MODULE 3

Evolution of Cellular Technologies

1.1.1 First Generation Cellular Systems

 The United States, Japan, and parts of Europe led the development of the first generation of
cellular wireless systems. The first generation systems were characterized by their ana- log
modulation schemes and were designed primarily for delivering voice service.
 Japan’s Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Company (NTT) implemented the world’s first
commercial cellular system in 1979. Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT-400) system, deployed
in Europe in 1981, was the first system that supported automatic handover and international
roaming. NMT-400 was deployed in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, and Spain.
 The more successful first generation systems were AMPS in the United States and its
variant Total Access Communication Systems (ETACS and NTACS) in Europe and Japan.
 The AMPS system was built on a 30kHz chan- nel size, whereas ETACS and NTACS used
25kHz and 12.5kHz, respectively.

Table 1.2 Major First Generation Cellular Systems

NMT-450/
AMPS ETACS NTACS NMT-900
Year of 1983 1985 1988 1981
Introduction
Frequency D/L:869- D/L:916- D/L:860- NMT-450:450-470MHz
Bands 894MHz 949MHz 870MHz NMT-900:890-960MHz
U/L:824- U/L:871- U/L:915-
849MHz 904MHz 925MHz
Channel 30kHz 25kHz 12.5kHz NMT-450:25kHz
Bandwidth NMT-900:12.5kHz
Multiple FDMA FDMA FDMA FDMA
Access
Duplexing FDD FDD FDD FDD
Voice FM FM FM FM
Modulation
Number of 832 1240 400 NMT-450:200
Channels NMT-900:1999

Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS):

 AMPS was developed by AT&T Bell Labs in the late 1970s and was first deployed
commercially in 1983 in Chicago and its nearby suburbs. The first system used large cell
areas and omni-directional base station antennas.

 The system covered 2,100 square miles with only ten base stations, each with antenna tower
height between 150 ft. and 550 ft. Most of the early systems were designed for a carrier-to-
interference ratio (CIR) of 18dB for satisfactory voice quality, and were deployed in a 7-cell
frequency reuse pattern with 3 sectors per cell.
  Besides the United States, AMPS was deployed in several countries in South America, Asia, and
North America. In the United States, the FCC assigned spectrum to two operators per market.
 Each operator was assigned 20MHz of spectrum, supporting a total of 416 AMPS channels in
each market. Of the 416 channels, 21 channels were designated for control information and the
remaining 395 channels carried voice traffic
 AMPS systems used Frequency Modulation (FM) for the transmission of analog voice
and Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) for the control channel.

2G Digital Cellular Systems

 2G systems were also aimed primarily toward the voice market but, unlike the first generation
systems, used digital modulation. Shifting from analog to digital enabled several improvements
in systems performance.
 System capacity was improved through (1) the use of spectrally efficient digital speech codecs,
(2) mul- tiplexing several users on the same frequency channel via time division or code
division multiplexing techniques, and (3) tighter frequency re-use enabled by better error per-
formance of digital modulation, coding, and equalization techniques, which reduced the
required carrier-to-interference ratio from 18dB to just a few dB..
 2G systems also used simple encryption to provide a measure of security
 Examples of 2G digital cellular systems include the Global System for Mobile Com- munications
(GSM), IS-95 CDMA, and IS-136 TDMA systems. GSM is by far the most widely deployed of these
systems;
 Besides providing improved voice quality, capacity, and security, 2G systems also en- abled new
applications. Prime among these was the Short Messaging Service (SMS).

