3/31/23, 9:48 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet

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LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 – PDCC

Capacity Enhancement

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There are many ways to optimize LTE throughput and I will try to cover all of them. The LTE throughput
optimization procedure described in this article requires PDCCH enhancements. The general idea is that
the LTE subframe is made up of PDCCH and PDSCH as explained in my article LTE Frame Structure Made
Simple. The PDCCH is used for control information while the PDSCH carries the actual data. So, if the
PDCCH resources are reduced then that means that the PDSCH resources can increase which in turn
3
means that there will be more data per subframe. Since, each subframe
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means there will be more bits per millisecond which is the definition
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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
Firstly, let’s try to understand PDCCH itself and how it works. A PDCCH is used to give scheduling Follow Us on Twitter
allocations to the UE on the PDSCH or PUSCH. For example, if the UE has data in the PDSCH, it needs to
know where the data is located. The PDCCH will tell the UE that the data it is looking for is located at this
location on PDSCH. This means that if the UE is unable to decode PDCCH then the UE cannot read the
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PDSCH in that subframe and consistent decoding failures of PDCCH lead to RLF (Radio Link Failure) due
to N310. Hence, the decoding of PDCCH is extremely important and that is why it uses a special OurTechnologyPlane
structure which is different than other channels.
Ali Khalid
PDCCH is made up of CCEs (Control Channel Elements) and each CCE is made up of 36 REs (Resource @AliKhalid84 · Mar
Elements). PDCCH further uses a concept of aggregation layers which is a group of CCEs. There are 4 KPI Optimization can be a c
aggregation layers in the normal PDCCH topic so when I try to explai
others, I use a flow chart typ
– Aggregation layer 1 : This uses 1 CCE and it is the smallest block so it is only used in very good radio where I take various real-life
conditions. and explain the steps and in
using flow charts to get to t
– Aggregation layer 2 : This uses 2 CCEs and it is usually the most common aggregation layer in normal potential solutions. The sum
radio conditions. youtu.be/HrXZtXA-DJg…

– Aggregation layer 4 : This uses 4 CCEs and it is a robust allocation. It can be used for signalling and
youtube.com
control information allocations.
KPI Optimiza
– Aggregation layer 8 : This uses 8 CCEs and it is the most robust allocation. Users in very bad radio Dummies: …
conditions are allocated with this layer or it can be used for control information.
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Let’s have a look at how many users can be scheduled by PDCCH in a subframe. This depends on the
number of CCEs that the subframe can handle which in turn depends on many factors. Let’s have a look
at a couple of examples

– Consider a 10 MHz channel using 2×2 MIMO (2 CRS ports). The PDCCH can span over 3 symbols at
maximum and may use 1 symbol at minimum. The number of RBs in a 10 MHz channel is 50 and this
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means that a symbol can hold a maximum of 600 REs. However, in the first symbol, we have 2 RS per RB
for each antenna port. This means that there will be a total of 4 RS per RB in the first symbol and since
there are 50 RBs so total RS count will be 4*50 =200 REs. Moreover, there is a PCFICH control channel Ali Khalid
that spans over 4 REGs or 16 REs. Then there are PHICH groups and each PHICH group occupies 3 REGs
or 12 REs. If the Ng parameter is 1 then there will be 7 PHICH groups in 10 MHz channel so the total Haider Khalid
PHICH overhead will be 12*7=84.

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3 Number of REs in one symbol : 50*12 = 600

Overhead in Symbol 1 = 200 RS + 16 REs of PCFICH + 84 REs of PHICH = 300 REs

Rate 
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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
Overhead in symbol 2 = 0 REs  KPI Optimization: LTE Call
Overhead in symbol 3 = 0 REs  LTE Throughput Optimiza
– Spectral Efficiency
Total REs available for PDCCH (REs available in 3 symbols) = 1800 – 300 = 1500 REs

Total CCEs available for PDCCH = 1500 REs / 36 = 41 CCEs

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This means that if all the users are in very good radio conditions, then there can be 41 users scheduled Mobile App
in 1 TTI (1 ms) with 3 PDCCH symbols. However, this does not happen because the radio conditions of
the users are usually distributed and there are common allocations like TPC (transmit power control)  Haider Khalid on Top Too
commands which are usually at a bigger aggregation layer since it carries allocations for multiple users. Developer should know to
So, if there is one TPC command which takes 8 CCEs then around 33 CCEs are remaining. These CCEs will Mobile App
be divided between downlink and uplink data allocations. Usually, downlink data is more so most of the
allocations are taken by downlink. Consider that the users are in good conditions and require 2 CCEs
each then there can be 16 users in each TTI (16*2 =32 CCEs) with 3 PDCCH symbols.

