Channel Coding Schemes

in GSM and UMTS

Presentation by

Wajahat Ullah Khan

Tatiana Pourtova
 Overview

• General principles of channel coding

(why and where is it used, adds redundancy)
• Types of the most important codes
(convolutional, block, concatenated schemes,….)
• GSM channel coding standards
(types of bits, ….)
• UMTS channel coding standards

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 Communication System

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General Principles of Channel Coding

• Encoder introduces redundancy in the information

sequence
• Encoding means taking k information bits and map
them into a unique n bits sequence
Code Rate=k/n
• Such redundancy is used at the receiver to overcome
the effects of interference, fading, noise.
• The decoder tries to find the input sequence most
probably transmitted

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 Selection Criteria

• Radio channel
(multipath propagation,fading,interference,noise)
• Required quality of service
• Data rate
• Delay
• BER(bit error rate)
• Complexity
As these requirements vary; Coding scheme should
be adaptable

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 Types of the Most Important Codes
• Convolutional codes (CC)
• Block codes
• Concatenated schemes
Concatenation of Reed Soloman (RS) and CC
Serial Concatenated codes (SCCC)
Parallel Concatenated codes (PCCC:Turbo codes)

SCCC: Serial concatenated convolutional codes

PCCC: Parallel concatenated convolutional codes

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 Convolutional Codes
• One to one mapping of input sequence of binary k tuples
to output sequence of binary n tuples to give a rate k/n
• Both sequences are semiinfinite
Vt = (ut, ut-1,.....,ut-m)

• Standard coding for all cellular systems

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 Block codes

Information block Code block

Information bits
i1,i2, ... ik  Code bits
c1,c2, ... cn

R = k/n

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 Concatenated Schemes

• Uses outer Reed Solomon code and an inner

convolutional code with inner and outer
interleavers
• Inner interleaver for making the fading channel
memoryless for the convolutonal coder
• The outer interleaver is used to randomize the
burst errors at the output of Viterbi decoder

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 Turbo codes

• Parallel or serial concatenated convolutional codes

• The structure is based on a combination of two or
more weak error control schemes
• Information bits are interleaved between two
encoders
• Decoding is carried out iteratively using the Turbo
principle

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 Interleaving schemes

• Radio channel produces bursty errors

• Interleaving schemes are used to randomize bursty
errors since convolutional codes are most effective
against random errors
• Interleaving length is restricted by the delay
requirements of the service

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 Channel coding in GSM

• Block codes: for error detection and error

correction
• Convolutional Codes: for error correction
• Interleaving: to reduce the negative influence of
burst errors

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 Stages of Channel Coding

Block Convol. Inler- Deinter- Convol. Parity

encoder encoder leaving leaving decoder check

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 Block coding

Block codes used in GSM:

• Fire code
• Parity check code

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 Fire code
• Linear binary block code
• The code belongs to the cyclic code family
• The GSM Fire code uses generator polynomial
(X23+1)(X17+X3+1)
• The polynomial of degree 40 gives 40 redundancy
bits
• Can detect and correct groups of errors (“bursty”
errors)

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 Parity check code
• Linear binary block code
• The code belongs to the cyclic code family
• Aimed at error detection
• Generator polynominals for parity check coding:

Channel type Generator polynomial

TCH, speech X3+x3+1
RACH X6+x5+x3+x2+x+1
SCH X10+x8+X6+x5+x4+x3+x2+x+1

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 Block coding in GSM
Channel type Input block Parity Fire Tail Output block
(bits) check code (bits)
TCH full rate 260 3 4 267
speech
TCH half rate 112 3 6 121
speech
FACCH, 184 40 4 228
SACCH, BCCH,
PCH, AGCH
RACH 8 6 4 18
SCH 25 10 4 39

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 Stages of Channel Coding

Block Convol. Inler- Deinter- Convol. Parity

encoder encoder leaving leaving decoder check

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 Convolutional Coding

• The source sequence is divided into finite blocks

• At the end of each block zero bits are added for
the termination of convolutional encoder
• These blocks run through the convolutional
encoder generating the coded sequence