Table 1.3 Major Second Generation Cellular Systems

GSM IS-95 IS-54/IS-136
Year of Introduction 1990 1993 1991
Frequency Bands 850/900MHz, 850MHz/1.9GHz 850MHz/1.9GHz
1.8/1.9GHz
Channel Bandwidth 200kHz 1.25MHz 30kHz
Multiple Access TDMA/FDMA CDMA TDMA/FDMA
Duplexing FDD FDD FDD
Voice Modulation GMSK DS-SS:BPSK, π/4QPSK
QPSK
Data Evolution GPRS, EDGE IS-95-B CDPD
Peak Data Rate GPRS:107kbps; IS-95-B:115kbps ~ 12kbps
EDGE:384kbps
Typical User Rate GPRS:20-40kbps; IS-95B: <64kbps; 9.6kbps
EDGE:80-120kbps
User Plane Latency 600-700ms > 600ms > 600ms

 In addition to SMS, 2G systems also supported low data rate wireless data applica- tions.
Original 2G systems supported circuit switched data services.

 Limitations in data rate and available space for dis- play in handheld devices meant that
specialized technologies, such as the Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), had to be developed to
tailor and deliver Internet content to handheld devices.

GSM and Its Evolution

 In 1989, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) took over the
development of the GSM standard and the first version, called GSM Phase I, was released in 1990.
 GSM quickly gained acceptance beyond Europe and the standard was appropriately renamed
as the Global System for Mobile Communications.
  According to the Informa Telecoms and Media, an industry analyst, GSM and its successor
technologies today boast over 4.2 billion subscribers spread across 220 countries, a 90% global
market share.
 The GSM air-interface is based on a TDMA scheme where eight users are multiplexed on a single
200kHz wide frequency channel by assigning different time slots to each user.
 GSM employed a variant of FSK called Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) as its modulation
technique. GMSK was chosen due to its constant envelope property providing good power and
spectral efficiency characteristics.
 Besides voice and SMS, the original GSM standard also supported circuit-switched data at 9.6kbps.
 By the mid-1990s, ETSI introduced the GSM Packet Radio Systems (GPRS) as an evolutionary step
for GSM systems toward higher data rates. GPRS.
 GPRS and GSM systems share the same frequency bands, time slots, and signaling links. GPRS
defined four different channel coding schemes supporting 8kbps to 20kbps per slot.
 If all eight slots in the GSM TDM frame were used for data transmission, in theory, GPRS could
provide a maximum data rate of 160kbps.
 Figure 1.2 provides a high-level architecture of a GSM/GPRS network. It is instructive to review this
architecture as it formed the basis from which later 3G systems and LTE evolved.

The original GSM architecture had two sub-components.

Base Station Subsystem:

 This is comprised of the base-station transceiver (BTS) units that the mobile stations
(MS) connect with over the air-interface and the base station controller (BSC).
 This manages and aggregates traffic from several BTSs for transport to the
switching core, and manages mobility across BTSs connected directly to them.
 BSCs evolved to become Radio Network Controllers (RNC) in the 3G evolution of
GSM.

Network Switching Sub-system:

 This is comprised of the Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and subscriber data bases.
 The MSC provides the required switching to connect the calling party with the called party
and is interconnected with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

 The MSC uses the Home Location Register (HLR) and Visitor Location Register (VLR) to
determine the location of mobile subscribers for call control purposes.

 As shown in Figure 1.2, a GSM system may be upgraded to a GPRS system by introducing
new elements, such as the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) and Gateway GPRS Support
Node (GGSN), and upgrading existing network elements such as the BTS with a packet
control unit (PCU) for handling data.

 SGSN provides location and mobility management. GGSN provides the IP access router
functionality and connects the GPRS network to the Internet and other IP networks.
3G Broadband Wireless Systems

 Third generation (3G) systems were a significant leap over 2G, providing much higher data
rates, significant increase in voice capacity, and supporting advanced services and
applications, including multimedia.
 The ITU (International telecommunication union) laid out the following data rate
requirements as the criterion for IMT- 2000(3G.)