March 2023
Now that the PDCCH structure is out of the way, let’s have a look at the optimization procedures for
PDCCH. M T W T F
1 2 3
6 7 8 9 10
13 14 15 16 17
20 21 22 23 24
27 28 29 30 31

« Feb

As described above, the PDCCH symbol usage can go upto 3. Each subframe has 14 symbols so if PDCCH
uses 3 symbols, then the PDSCH will only be able to use 11 symbols. If the PDCCH symbol number is
reduced to 1, then the PDSCH symbol count can increase to 13 which is around 15% improvement in
throughput or capacity. However, if we change the PDCCH symbol count to 1 then that means that the
available PDCCH CCEs will reduce to 8 (300/36=8) since the first symbol has 300 REs available and other
300 REs are used by RS, PCFICH and PHICH. And if we need to transmit a TPC command then it will
utilize all the CCEs and we cannot transmit any data allocations.

In order to tackle this, most of the vendors have introduced a dynamic algorithm that changes the
PDCCH symbol count with respect to the requirement of the users. If there is data for 6 users and a TPC
command, it will use 2 symbols for PDCCH and if there is only 1 user that needs to be scheduled, it will
3 reduce the PDCCH symbol count to 1. Activating this algorithm is the first step to ensure optimum
balance between PDCCH and PDSCH. 
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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet

The PDCCH allocation is mostly based on a BLER target accompanied by a CQI input. If the UE is showing
a good CQI, the eNB will allocate a good aggregation layer. For example, the UE reported CQI index 12
which shows that it is in good radio conditions then the eNB will allocate it aggregation layer 2 which
uses 2 CCEs. Now, consider that the UE moves away and eNB experiences BLER so the eNB will increase
the aggregation layer to 4 to provide more robustness to the PDCCH. However, there is another way to
increase the robustness and that is to increase the PDCCH power. Vendors have dynamic power
features for PDCCH and if such a feature is used, it will increase the PDCCH power with the same
aggregation layer to increase the robustness. This means that the UE will stay with the same aggregation
layer using 2 CCEs and since it did not expand to 4 CCEs so there was a gain of 2CCEs or 72 REs which
might prevent the eNB to increase the PDCCH symbol from 1 to 2 resulting in an extra symbol for
PDSCH.

Another approach is to tune the PDCCH BLER target. If the BLER target is slightly increased, then the
eNB will use the same PDCCH aggregation layer for longer and this will reduce expansion of PDCCH
resulting in a lower CCE utilization and reduced overhead. However, if the BLER target is increased
excessively, the UEs might fail to decode the PDCCH resulting in retransmissions.

Another dimension is the coding rate for the PDCCH aggregation layers. If there is more number of bits
in a particular PDCCH allocation, then it might exceed the upper limit of the Aggregation Layer 1. So, the
eNB will have to expand to the bigger aggregation layer. This happens because the eNB has a threshold
for maximum coding rate per aggregation layer. However, if the maximum coding rate threshold is
increased, the eNB will be able to send more bits within the same aggregation layer. This would reduce
the transitions to higher aggregation layers and might reduce the overhead. As an example, a transmit
diversity allocation uses lesser number of PDCCH bits compared to a Open Loop Spatial Multiplexing
(TM3) allocation. So, if a network has Transmit Diversity and it moves to Open Loop Spatial Multiplexing,
an increase in aggregation layer will be observed. Similarly, if the network shifts from Open Loop to
Closed Loop, another increase in aggregation layer will be observed as Closed Loop MIMO allocations
take more number of bits on PDCCH compared to Open Loop MIMO allocations. This can be mitigated
3 by increasing the maximum coding rate threshold for the PDCCH. But increasing it reduces the
robustness of the PDCCH and therefore, a balance must be maintained. 
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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet

The gain of the PDCCH optimization is directly proportional to the utilization and load on the PDCCH. If
the network is lightly loaded then most of the time PDCCH will only be using 1 symbol and since that is
the minimum number of symbols allocated to PDCCH so there will be no gain with any of the above
mentioned changes. If the network is congested and PDCCH is consistently using 3 symbols then such
measures can help in reducing the symbols to 2 which can expand the PDSCH or data capacity.
However, in all the cases, special care must be taken that this does not increase decoding failures
excessively.

In case of any queries or feedback, please drop a comment below and I would love to respond and help.
Also, If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our Youtube channel – Our Technology Planet for
more exciting stuff and videos.

Bio Latest Posts

Ali Khalid
5G NR | VoLTE | LTE-A | Massive MIMO | NB-IoT | NDO Network Specialist at Ericsson, Australia

Ali Khalid is a Senior LTE/VoLTE RNPO, NB-IoT and 5G Solution Architect who has
successfully led and delivered a number of projects in different regions across the
globe including Pakistan, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman, KSA, Nigeria, Turkey, Poland and
Japan. He is currently working in Strategic Competence Unit (SCU), a highly experienced
global team at Ericsson, Australia. In case of any questions or feedback, please feel free
to drop a comment below or connect with him on LinkedIn.

