidths at higher carrier frequencies are easily available and hence less expensive.
Hence a high rate low cost system would generally prefer to work at higher frequencies.
But, the terrestrial propagation environment is not free space.
The reflections from the Earth or other objects would actually increase the received power since more
energy would reach the receiver.
However, because a reflected wave often experiences a 180-degrees phase shift, at relatively large
distances the reflection serves to create destructive interference.
Where α is the path loss exponent and the measured path loss P0 at a reference distance of d0.
Shadowing :
Obstacles located between Transmitter & Receiver cause temporary degradation in received signal
strength.
Modeling the locations of all objects in every possible communication environment is generally
impossible.
Where α is the path loss exponent and the measured path loss P0 at a reference distance of d0.
3 Is the sample of the shadowing random process. Shadowing is also called as large scale fading.
𝗑
The shadowing value is modeled as lognormal random variable given as 3 = 1010
Where x ≈N(0,𝜎2) were N(0,𝜎2) is a gaussian distribution with mean 0 and variance 𝜎2.
𝑠 𝑠 𝑠
Thus, shadowing is an important effect in wireless networks because it causes the received SINR to vary
dramatically over long time scales.
In some given cell, reliable high-rate communication may be nearly impossible.
CELLULAR SYSTEMS:
In cellular systems, the service area is subdivided into smaller geographic areas called cells.
Each cell is served by its own base station (BS).
In order to minimize interference between cells, the transmit power level of each BS is regulated to be
just enough to provide the required signal strength at the cell boundaries.
The same frequency channels can be reassigned to different cells, as long as those cells are spatially
isolated.
The reuse of the same frequency channels should be intelligently planned in order to maximize the
geographic distance between the co-channel base stations.
Some advantages of Cellular systems are:
Cellular systems allow the overall system capacity to increase by simply making the cells smaller &
turning down the power.
Cellular systems support user mobility, seamless call transfer from one cell to another is pro- vided.
The handoff process provides a means of the seamless transfer of a connection from one BS to
another.
Primary drawbacks are, system needs more Base Stations, and their associated hard- ware costs, and
the need for frequent handoffs.
Cell Sectoring:
The performance of wireless cellular systems is significantly limited by co-channel interference (CCI).
This comes from other users in the same cell or from other cells.
In Cellular Systems, Other Cell Interference (OCI) is a decreasing function of the radius of the cell (R)
& the distance to the center of the neighboring co-channel cell and an increasing function of transmit
power.
Since the SIR is so bad in most of the cell, it is desirable to find techniques to improve it without
sacrificing so much bandwidth.
Apopulartechniqueisto sectorizethecells, whichiseffectiveiffrequenciesarereusedin each cell.
Directional antennas are used instead of Omni-directional antenna at the base station.
The multiple received versions are caused by reflections that are referred to as multipath.
Fig: The channel may have a few major paths with quite different lengths, and then the receiver may
see a number of locally scattered versions of those paths.
Depending on the phase difference between the arriving signals, the interference can be either
constructive or destructive.
This causes a very large observed difference in the amplitude of the received signal even over very
short distances.
Let us consider the time-varying tapped-delay line channel model.
As either the Txr or Rxr move relative to each other, the channel response h(t) will change.
This channel response can be thought of as having two dimensions:a delay dimension τ & a time
dimension t
Since the channel is highly variant in both the τ & t dimensions, in order to be able to discuss what the
channel response is we must use statistical methods.
The most important & fundamental function used to statistically describe broadband fading
channels is the two-dimensional auto correlation function, A(∆τ, ∆t).
And it is defined as
A(∆τ, ∆t) =E[h(τ1, t1)h*(τ2, t2)]
=E[h(τ1, t)h*(τ2, t + ∆t)]
=E[h(τ, t)h*(τ + ∆τ, t + ∆t)
The channels described by this auto correlation function are referred to as Wide Sense Stationary
Uncorrelated Scattering (WSSUS).
This is the most popular model for wide band fading channels.
Fromthe auto correlation function, following wireless channel parameters can be estimated.
Delay Spread τ: The delay spread is an important factor of a wireless channel as it specifies the duration of
the channel impulse response h(𝑟, 𝑡).The delay spread is the amount of time that elapses between the first
arriving path and the last arriving path.The maximum delay spread that can occur is represented by 𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑥.
𝑟𝑟𝑚𝑠 gives a measure of the width and spread of the channel.If 𝑟𝑟𝑚𝑠 is large the channel is dispersive
wereas small indicated its not very dispersive.
The number of taps needed is given as 𝖯 ≈ 𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑥/𝑇𝑠.
Coherence Bandwidth: The coherence bandwidth gives the measure of the maximum separation between a
frequency f1 and a frequency f2 where the channel frequency response is correlated.It is represented by Bc
|ƒ1 − ƒ2| ≤ 𝐵𝑐 = (ƒ1) ≈ (ƒ2)
|ƒ1 − ƒ2| ≤ 𝐵𝑐 = (ƒ1) ≈ (ƒ2) 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑
It also describes the range of frequencies over which the channel stays constant.