1.2Mbps in fixed or in building environments

2.384kbps in pedestrian or urban environments
3.144kbps in wide area vehicular environments

 Besides high data rate, 3G systems also ensured better Quality of Service (QoS) control
tailored for a variety of applications—from voice telephony and interactive games, to Web
browsing, e-mail, and streaming multimedia applications.
 Table 1.4 provides a quick summary of the major 3G system characteristics.
Key Enabling Technologies and Features of LTE

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

 One of the key differences between existing 3G systems and LTE is the use of Orthogo- nal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as the underlying modulation technology.
 OFDM has emerged as a technology of choice for achieving high data rates. It is the core
technology used by a variety of systems including Wi-Fi and WiMAX.

The following advantages of OFDM led to its selection for LTE:

[Link] solution to multipath interference:

 . OFDM is a spectrally efficient version of multicarrier modulation, where the subcarriers

are selected such that they are all orthogonal to one another over the symbol duration,
thereby avoiding the need to have non- overlapping subcarrier channels to eliminate inter-
carrier interference.
 In OFDM, any residual intersymbol interference can also be eliminated by using guard inter-
vals between OFDM symbols that are larger than the expected multipath delay. By
making the guard interval larger than the expected multipath delay spread, ISI can be
completely eliminated.
2. Reduced computational complexity

 OFDM can be easily implemented using Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT/IFFT), and the
computational requirements grow only slightly faster than linearly with data rate or
bandwidth.
 Reduced complexity is particu- larly attractive in the downlink as it simplifies receiver
processing and thus reduces mobile device cost and power consumption.
3. Graceful degradation of performance under excess delay

 The performance of an OFDM system degrades gracefully as the delay spread exceeds the
value it is designed for. Greater coding and low constellation sizes can be used to provide
fallback rates that are significantly more robust against delay spread.
 OFDM is well suited for adaptive modulation and coding, which allows the system to
make the best of the available channel condition.

4. Exploitation of frequency diversity:

 OFDM facilitates coding and interleaving across subcarriers in the frequency domain.
 OFDM also allows for the channel bandwidth to be scalable without impacting the hardware
design of the base station and the mobile station. This allows LTE to be deployed in a variety of
spectrum allocations and different channel bandwidths.

5. Enables efficient multi-access scheme:

 OFDM can be used as a multi-access scheme by partitioning different subcarriers among

multiple users. This scheme is referred to as OFDMA and is exploited in LTE to achieve
significant capacity improvements, particularly in slow time-varying channels.

6. Robust against narrowband interference:

 OFDM is relatively robust against narrowband interference, since such interference affects only a
fraction of the sub- carriers.

7. Suitable for coherent demodulation:

 It is relatively easy to do pilot-based channel estimation in OFDM systems, which renders them
suitable for coherent demodulation schemes that are more power efficient.

8. Facilitates use of MIMO:

 For MIMO techniques to be effective, it is required that the channel conditions are such
that the multipath delays do not cause intersymbol [Link] should be flat
fading channel and not frequency selective.
 The ability to effectively use MIMO techniques to improve system capacity gives OFDM a
significant advantage over other techniques and is one of the key reasons for its choice

[Link] support of broadcast services:

 By synchronizing base stations to timing errors well within the OFDM guard interval, it is
possible to operate an OFDM network as a single frequency network (SFN).
 This allows broadcast signals from different cells to combine over the air to significantly
enhance the received signal power, thereby enabling higher data rate broadcast
transmissions for a given transmit power.

SC-FDE and SC-FDMA

 To keep the cost down and the battery life up, LTE incorporated a power efficient transmission
scheme for the uplink.

 Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE) is conceptually similar to OFDM but instead
of transmitting the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) of the actual data symbols, the data
symbols are sent as a sequence of QAM symbols with a cyclic prefix added

 SC-FDE retains all the advantages of OFDM such as multipath resistance and low com-
plexity, while having a low peak-to-average ratio of 4-5dB.
 The uplink of LTE implements a multi-user version of SC-FDE, called SC-FDMA, which
allows multiple users to use parts of the frequency spectrum.
 SC-FDMA also preserves the PAR properties of SC-FDE but increases the complexity
of the transmitter and the receiver.