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 October 21, 2017  Ali Khalid  Telecom  LTE Throughput Optimization, PDCCH

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114 thoughts on “LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 – PDCCH

Capacity Enhancement”

Shajeel iqbal says:

 May 18, 2022 at 9:29 am

What is the requirement of throughput for PDCCH channels ? How fast should it be able to decode and
encode data ?
For example, for PDSCH channel the requirement for 5G NR is 20 Gb/s with 0.5 ms latency. I wonder what
is it only PDCCH control information ?

REPLY

3
Abderrahmane says:
 April 7, 2022 at 9:46 am

Hi Ali

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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
Excellent post

For ERICSSON which parameter or feature activate the CCE aggregation layers

REPLY

Shrikant says:
 February 4, 2022 at 3:18 am

L.ChMeas.PDCCH.AggLvl1Num is reduced after 2T2R to 4T4R what can be the possible reason

REPLY

EŞREF ÇİFTÇİ says:

 December 1, 2021 at 9:10 pm

What’s relation of PDCCH management and RRC?

REPLY

Graja Ahmed says:

 August 17, 2021 at 6:28 pm

Is the calculation for TDD also, if not what is the difference, please.

REPLY

Jigar says:
 April 20, 2021 at 10:55 am

What is your view on if we did 8 ue per TTI in DL if we have CFI=3 for 10 or 20 MHz?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 June 25, 2021 at 6:49 am

It would depend on the CCE aggregation levels assigned to these UEs

REPLY

Ajay Nigam says:

 March 18, 2021 at 10:09 am

Helllo Khalid,

Is there any reference where we can derive the aggregation level based on DL CQI reported?

Thanks

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 June 25, 2021 at 6:53 am

In LTE, not easy to generate that as the outer loop is very active and PDCCH aggregation levels are
mostly adjusted by the Outer Loop (BLER based link adjustment)

3 REPLY
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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet

Mohammed says:
 January 1, 2021 at 12:52 pm

Hi Khalid
Increasing PDCCH power will it result in reduction of PDSCH power and hence reduction of THP or not ?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 January 25, 2021 at 4:22 am

PDCCH power will be increased on PDCCH symbol. In conventional LTE, the PDCCH and PDSCH
symbols are separate so it should not impact PDSCH

REPLY

Manoj Deka says:

 December 11, 2020 at 6:00 pm

No of CCE Calculation: FDD 20 MHz, 4 CRS., CFI =3

No of RBs = 100
Total No of REs = 3 * 1200 = 3600
No of REs carrying Reference Signal = 4 * 100 ( 1st symbol) + 4 * 100 ( 2nd symbol) = 800 ( Since 4 CRS)
No of PCFICH Symbol ( Always in Symbol 0) = 16 REs
No of PHFICH Symbol ( Always in Symbol 0) = 156 REs (For Ng =1, No of PHICH groups = 13, Size of 1 PHICH
group = 12 REs, then total no of REs for PHICH is 13 * 12 =156 REs )
No of PDCCH REs = 3600 – 800 – 16 – 156 = 2628 REs
We know that 1 CCE = 9 REG and 1 REG = 4REs
1 CCE = 9 * 4 REs = 36 REs

No of CCEs = 2628/36 = 73 CCEs.

REPLY

Mohit says:
 October 17, 2020 at 5:30 pm

I have a doubt with this line

“However, this does not happen because the radio conditions of the users are usually distributed”
Why would the CCE allocation depend on the radio condition of the Users? shouldn’t it just depend on the
channel condition(CQI) of PDCCH, which should be common for all the users?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 December 5, 2020 at 3:24 am

PDCCH can be common and it can be user specific as well. Common PDCCH does not depend on
UE specific CQI. It has fixed CCE aggregation level which is usually robust (e.g. 4 or 8). The user
specific PDCCH which is only for one user depends on that user’s CQI.

REPLY

Sudarsan Samal says:

 May 17, 2021 at 6:23 pm

Thanks Mr.Ali Its very well explained..!!!

REPLY
3

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Ali Khalid says:

 June 25, 2021 at 6:48 am

Glad to help

REPLY

Amin Azari says:

 October 12, 2020 at 10:10 am

Thank you

REPLY

Sujit P says:
 October 8, 2020 at 11:36 am

Informative and well articulated

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 October 9, 2020 at 2:29 pm

Thanks Sujit

REPLY

Vikram Thakur says:

 October 8, 2020 at 9:44 am

Hi Ali,
First of all thank you very much for wonderful post and explanation as well. Please keep on sharing such
treasure with all of us its really very helpful. I have 2 queries as below.
1) is rlf happen after n310 expiry or T310expiry?
2) when we are considering CFI=2, then how you are calculating 300 RE’s for 2nd symbol? As per my
understanding if PHICH duration is normal, CFI=2, RS will always be on 1st and 5th symbol of each RB…so I
am finding it little contradictory. Can you please help me out to clarify this?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 October 9, 2020 at 2:47 pm

Actual RLF should be after T310 expiry

The 300 REs overhead is in the first symbol. The Second symbol has no RS overhead.