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 Principle of a convolutional encoder
G0(d)

cj
di
v=2

G1(d)

• The code rate: r=1/c

• The memory m=4
• Generator polynomials:
Go(d)=d4+d3+1; G1(d)=d4+d3+d+1
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 Generator polynomials used in GSM

Type Polynomial

G0 1+d3+d4

G1 1+d+d3+d4

G2 1+d2+d4

G3 1+d+d2+d3+d4

G4 1+d2+d3+d5+d6

G5 1+d+d4+d6

G6 1+d+d2+d3+d4+d6

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 Overview of convolutional coding
Channel type Generator Memory Rate Free
polynomials distance
TCH full rate, speech 1+d3+d4, 1+d+d3+d4 4 1/2 7

TCH half rate, speech 1+d2+d3+d5+d6, 6 104/211 15

1+d+d4+d6
1+d+d2+d3+d4+d6
TCH full rate, 14.4 kbit/s 1+d3+d4, 1+d+d3+d4 4 294/456 7

TCH full rate, 9.6 kbit/s 1+d3+d4, 1+d+d3+d4 4 244/456 7

TCH full rate, 4.8 kbit/s 1+d+d3+d4, 1+d2+d4 4 1/3 12

1+d+d2+d3+d4
TCH half rate, 4.8 kbit/s 1+d3+d4, 1+d+d3+d4 4 244/456 7

TCH full rate, 2.4 kbit/s 1+d+d3+d4, 1+d2+d4 4 1/6 12

1+d+d2+d3+d4
TCH half rate, 2.4 kbit/s 1+d+d3+d4, 1+d2+d4 4 1/3 12
1+d+d2+d3+d4
FACCH, SACCH, BCCH, 1+d3+d4, 1+d+d3+d4 4 12 7
AGCH, PCH, RACH, SCH        

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 Puncturing
• Puncturing: some of the code bits, generated by
the encoder, are deleted again
• The resulting code is a punctured convolutional
code
Advantages:
• The rate of the code is increased
• The block length is adjusted for the further
processing
Disadvantage:
• The error correction capabilities are decreased
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 Convolutional decoding

• Maximum likelihood decoding

• Based on Viterbi algorithm
• To achieve good error correction result the bit
errors should be statistically independent
• Burst errors should be distributed across the
transmitted codewords

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 Interleaving
• Interleaving consists in distribution of the
codewords by spreading in time and merging them
across several bursts
• Interleaving depth: the number of bursts over
which a codeword is spread
• The larger the interleaving depth, the better the
decoding results
• But the longer the transmission delay

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 General Principles of Interleaving
• Time spreading: each of the codewords is distributed
across threefold length
• Merging: the bits of codewords are distributed across
several bursts

SPREADING

MERGING

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 Distribution of bit errors
INTERLEAVED SIGNAL

DEINTERLEAVED SIGNAL

• The burst errors occurred during transmission are

distributed equally across several codewords

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 Stages of Channel Coding

Block Convol. Inler- Deinter- Convol. Parity

encoder encoder leaving leaving decoder check

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 Summary of channel coding in GSM
Channel type Input block Block Tail Convol. Output Inter-
(bits) coding (bits) Coding rate block (bits) leaving depth

TCH full rate speech 260       456 8

Class I 182 3 4 1/2 378
Class II 78 78
TCH half rate speech 112       228 4
Class I 95 3 6 104/211 211
Class II 17 17
TCH full rate, 14.4 kbit/s 290 0 4 294/456 456 19