Multiantenna Techniques
 The LTE standard provides extensive support for implementing advanced multiantenna
solutions to improve link robustness, system capacity, and spectral efficiency.
 Multiantenna techniques supported in LTE include:

Transmit diversity:

 This is a technique to combat multipath fading in the wireless channel. The idea here is to
send copies of the same signal, coded differently, over multiple transmit antennas.

 Transmit diversity is primarily in- tended for common downlink channels that cannot
make use of channel-dependent scheduling. It can also be applied to user
transmissions such as low data rate [Link] diversity increases system
capacity and cell range.

Beamforming:
 Multiple antennas in LTE may also be used to transmit the same signal appropriately
weighted for each antenna element

 The effect is to focus the transmitted beam in the direction of the receiver and away from
inter- ference, thereby improving the received signal-to-interference ratio.

 Beamforming can provide significant improvements in coverage range, capacity, reliability,

and battery life.

Spatial multiplexing:
 multiple independent streams can be transmitted in parallel over multiple antennas and
can be separated at the receiver using multiple receive chains through appropriate signal
processing.
 spatial multiplexing provides data rate and capac- ity gains proportional to the number
of antennas used.
 LTE standard supports spatial multiplexing with up to four transmit antennas and four
receiver antennas.

Multi-user MIMO:
 Since spatial multiplexing requires multiple transmit chains, it is currently not supported in the
uplink due to complexity and cost considerations.
 However, multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), which allows multiple users in the uplink, each with a
single antenna, to transmit using the same frequency and time resource, is supported.

 The signals from the different MU-MIMO users are separated at the base station receiver using
accurate channel state information of each user obtained through uplink reference signals that
are orthogonal between users.

LTE Network Architecture

  The core network design presented in 3GPP Release 8 to support LTE is called the Evolved
Packet Core (EPC). EPC is designed to provide a high- capacity, all IP, reduced latency, flat
architecture , that dramatically reduces cost and supports advanced real-time and media-
rich services with enhanced quality of experience.
 Functions provided by the EPC include access control, packet routing and transfer, mo-
bility management, security, radio resource management, and network management.

 The EPC includes four new elements: (1) Serving Gateway (SGW; (2) Packet Data Network
Gateway (PGW),; (3) Mobility Management Entity (MME (4) Policy and Charging Rules
Function (PCRF]

1. Serving Gateway (SGW):

 The SGW acts as a demarcation point between the RAN and core network, and
manages user plane mobility. It serves as the mobil- ity anchor when terminals move
across areas served by different eNode-B elements.
 SGW does downlink packet buffering and initiation of network-triggered service request
procedures.
 Other functions include lawful interception, packet rout- ing and forwarding, transport level
packet marking in the uplink and the downlink, accounting support for per user, and inter-
operator charging.

2. Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW):

 The PGW acts as the termination point of the EPC toward other Packet Data
Networks (PDN) such as the Internet, private IP network, or the IMS network
providing end-user services.
 . It serves as an anchor point for sessions toward external PDN and provides
functions such as user IP address allocation, policy enforcement, packet filtering,
and charging support.
 Policy enforcement includes operator-defined rules for resource allocation to
control data rate, QoS, and usage. Packet filtering functions include deep packet
inspection for application detection.

3. Mobility Management Entity (MME):

  The MME performs the signaling and control functions to manage the user terminal access
to network connections, as- signment of network resources, and mobility management
function.
 The MME provides security functions such as providing temporary identities for user
terminals, inter- acting with Home Subscriber Server (HSS) for authentication, and
negotiation of ciphering and integrity protection algorithms

4. Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF):

 The PCRF interfaces with the PDN gateway and supports service data flow detection, policy
enforcement, and flow-based charging.