REPLY

Amin says:
 September 8, 2020 at 6:41 am
3 HI
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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
Thank you for excellent explanation. I’m just wondering if we could increase the capacity of PDCCH by
reducing the # RE allocated to PHICH through reducing the Ng ( 1 to 1/6). Have you tried it before ?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 October 9, 2020 at 2:55 pm

Yeah theoretically, if PHICH is reduced that can increase PDCCH REs but PHICH is already using a
very small amount of REs and each PDCCH CCE needs 36 REs so maybe not a significant gain.

REPLY

Alina says:
 August 27, 2020 at 4:44 am

There is this switch in ZTE that adjusts the conservative power or additional power provided to each CCE:

pdcchConsSwitch=(The selection for the conservative quantity of control channel)(value range:0-3 where
[0] means 3dB Conservative power, [1] means 6dB and [2]means 9dB)
The CCE aggregation level and power offset of the PDCCH is determined based on the data operating point
corresponding to the equivalent spectrum efficiency of the UE plus a certain conservative quantity.

Can u kindly what is general power needed per CCE and How much of it is contributed by conservative
power.

REPLY

Sudarsan Samal says:

 May 17, 2021 at 6:22 pm

CCE power is adjusted to attend the PDCCH assignment. Power range varies from 12 dB to 18.2 dB.

REPLY

zain abidi says:

 August 3, 2022 at 11:03 am

hi alina can you please explain me “aucCFI1Cons” and “pdcchConsSwitch” why these two
parameters having 2 values like this [1,1] whats meant by ist value and 2nd value???

REPLY

Hussam Eddin Al Jammal says:

 August 19, 2020 at 6:34 am

Very nice information … thanks for your Share

REPLY

ludali says:
 August 13, 2020 at 2:11 pm

Very informative and well clarified. Thanks Ali Khalid.

REPLY

Ayan says: 
 August 12, 2020 at 3:22 pm

https://ourtechplanet.com/lte-throughput-optimization-part-1-pdcch-capacity-enhancement/ 9/24
3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
How pdcchCFI mode related with accessibility (MP Load) ?

REPLY

magi says:
 July 23, 2020 at 12:51 pm

Hi dear,
can you pls explain me about the firstorder, secondorder and last order of cces allocation . what are the
cases and functionalities of this cases??

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 August 7, 2020 at 9:21 am

Are you referring to aggregation layers? If yes, first or second Agg layers are used for good
coverage UEs and as coverage goes bad, 3rd or 4th Agg layer can be used. Signaling data uses
either 3rd or 4th Agg layer.

REPLY

magi says:
 June 24, 2020 at 3:08 pm

can you explain how many cces will be there in the each subframe??

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 June 28, 2020 at 12:26 pm

The number of CCEs depend on bandwidth and also on the number of PDCCH symbols used in the
subframe. So, if the bandwidth is 20MHz, it has 100 RBs which is equal to 1200 REs in one symbol.
Each CCE is equal to 36 REs so with 1200 REs, there can be 33 CCEs per symbol. However, the first
symbol has RS, PHICH and PCFICH so the number of REs available for PDCCH will be lesser (usually
there are 16 CCEs in the first symbol). Considering all this, in a subframe, if we have 3 symbols for
PDCCH, 2 CRS Ports and bandwidth is 20MHz, we can have have around 82 CCEs.

REPLY

magi says:
 June 23, 2020 at 10:56 am

how many cces are available in eacj subframe?/

REPLY

axel says:
 May 12, 2020 at 6:45 pm

hi, do you know how can reach a maximum quantity of users for CCE or PDSCH/Throughput using mimo
2×2 in ericsson 5216?

REPLY

Khizar Suri says: 

 April 28, 2020 at 8:10 pm

https://ourtechplanet.com/lte-throughput-optimization-part-1-pdcch-capacity-enhancement/ 10/24
3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
AOA Ali,

We are now a days facing LTE High Utilization and Degraded User throughput, I have implemented the
above discussed techniques Like CFI modification, CCE Aggr level 4 fix, RS Power reduction for LTE
throughput enhancement in phases ( Results were satisfactory). Can you guide any other technique
regarding throughput enhancement, Congestion relief except carrier addition/Carrier aggregation or hard
expansions.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 May 17, 2020 at 6:14 am

There are advanced MIMO techniques – are you using TM4? Then maybe you can explore MU-
MIMO options. Also load balancing optimization might help as well.

REPLY

Karmand says:
 April 27, 2020 at 1:02 am

Thank you Mr.Ali it is very useful keep doing.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 May 17, 2020 at 6:12 am

You are welcome

REPLY

reda says:
 March 11, 2020 at 10:19 am

Is the No of PDCCH related to quantity of requested data ?

or if PDCCH DL Grant is 0 or 1 Dl throughput will be large or small ?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 March 15, 2020 at 11:59 am

No, single PDCCH grant can schedule a single RB or all the RBs.