It is related to delay spread as B c = (1/5τ cmax )
Doppler Spread:It is the motion between transmitter and the receiver.If the transmitter and the receiver
are moving fast the Doppler is large and the channel will change much more frequently.
It is given as fd=fcv/c
Were fc is the carrier frequency and c is the speed of light.
Coherence Time, Tc: It is the period of time for which the channel is correlated. It is mathematically given as
|𝑡1 − 𝑡2| ≤ 𝑇𝑐 = (𝑡1) ≈ (𝑡2)
|𝑡1 − 𝑡2| > 𝑡𝑐 = (𝑡1) ≈ (𝑡2) 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑
Coherence time and the Doppler spread are related as
𝑡𝑐 = 1
𝑓𝐷
Angular Spread, θrms :It refers to the statistical distribution of the angle of the arriving energy.
A large θrms implies that the energy is coming in from many directions whereas a small θrms implies that the
received energy is more focused.
Coherence distance: It is the distance between any physical positions separated by a value d .The amplitude
and phase of the received signal at these positions are uncorrelated.
0.2L
𝐷𝑐 ≈
𝜃𝑟𝑚𝑠
9L
For Rayleigh fading which assumes a uniform angular spread the well-known relation 𝐷𝑐 ≈ 16𝜋 the
coherent distance increases with the carrier wavelength 𝜆 so high frequency systems have shorter
coherence distances.
Modeling broadband Fading channels: In order to design a wireless communication system it’s important
to design channel models that incorporate variations in time frequency and space.The two major class of
channel models are statistical and emphirical.
Statistical models are simpler and are useful for analysis and simulations.
The empirical models represent a specific type of channel more accurately.
A Pedagogy for Developing Statistical Models
The methods for modeling wireless channels are broken into three steps:
Step 1: First consider just a single channel sample corresponding to a single principle path between the
transmitter & receiver that is
h(τ, 𝑡) ℎo δ(τ, 𝑡)
Step 2: Next consider how this channel sample h0 evolves over time, that is:
h(τ, t) → h0(t)δ(τ )
Statistical Channel Models
The received signal in a wireless system is the superposition of numerous reflections or multi path
components.
In this section, we will overview statistical methods that can be used to characterize the amplitude
& power of received signal r(t) when all the reflections arrive at about the same time.
--------Students are informed to refer Text book for Rayleighs Fading Model---------
--------Students are informed to refer Text book for Los Channels Model---------
The European Cooperative for Scientific and Technical (COST) research extended the Hata model to
2 GHz as follows:
PL,U rban = 46.3 + 33.9log10 (fc ) − 13.82log10 (ht ) − a(hr ) + [44.9 − 6.55log10 (ht )]log10 (d) + Cm
This model is restricted to the following range of parameters:
Carrier Frequency 1.5 GHz to 2GHz
Base Antenna 30 m to 300m
Height
Mobile Antenna 1 m to 10 m
Height
Ditance d 100 m to 20 Km
COST Hata model isdesignedforlarge and small macro-cells, i.e., base stationantenna heights above
rooftop levels adjacent to base station.
Mitigation of Narrowband Fading:
The probability of bit error (BER) is the principle metric of interest for the physical (PHY) layer of a
communication system.
Fora QAM - based modulation system, the BER in an AWGN(nofading) canbe approximated by the
following bound:
Pb ≤ 0.2e−1.5SNR/(M −1)
The BER decreases rapidly (exponentially) with SNR.
So decreasing SNR linearly causes the BER to increase exponentially. However in a fading channel
the BER becomes a random variable which depends on the channel strength .Hence when the
channel is in deep fade it dominated the average BER.
When the required average BER is very low all errors are made while in deep fades.
Hence 𝑃𝑏 = 𝑆𝑁𝑅
𝑀 .Hence BER goes down with SNR only inversely.
Diversity is the key to overcoming the potentially devastating performance loss from fading
channels.
Spatial Diversity: Spatial Diversity is a very powerful form of diversity and is desirable since it
doesn’t necessitate redundancy in time or frequency.
It is achieved by adding two more antennas at either the receiver or the transmitter. The simplest
example is two antennas spaced sufficiently apart are placed at the receiver and the one receiving
stronger signal is selected.
The two signals undergo uncorrelated fading. Here half of the received signal is completely
discarded.
Coding and interleaving: Another form of diversity in digital communication is natural pair of
coding and interleaving. Here coding indicates the use of error correction codes.
These introduce redundancy at the transmitter to allow the receiver to recover the input signal even
if the received signal is significantly degraded by attenuation, noise and interference. Coding
techniques can be defined by their coding rates r≤ 1.
Example 1: for an output of a rate 1/3 code has 3 times the original rate which means it introduces
three redundant bits for every one bit information. If the transmission rate is constant the 1/3 rate
code lowers the transmitted by a factor of 3 .