Frequency Domain Multiple Access

Multiple Access for OFDM Systems :
 OFDM is a technique for m i n i m i z i n g frequency selectivity (inter-symbol interference).
 OFDM does, however, create many parallel streams of data that can in principle be used by
different users.
 Multiple-access strategies typically attempt to provide orthogonal, that is, non-interfering,
communication channels for each active base station/subscriber link. The most common
ways to divide the available dimensions among the multiple users is through the use of
frequency, time, or code division multiplexing.
 In Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), each user receives a unique carrier
frequency and bandwidth. In Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), each user is given a
unique time slot, either on demand or in a fixed rotation.
 Orthogonal Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems allow each user to share the
bandwidth and time slots with many other users, and rely on orthogonal or nearly
orthogonal binary codes to separate out the users. More generally, in all CDMA systems
(including the pop- ular non-orthogonal ones) many users share the available time and
frequency dimensions.
 One of the principle merits of OFDMA is that by adjusting how subcarriers are allocated in
time and frequency, many of the desirable features of both FDMA and TDMA can be
achieved, while the negatives can be mitigated.

Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDM-FDMA)

Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) can be readily implemented in OFDM systems
by assigning different users their own sets of subcarriers as shown in fig below.

 For example, in a 64-subcarrier OFDM system, user 1 could take subcarriers 1–16, with users
2, 3, and 4 using subcarriers 17–32, 33–48, and 49–64, respectively.
 there could also be uneven allocations(dynamic) with high data rate users being allocated
more subcarriers than lower rate users. such a system as this could reasonably be referred
to as OFDMA since it allows multiple users to share the OFDM subcarriers.
 OFDM-FDMA was sometimes used to describe what would now be called an OFDMA system.
 OFDMA in LTE, however, has explicit time-sharing and procedures to allow for the dynamic
allocation of subcarriers.

Time Division Multiple Access (OFDM-TDMA)

  Instead of FDMA, multiple users can also be accommodated with TDMA. In reality, all
wireless TDMA systems employ both FDMA and TDMA at some level since the
electromagnetic spectrum must be shared with many other users and systems.
 Static TDMA is shown on the right of Figure 4.1. Such a static TDMA methodol- ogy is
appropriate for constant data-rate (i.e., circuit-switched) applications like voice and
streaming video.
 but in general, a packet-based system like LTE can employ more sophisticated scheduling
algorithms based on queue-lengths, channel conditions, and delay constraints to achieve
much better performance than static TDMA.

 In the context of a packet-based system, static TDMA is often called round robin scheduling:
each user simply waits for their pre-determined turn and then transmits.

Code Division Multiple Access (OFDM-CDMA or MC-CDMA)

 CDMA is the dominant multiple access technique for 3G cellular systems, , but is not
particularly appropriate for high-speed data
 CDMA requires a bandwidth much larger than the data rate is used to suppress the
interference.

 In wireless broadband networks the data rates already are very large, so spreading the
spectrum further is not viable.
 OFDM and CDMA are not fundamentally incompatible; they can be combined to create a
Multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) waveform.
 It is possible to use spread spectrum signalling and to separate users by codes in OFDM by
spreading in either the time or frequency domain.
 Time domain spreading entails each subcarrier transmitting the same data symbol on
several consecutive OFDM symbols, that is, the data symbol is multiplied by a length N
code sequence and then sent on a specific subcarrier for the next N OFDM symbols.
 Frequency domain spreading, which generally has slightly better performance than time
domain spreading , entails each data symbol being sent simultaneously on N different
subcarriers.
 Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)
 OFDMA systems allocate subscribers time-frequency slices (in LTE, “resource grids”)
consisting of M subcarriers over some number of consecutive OFDM symbols in time.
 The M subcarriers can either be spread out over the band, often called a “distributed,”
“comb,” or “diversity” allocation bunched together in M contiguous subcarriers, which is
often called a “band AMC,” “localized,” or “grouped” cluster.

OFDMA: How It Works

 The block diagram for a downlink OFDMA system is shown in Figures 4.3 and 4.4.