REPLY

Sushant says:
 December 6, 2019 at 6:12 am

I didn’t get the calculation of 600RE, if PDDCH is max 3 so it means that 12(subcarrier) * 3(symbol) * 50RB =
1800RE

REPLY

Ali Khalid says: 

 January 11, 2020 at 3:53 am

https://ourtechplanet.com/lte-throughput-optimization-part-1-pdcch-capacity-enhancement/ 11/24
3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet
The 600 REs that I mentioned are for 1 symbol. So total REs for 3 symbols will be 1800 as you
mentioned but subtracting REs for RS, PCFICH and PHICH, the remaining amount will be around
1500.

REPLY

Said says:
 November 13, 2019 at 2:40 pm

Thank You so much Ali for the post. It is very usefull!

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 January 11, 2020 at 3:46 am

You are welcome

REPLY

avinash says:
 November 4, 2019 at 10:16 am

What is the relation between LTE CFI and LTE CCE ? If I have CFI=1, How is it related to CCE ? Also, Is CFI=1
means there is 1 symbol on PDCCH ?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 January 11, 2020 at 3:45 am

CFI = 1 means that 1st symbol will be used by PDCCH. Within that symbol, there will be multiple
CCEs. So, in short, CCEs make up PDCCH allocations while CFI tells how many symbols will be
occupied by the PDCCH.

REPLY

Miles Mohammad says:

 August 11, 2019 at 11:14 am

Dear Khalid bro

Take my Salam.

Please help me to know the reason of L.ChMeas.CCE.DL.AllocFail and way forward to optimize this issues

REPLY

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3/31/23, 9:49 AM LTE Throughput Optimization: Part 1 - PDCCH Capacity Enhancement - Our Technology Planet

Ali Khalid says:

 August 19, 2019 at 10:22 am

The CCE allocation failures usually mean that there is an allocation for data for a user but number
of CCEs are exhausted so the allocation failed. It will be done in the next TTI in most cases so it is
not a big issue. But if the CCE allocation failures have increased massively then PDCCH needs to be
optimized. There are features to improve PDCCH capacity in LTE – it will be good to focus on those.
If you have already implemented those features then it is simply congestion and corresponding
actions should be taken to relieve congestion.

REPLY

Srikanth Chinta says:

 July 2, 2019 at 12:21 pm

Thanks Ali Khalid for great information…

Just need more information on how to calculate total number of PRBs allocated for PUCCH and PRACH in
LTE TDD 20Mhz?

REPLY

Xeeshan says:
 April 2, 2019 at 8:46 am

What is the minimum resource one User can acquire.

2 PRBs? 168 REs? How many minimum REs or PDSCH channels can be allocated to a user in 1 SubFrame?
How many minimum REs in one Frame? Can multiple users share?
Therefore what is the Minimum throughput (considering 64 QAM) be allocated to a user.
In Huawei users in high capacity situations can reach from 1200 to 1800 users per Cell; given higher
UBBP/UMPT board in a 20MHz Cell. What would be the minimum throughput one user be getting in this
case, lets assume Radio is good and 64 QAM is triggered. Basically we would like to know the scheduling
and minimum resource allocation to a user.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 April 5, 2019 at 12:54 pm

Minimum resource for a user is 1 RB in frequency domain and it spans over two slots (1 TTI) in time
domain – hence also known as a scheduling block. Users can share the same resources if MU-
MIMO is enabled otherwise resources are not shared. Minimum throughput can be calculated
using tables provided in 3GPP 36213.

REPLY

Muhammad Saqib says:

 March 21, 2019 at 5:20 am

Hi Dear
Can you explain bout TAC planning with respect to LAC

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Ali Khalid says:

 April 5, 2019 at 12:57 pm
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Simplest way used nowadays is to map a TAC to a LAC. With algorithms like precise and intelligent
paging, the paging capacity nowadays is not much of an issue on LTE. 
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Osvaldo says:
 February 22, 2019 at 1:50 am

hello guys,
we are facing major issue that cant be simply explained.
formulas for huawei and nokia seem to be correct.
but… nokia in 700mhz doesnt seem to achieve good throughput… not even close to 2600mhz huawei…
anyone thought this could be related to measurement??
in nokia, throughput formula names IP_TPUT_VOL_DL_QCI_1 and in huawei are bits PDCP SDU (which
means received from ip layer… should be identical)
well i cant explain why nokia seems to be showing low throughput…
thanks for any words on the matter

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Ali Khalid says:

 February 27, 2019 at 4:19 pm

Usually, L700 is a coverage layer while L2600 is a capacity layer by default. L2600 should have more
bandwidth, higher Tx configuration and much better CQI so with the same number of sites and
same topology, L2600 should have much better throughput than L700.

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Lakhendra Singh says:

 January 31, 2019 at 9:09 am

Hi Ali

Can you help to know PDSCH Blocking formula for Ericsson

Thanks

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Lakhendra says:
 January 31, 2019 at 6:56 am

Hi Ali

Can you share the PDSCH Blocking formula for Erisson

Also i am getting very low preamble success rate, i am taking below formula and counter

Preamble success rate=

((‘pmRaSuccCbra'[eCell,Time]+’pmRaSuccCfra'[eCell,Time])/(‘pmRaAttCbra'[eCell,Time]+’pmRaAttCfra'[eCell,Time]))

is this correct?