TCH full rate, 9.6 kbit/s 4x60 0 4 244/456 456 19

TCH full rate, 4.8 kbit/s 60 0 16 1/3 228 19

TCH half rate 4.8 kbit/s 4x60 0 4 244/456 456 19

TCH full rate, 2.4 kbit/s 2x36 0 4 1/6 456 8

TCH half rate 2.4 kbit/s 2x36 0 4 1/3 228 19

FACCH, SACCH, 184 40 4 1/2 456 8

BCCH, PCH, AGCH 6
4
RACH 8 6 4 1/2 36 1

SCH 25 10 4 1/2 78 1

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 Coding of speech traffic channels
260 bits of speech data block are divided into:
• Class I: the most important for the speech quality
– 50 bits of Class Ia: block and convolutional coding
– 132 bits of Class Ib: convolutional coding
• Class II: 78 bits
– less important and are not coded

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 Channel coding in UMTS

• UMTS System architecture

• Where is Channel coding applied
• Channel coding schemes used
• Summary

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 UMTS System architecture

•UMTS system is made up of CN, UTRAN and UE

•Network elements are connected to each other via
interfaces
UE:User Equipment MSC/VLR:Mobile sw center/Visiting location register
Node B:Base station in UMTS GMSC: Gateway mobile switching center
RNC:Radio Network controller EIR: Equipment identity register
UTRAN:UMTS Terrestrial Radio access Network HLR/Auc: Home location register/ Authentication center
CN:Core Network SGSN: Serving GPRS support node
GGSN : Gateway GSN
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 Where is Channel coding applied

• Uu is the interface between UE and UTRAN

• It has three level channel hierarchy
Logical channels
Transport channels
Physical Channels
Channel coding is applied on Transport
channels(DCH,RACH,FACH,BCH,PCH,DSCH,CPCH)

DCH : Dedicated channel PCH :Paging channel

RACH: Random Access channel DSCH: Downlink Shared channel
FACH :Forward Access channel CPCH: Common Packet channel
BCH : Broadcast channel

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 Channel coding schemes used

• ½ and 1/3 rate convolutional coding for lower

number of users (data rates comparable to 2G
systems)

• 1/3 rate turbo coding for higher number of

users

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 Rate 1/2 convolutional coding
•Used with relatively low data rates
•Based on constraint length 9 coding with the
use of tail bits

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 Rate 1/3 convolutional coding

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 Turbo coding(1)
• For higher data rates 1/3-rate Turbo coding can be
applied
• The main reason of using turbo coding is performance
enhancement
• The selected turbo encoding/decoding method is
8-state PCCC(Parallel concatenated convolutional
code)
• The maximum coding block size is limited to 5114
information bits

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 Turbo coding(2)

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 Turbo Decoding

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 Encoding of speech
•AMR(adaptive multi rate) coding is used
•Three different classes of bits are defined ; Class
A,class B and class C
•Class A have the strongest protection and class C have

no protection
•This gives around 1 dB gain in Eb/N0 compared to
equal error protection
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 Usage of channel coding scheme and
coding rate

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 Summary

• At the same code rate Turbo codes (TC) have better

compared to convolutional codes(CC)

•Increase in the number of spreading sequences
•Increase in the number of users
•Increase in data rate of the system/ user

• For low Block sizes TC have no Performance improvement

over CC, but CC codes have less decoding delay and
complexity

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 References
• Lecture ‘‘Communication Systems SS2003” by Dr. Hans-Joachim Dreßler

•‘‘Wide Band CDMA for 3rd generation mobile communication” Artech House
Universal Personal Communications Series Tero Oianpera and Ramjee Prasad

• ‘‘Third Generation Mobile Communication Systems” Ramjee Prasad, Werne

Mohr and Walter Konhauser Artech House Publishers Boston·London

• ‘‘WCDMA for UMTS: Radio Access for Third Generation Mobile

Communications, 2nd Edition” Harri Holma , Antti Toskala

• “Channel coding for Telecommunications” Bossert Martin

John Wiley & Sons Ltd

• 3GPP TS 25.212 V3.4.0(2000-09)

• Lab Script “Simulation in Communication” SS 2003, TAIT, University of Ulm

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