 The basic flow is very similar to an OFDM system except for now K users share the L
subcarriers, with each user being allocated Mk subcarriers. Although in theory it is
possible to have users share subcarriers, this never occurs in practice.
 At each receiver, the user cares only about its own Mk subcarriers, but still has to apply
an L point FFT to the received digital waveform in order to extract the desired subset of
subcarriers. the receiver has to know which time-frequency resources it has been allocated in
order to extract the correct subcarriers.
 OFDMA downlink receiver must mostly demodulate the entire waveform, which wastes
[Link] digital separation of users is simple to enforce at the receiver and the amount of
residual interuser interference is very low compared to either CDMA or conventional FDMA
where analog filters must be used to separate the users.

 OFDMA uplink block diagrams are shown in Figures 4.5 and 4.6
 The transmitter modulates user k’s bits over just the Mk subcarriers of interest: in this
case, we have chosen Mk = M for all users, and shown user 1 occupying subcarriers 1, 2,
,M of the L total subcarriers.

 All the users’ signals collide at the receiver’s antenna, and are collectively
demodulated using the receiver’s FFT. Assuming each subcarrier has only a single
user on it, the demodulated subcarriers can be de-mapped to the detectors for each
of the K served users.
 It should be noted that uplink OFDMA is considerably more challenging than down-
link OFDMA since the uplink is naturally asynchronous, that is the users’ signals
arrive at the receiver offset slightly in time (and frequency) from each other.
 This is not the case in the downlink since the transmitter is common for all users.
These time and frequency offsets can result in considerable self-interference if they
become large.

 A higher level view of OFDMA can be seen in Figure 4.7. Here, a base station is transmitting a
band AMC-type OFDMA waveform to four different devices simultaneously. The three
arrows for each user indicate the signalling that must happen in order for band AMC-type
OFDMA to work.

 First, the mobiles measure and feed back the quality of their channel, or channel state
information (CSI) to the base station. Usually, the CSI feed back would be a measurement
corresponding to SINR.

 The base station would then allocate subcarriers to the four users and send that subcarrier
allocation information to the four users in an overhead message. Finally, the actual data is
transmitted over the subcarriers assigned to each user.
OFDMA Advantages and Disadvantages

 OFDMA offers robust multipath suppression, relatively low complexity, and the creation of
frequency diversity.
 In addition, OFDMA is a flexible multiple access technique that can accommodate many
users with widely varying applications, data rates, and QoS requirement.
 Since multiple access is performed in the digital domain (before the IFFT op- eration),
dynamic, flexible, and efficient bandwidth allocation is possible. This allows sophisticated
time and frequency domain scheduling algorithms to be integrated in order to best serve
the user.
 Lower data rates (such as voice) and bursty data are handled much more efficiently in
OFDMA than in single-user OFDM (i.e., OFDM-TDMA) .

Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple

Access (SC-FDMA):

 Single-carrier FDMA, or SC-FDMA, is employed in the LTE uplink. SC-FDMA more closely
resembles OFDMA because it still requires an IFFT operation at the trans- mitter in
order to separate the users.

SC-FDMA: How It Works

 An SC-FDMA uplink transmitter is shown in Figure 4.8. Clearly, this is very similar to the
OFDMA uplink transmitter.
 As shown in figure. Mk complex symbols are pre-processed with an FFT of size Mk
Let us refer to these time-domain complex symbols as x[n]. In LTE, Mk is related to the
number of resource blocks allocated to the user k for its uplink transmission.
 The FFT operation creates a frequency domain version of the signal X[m] = FFT(x[n]),
so that when the L point IFFT is applied later, the time-domain outputs of the IFFT
correspond to an over- sampled and phase-shifted version of the original time-domain
signal x[n].
 The SC-FDMA uplink receiver is shown in Figure 4.9. This is also very similar to the
OFDMA uplink receiver of Figure 4.6, the difference now being that for each user’s Mk
“subcarriers,” an additional small IFFT must be applied prior to detection.

 Just like in OFDMA, frequency domain equalization is applied to each user’s signal
independently after the FFT, and users’ signals are de-mapped based on the current
subcarrier allocation.