Thanks

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Md Mustafizur Rahman says:

 January 8, 2019 at 11:14 am

Thanks a lot Ali Bhai, very nice & precise articulation of PDCCH Capacity Enhancement.

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Ali Khalid says:

 January 15, 2019 at 9:46 am

Glad that you liked it

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hamza lot says:

 November 3, 2018 at 5:47 pm

pdcch high usage can lead to call drop ??

BR

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Tito C. says:
 September 28, 2018 at 11:59 pm

Hi Ali,

Thanks for the knowledge sharing and congrats for this very pratical and userful topic.

In terms of radio interface occupation, which resource allocation we should take into account first and
why?
PRB utilization or TTI utilization or CCE utilization?
I recon that radio condition will have greater influence in all of those, but which one of them will be less
effected by the radio condition but still show how much a cell is loaded and why?

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Ali Khalid says:

 October 20, 2018 at 9:13 pm

There is no single answer for this question as it will vary in different scenarios. For instance, if the
users are using FTP or P2P or video streaming, you might get higher utilization on PRB and TTI but
CCE might be free. However, if the users are using whatsapp or small packet services like
applications with heart-beat signaling, then the CCE utilization might be higher than PRB utilization.

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Raju says:
 September 14, 2018 at 2:08 pm

Hi Ali,

very useful topic.

i have a requirement to modify max CCEs as per PDCCH load from 16 to 8 or vice versa.
when PDCCH load is above a certain threshold then reduce the max number of CCE allocation from 16 to 8
and this 8 is applied to new calls only. this Requirement says this will help in reducing call drops.

i. Does it mean that MAC can assign up to 16 CCEs for old calls and 8 for new calls.
ii. how does this req will help in improving call drop rate

Thanks,
Raju

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Mohamed Abdelbasset says:

3

 August 5, 2018 at 9:25 am

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Very Useful topic
Thanks Ali

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 August 5, 2018 at 12:42 pm

You are welcome

REPLY

Subh says:
 July 14, 2018 at 6:41 pm

How can we know if the decoding has failed if I reduce the no of cfi mode to 1? What counters does it peg?

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Ali Khalid says:

 July 28, 2018 at 8:37 am

If the CFI is fixed to 1, then there will be increase in blocking or PDCCH allocation failures especially
for uplink.

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Narendra says:
 June 15, 2018 at 1:19 pm

Thanks for this wonderful description. I have one query “how to check coding rate in ericsson system for
particular aggregation layer”

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Haider says:
 May 21, 2018 at 7:41 pm

how many (minimum) resource blocks one user occupy?

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Narendra says:
 June 15, 2018 at 1:22 pm

Minimum 2 RB which we can say Scheduling Block

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Kranthi says:
 April 15, 2018 at 8:07 am

Good one Khalid Bro

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NOman says:
 March 9, 2018 at 3:20 pm

Could u pls help me with parameters of Nokia 16A for Throughput Optimization.????

REPLY

Steve says:
 January 13, 2018 at 1:56 am

Dear Ali,

Any negative impact for PDCCH power boost?

Best Regards,
Myo

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Ali Khalid says:

 January 14, 2018 at 6:04 pm

If the power is taken from other channels then it can impact decoding of other channels but if the
power is taken from free or unused REs within the same symbol then it should not have an impact

REPLY

Daniel Coral says:

 December 28, 2017 at 3:40 pm

Excellent and very useful post!

Daniel

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Ali Khalid says:

 January 2, 2018 at 5:06 am

Thanks Daniel

REPLY

Samson Babajide Fayoyiwa says:

 December 18, 2017 at 3:03 pm

In depth analysis Ali, I find this material very deep and useful. Just done digesting it and I make bold to say
this is the most descriptive and concise piece I have seen on PDSCH and PDCCH as the most important
channels in LTE.
Bravo

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Ali Khalid says:

 December 26, 2017 at 6:03 am

Thanks Samson
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Kamel says:
 December 11, 2017 at 8:05 pm

Dear
As you may know that in 3G, we have AC for Power because we have Dedicated channel for SRB and Voice.
My question is, does we have the issue of power in LTE ? Does there is a AC for power as well ?
Remember that we have SRB1 and 2 which are using Dedicated Channel (and SRB0 uses CCCH).
Thanks.

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Ajay Patel says:

 December 4, 2017 at 7:45 am

Hi Ali,

“Excellent post”
I just want to highlight one practical experience in loaded network where 40% usage of PDCCH agg-8. Even
after enabling capacity improved switch , there was no change in User throughput (No change in Bits & TTI
) although got gain in PDCCH Utilization , reduction in CCE-8 Usage , No impact on PDCCH DTX . What are
the other factors which can restrict user throughput gain even with gain 1) Reducing Agg layer 2) Reducing
CCE blocking ) Maintaining DTX ratio in live network.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 December 4, 2017 at 3:55 pm

Thanks Ajay. The reduction in PDCCH blocking and utilization might not have resulted in a
significant reduction in CFI. The increase in throughput is supposed to be linked to the CFI.