The above example shows a Convolution encoder defined by LTE for use in the Broadcast channel.
It has one input ck and 3 outputs dk.The constraint length of this code is 7.There are 6 delay
elements or 64 possible states.The generator polynomial for for each of the three outputs is given
an octal notation.
Go=133 in binary form is 1011011 where a 0 means the output doesn’t include the tap but 1 does.
Hence 𝑑0𝑘
Includes modulo-2 summed contributions from the input and after delay elements 2, 3, 5 and 6.All
optimal codes include in each output the first and the last taps for maximum memory.
The job of the decoder is to take degraded output symbols 𝑑^𝑘 after demodulation and produce and
estimate Ck of the original information signal Ck . if for a given packet Ck = ck then the packet was
successfully received otherwise it must be retransmitted.
Example 2:Turbo codes A rate 1/3 code is also deployed by LTE for uplink and downlink shared
channels.The encoder is a parallel concatenated convolutional code that comprises 8 state rate ½
systematic encoder and an 8 state rate 1 systamatic encoder that operates on an interleaved input
sequence for a net coding 1/3.
Here systematic means a function of both input bits and the previous states while the other outputs
are simply passed through to the output.
I
INTERLEAVING:It is used in both convolutional coding and turbo coding .The interleaver shuffles
the coded bits to provide robustness to burst errors .It spreads out the coded bits so that the effect
of of burst error after de interleaving are spread over an entire frame.
In turbo coding an interleaver is used between the concatenated codes .At the receiver the
decoders for each encoder pass their soft outputs back and forth via a deinterleaver that
decorrelates these values.
The decoder proceeds to iterate back and forth between each decoder until the symbol estimates
converge that is the interleaver is no longer able to decorrelate the soft outputs.
The interleaver packt is usually constrained to a single packet to reduce interleaving and de
interleaving delays.
There is an additional channel interleaver used to send control information over the uplink shared
channel in order to spread it out over a wide range of sub carriers.
Automatic Repeat request:
ARQ is MAC layer retransmission protocol that allows erroroneous packets to be quickly
retransmitted.
It works along with PHY layer ECC’S and parity checks to ensure reliable links.
ARQ retransmits the entire packet even for a single bit error.
Hybrid ARQ combines both ARQ and FEC to avoid an unnecessary retransmission.
In H-ARQ a channel encoder such as a convolutional encoder is used to generate additional
redundancy to the information bits.
However instead of transmitting all the bits only a fraction of the encoded bits are transmitted.
This is achieved by puncturing some of the encoded bits to create an effective code rate greater
than the native code rate of the encoder.
After transmitting the encoded and punctured bits the transmitter waits for an acknowledgement
from the receiver to see if the receiver was able to decode the information bits from the
transmission.
If the receiver was able to decode then its done otherwise the transmitter can resend a copy of the
encoded bits.
During retransmission the transmitter sends a copy of the encoded bits that is identical to the first
transmission and the receiver combines the received bits with the previous transmission.
Since the encoded bits are the same in all transmissions the receiver can combine all the
transmissions to increase SNR.
ADAPTIVE MODULATION AND CODING:
LTE systems employ adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) in order to take advantage of
fluctuations in the channel over time and frequency.
The basic idea is to transmit at a high data rate when the channel is good and transmit at a low
data rate when the channel is poor in order to avoid excessive drop of packets.
Lower data rates are achieved by using a small constellation such as QPSK and larger data rates
are achieved using larger constellations such as 64 QAM.
Depending on the channel gain of the transmitter AMC chooses the required modulation technique
so that the highest possible data rate can be achieved.
An alternative objective is to pick up the modulation or coding combination that provides
maximum throughput.
A block diagram is given below for simplicity a single user system is considered which attempts to
transmit as quickly as possible through the channel with a variable SINR.
The goal of the transmitter is to transmit data from its queue as quickly as possible subjected to
data being demodulated and decoded reliably at the receiver.
Feedback is critical in AMC and the transmitter needs to know the channel SINR.
MITIGATION TO BROADBAND FADING:
In LTE broadband channel symbol interference is a very serious problem.This is due to frequency
selective fading cause dispersion in time and frequency.Choosing a technique to effectively combat
ISI is centralized design for high data rate system.
Techniques for ISI Mitigation:
Spread Spectrum and RAKE Reciever
Equalisation
Multicarrier Modulation OFDM
Single Carrier Modulation with frequency Domain Equalisation
Multicarrier Modulation:
Multicarrier modulation is that rather than fighting the time dispersive channel .
For a large number of subcarriers (L) used in parallel so that the symbol time for each goes from T
to LT.
In other words rather than sending a single signal with data rate R and bandwidth B why not send
L signals at the same time each having bandwidth B/L and data rate R/L.
In this way if B/L « 𝐵𝑐 each of the signals will undergoe approximately flat fading and the time
dispersion for each of the signal is negligible.
As long as the number of the subcarriers L is large enough the condition B/L « 𝐵𝑐 can be met.