REPLY

Ajay says:
 November 21, 2017 at 3:24 am

excellent insight info..

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Jamie says:
 November 15, 2017 at 5:08 pm

“Similarly, if the network shifts from Open Loop to Closed Loop, another increase in aggregation layer will
be observed as Closed Loop MIMO allocations take more number of bits on PDCCH compared to Open
Loop MIMO allocations. ”

That’s not altogether a bad thing though is it? With CL MIMO your CQI feedback should be improved thus
resulting in higher MCS/larger TBS and if not better throughput then better efficiency wouldn’t it?

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 November 16, 2017 at 7:40 am

Exactly, that is not a bad thing at all. Closed loop MIMO usually out-performs Open loop MIMO.
Actually I have received this query from many engineers so I just wanted to clarify that transition to
closed loop MIMO causes an increase in aggregation layer.

3
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Vikram sharma says:

 November 11, 2017 at 1:36 pm

Hi Pl tell me the difference between PDCCH and PDSCH

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 November 16, 2017 at 7:44 am

PDCCH is the LTE channel which gives allocations to the User while PDSCH carries the actual data.
In simple words, the Users needs to download its data then it needs to know where the data is
located. It will get the location of this data by reading the PDCCH and this data location will be on
PDSCH.

REPLY

Christian says:
 November 10, 2017 at 8:26 am

Excellent post.
Thanks

REPLY

Bimal says:
 November 7, 2017 at 9:58 am

Hi Ali,

Very nice explanation. i just confused and didn’t understand this line of yours, kindly check .

Number of REs in one symbol : 50*12 = 600 ”

if i am not wrong it should be no of sub carriers …

Thanks
Bimal

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 November 7, 2017 at 12:33 pm

Hi Bimal, you are right that it is number of subcarriers but one RE is one symbol into one
subcarrier. So, when I say “REs in ONE symbol” then it means that symbol is constant now so the RE
is just a depiction of subcarriers. In short, number of subcarriers is 600 and if we just choose one
symbol then the number of REs in that symbol is also 600.

REPLY

Swati Singla says:

 October 30, 2017 at 10:21 am

Hi

Thanks for the informative material. Very well explained !

Just to mention the Features available in Ericsson for the functionalities mentioned in the Article for the
PDCCH aggregation level adjustments
3
1) PDCCH Power boost– For increasing the power of the PDCCH REs
2) Enhanced PDCCH Link Adaptation- For Changing the BLER target 
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3) PDCCH Coverage extension- For use of more robust DCI format for downlink assignments in limited RF
conditions.

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Ali says:
 October 31, 2017 at 11:02 am

@Swati Singla : Please explain more about below feature, I don’t get what do you mean by limited
RF conditions.
3) PDCCH Coverage extension- For use of more robust DCI format for downlink assignments in
limited RF conditions.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 November 1, 2017 at 6:15 am

Hi Swati
Thanks for your comment. Actually I am also interested to know about the 3rd feature that you
mentioned. DCI formats are already defined so what do you mean by the term “more robust DCI
format” – is it like more robust aggregation layer?

REPLY

Mujtaba Sk says:
 February 20, 2018 at 3:48 pm

Hi Ali,
It forces the use of DCI format 1A for downlink assignments on the PDCCH in the cases of
POOR SINR,
As it has a smaller size, the coding rate will decrease and hence the coverage improves.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 February 26, 2018 at 4:18 pm

Thanks Mujtaba

REPLY

Mustafa Rawat says:

 November 30, 2019 at 6:08 am

Dear Mujtaba,
What threshold of DL SINR is used to force the use of DCI Format 1A?
Thanks!

REPLY

Danish Naseer says:

 October 27, 2017 at 3:37 pm

Well done Ali ?

3
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Ali Khalid says:

 November 1, 2017 at 6:13 am

Thanks Danish

REPLY

Sami Balsak says:

 October 23, 2017 at 8:41 am

Dear Ali,
For this purpose in Huawei vendor there are 2 parameters introduces, I would like to know if is there any
negative effect of this parameters or not also is there any additional parameter can you recommend for
this purpose or not.
Thanks in Advance
First One:
PdcchCapacityImproveSwitch: Indicates whether to enable optimization on PDCCH capacity expansion. For
LTE FDD networks, if this parameter is set to ON(On), (1) the initial value for closed-loop adjustment on
PDCCH aggregation level applies only to SRBs; (2) if a UE fails to be allocated with CCEs, the eNodeB
reallocates CCEs to the UE by increasing the PDCCH power and decreasing the PDCCH aggregation level for
the UE. If this parameter is set to OFF(Off), (1) the initial value for closed-loop adjustment on PDCCH
aggregation level applies to both SRBs and DRBs; (2) if a UE fails to be allocated with CCEs, the eNodeB
does not reallocate CCEs to the UE by increasing the PDCCH power and decreasing the PDCCH aggregation
level for the UE. For LTE TDD networks, if this parameter is set to ON(On), the eNodeB reallocates CCEs to a
UE, if the UE fails to be allocated with CCEs, by increasing the PDCCH transmit power and decreasing the
PDCCH aggregation level for the UE. If this parameter is set to OFF(Off), the eNodeB does not reallocate
CCEs to a UE, if the UE fails to be allocated with CCEs, by increasing the PDCCH power and decreasing the
PDCCH aggregation level for the UE. This parameter applies only to LTE FDD and LTE TDD.

Second one is :
PdcchPowerEnhancedSwitch: Indicates whether to enable enhanced PDCCH power control. If this switch is
turned on, the eNodeB selects appropriate PDCCH transmit power based on channel quality to increase
PDCCH capacity. This parameter is valid only for FDD, not for TDD.
If this switch is turned on, the eNodeB selects a lower aggregation level and increases the transmit power
to ensure the PDCCH demodulation performance, allow the PDCCH to support more UEs, and increase the
uplink and downlink throughput.
If this switch is turned off, the eNodeB selects a higher aggregation level and the operator needs to
configure the transmit power manually. This results in the opposite effects.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 October 24, 2017 at 5:10 pm

I am trying to keep the discussions vendor independent. However, the parameters are in line with
the aggregation layer optimization and power enhancements explained in the article. For the first
parameter as it says that the closed loop aggregation algorithm only applies to SRBs so in certain
cases, the PDCCH allocations for DRBs can have decoding failures.

REPLY

Jullien says:
 November 13, 2017 at 9:45 pm

Which KPI could be degraded in case we have decoding failures of PDCCH allocations for
DRB ?
And which KPI could be enhanced in case PDCCH SRB allocation after enabling the swicth
1?
Thanks.

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Ali Khalid says:

 November 16, 2017 at 7:47 am

If you have decoding failures on DRB then that can degrade PDCCH DTX and in
extreme cases, it can cause n310 related RLFs resulting in higher drop rate.
The SRB enhancement is a default algorithm so you won’t see any enhancement on
that.

REPLY

arslan says:
 March 20, 2018 at 5:52 am

could you pls share any kind of RCA related LTE major kpi,s…As i new to LTE Technology

REPLY

Adeeb says:
 August 12, 2022 at 6:44 pm

Thank you very much

REPLY

Muhammad Ali says:

 October 23, 2017 at 6:43 am

Thanks great stuff. Kindly also include

1) Call Drop Optimization

2) HO Optimization
3)VoLTE/SRVCC Optimization

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 October 24, 2017 at 5:03 pm

Thanks Yeah these topics are in bucket list. I will add them.

REPLY

Jullien says:
 November 13, 2017 at 9:31 pm

Dear
Could you please add PUCCH Dimensionning and optimisation ? Thanks in advance.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 November 16, 2017 at 7:41 am

I will work on it but usually the PUCCH resource allocation is adaptive now for most
of the vendors so it does not have much practical use
3
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Kamel says:
 November 16, 2017 at 6:28 pm

Thanks to share a little description like you did in PDCCH.

With focus how to make dimmensioning and optimisation.
I work in Nokia LTE FL16A, there is a feature of Dynamic PUCCH but i like to
understand it before trying this dynamic feature.
I have a question regarding the PUCCH position in SubFrame FDD.
if we put PRACH PRB just one PRB after the PUCCH. Does this PRB (between
PUCCH and PRACH could be used by the scheduler in UL or not ? Thanks.

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 November 19, 2017 at 2:01 pm

As per my understanding, uplink scheduler can assign single PRB

allocations so this PRB can be used. However, since PUSCH needs to
be continuous so this user will only get 1 PRB in this allocation.

REPLY

Hassan says:
 February 22, 2018 at 6:24 pm

In Nokia and Huawei as well, schedular can only handle 1 continues region if
there is a gap btw pucch and PRB schedular will not use it.

REPLY

Munzir Khalil says:

 October 22, 2017 at 12:48 pm

“Vendors have dynamic power features for PDCCH and if such a feature is used, it will increase the PDCCH
power with the same aggregation layer to increase the robustness.”

From where additional power is coming from?

As far as Ericsson PDCCH Dynamic Power Feature is concerned . it takes power from same symbol’s
unused PDCCH REs power

REPLY

Ali Khalid says:

 October 22, 2017 at 5:37 pm

Additional power always comes from unused REs from the same symbol.

REPLY

pawan says:
 July 13, 2021 at 3:22 pm

Hi Ali,
3
Thanks for the information..i am in a bit confusion for coding rate for pdcch agg layer. as per my
understanding pdcch using qpsk means 2 bit and 1 CCE =36 REs so 1 CCE= 72 bits…now how we 
can increase this 72 bit so that we can not move from 1 agg level to 2 agg level.
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