Wireless Cellular and LTE 4G Broadband (15EC81) Module -1

Wireless Cellular and LTE 4G Broadband

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. Wireless Fundamentals: Cellular concept, Broadband
wireless channel (BWC), Fading in BWC, Modeling BWC – Empirical and Statistical models,
Mitigation of Narrow band and Broadband Fading.

OFDM
• The Key difference between existing 3G and LTE is the use of OFDM as modulation
technology. 3G systems such as UMTS and CDMA2000 are based on CDMA.CDMA works by
spreading a narrow band signal over a wider BW to achieve interference resistance. CDMA
performs well for low data rate communication – voice. CDMA is untenable for high speed
applications due to larger bandwidth needed to achieve useful amounts of spreading. OFDM has
emerged for achieving high data rates. OFDM is the core technology used by Wi-fi and Wimax.
Advantages of OFDM
1. Elegant solution to multipath interference: The critical factor in transmission of high bit
rate in wireless channel is ISI intersymbol interference caused by multipath. At high data
rates, the symbol time is shorter, so it takes small delay to cause ISI.OFDM is a multicarrier
modulation technique which resolves challenges. Here in OFDM, it divides a high bit rate
data stream into several parallel lower bit-rate and modulate each stream on separate carriers
called subcarriers. These splitted parallel data stream increases the symbol duration of each
stream, such that multipath delay spread is only a small fraction of symbol duration. In
OFDM subcarriers are selected such that they are all orthogonal to one another over symbol
duration.
2. Reduced computational complexity: OFDM can be easily implemented using Fast Fourier
Transform ( FFT/IFFT). The computational complexity of OFDM can be shown as O
(BlogBTm) where B is the bandwidth and Tm is the delay spread. The complexity is much
lower than that of time domain equalizer based system.
3. Graceful degradation of performance under excess delay: The performance of an OFDM
system degrades gracefully as the delay spread exceeds the designed value. OFDM is well
suited for adaptive modulation and coding.

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4. Exploitation of frequency diversity: OFDM provides coding and interleaving across

subcarriers in the frequency domain that provides robustness against burst errors. OFDM also
allows for scaling of channel bandwidth.
5. Enables efficient multi-access scheme: OFDM can be used as a multi access scheme by
partitioning different subcarriers among multiple users. OFDM offers ability to provide fine
granularity in channel allocation that improves capacity in time varying signals.
6. Robust against narrowband interference: OFDM is relatively robust against narrowband
interference, which inturn affects fraction of subcarriers.
7. Suitable for coherent demodulation: Pilot- based channel estimation can be done easily in
OFDM systems, which renders power efficient demodulation schemes.
8. Facilitates use of MIMO: For MIMO techniques to be effective, that channel conditions are
such that multipath delays do not cause ISI.MIMO do not work well in traditional broadband
channels. OFDM converts frequency selective broad band channel into several narrowband
flat fading channels. MIMO and OFDM have already been combined effectively in Wi-Fi
and WIMAX.
9. Efficient support of broadcast services: OFDM network can be operated as single
frequency network (SFN).which allows broadcast signals to combine over air to enhance
received signal power. LTE design leverages this OFDM capability to improve broadcast
services.
Disadvantage of OFDM: OFDM signals Having high peak average ratio(PAR), which causes
nonlinearities and clipping distortions when passed through RF amplifier. Mitigating this problem
requires the use of expensive and inefficient power amplifiers, which in-turn increases the cost of
transmitter. The modulation of choice for the uplink is called Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA).

SC-FDE and SC-FDMA: To reduce cost and increase battery life, LTE incorporated a power
efficient transmission scheme for the Uplink. Single carrier frequency division equalization (SC-FDE)

 SC-FDE is similar to OFDM, but instead of transmitting the IFFT of data symbols, data symbols
are sent as a sequence of QAM symbols with cyclic prefix added. IFFT is added at the end of
receiver.

 SC-FDE retains all the advantages of OFDM such as multipath resistance and low complexity.

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 The Uplink of LTE implements a multiuser version of SC-FDE called SC-FDMA, which allows
multiple users to use parts of frequency spectrum.

 SC-FDMA closely resembles OFDMA. SC-FDMA also preserves the PAR properties of SC-
FDE, but increases the complexity of the transmitter and receiver.

Channel Dependent Multiuser Resource Scheduling

 OFDMA scheme allows for allocation both time & frequency domain also allocates resources in
a flexible and dynamic manner to meet delay, throughput.

 Frequency selective multiuser scheduling focuses transmission power in each user’s best channel
portion, which in turn increases channel capacity.

 Frequency selective scheduling requires good channel tracking and viable in slow varying
channels.

 In OFDMA, Frequency selective scheduling can be combined with multi-user time domain
scheduling.

 For high mobility users OFDMA can be used to achieve frequency diversity, by coding and
interleaving across subcarriers using uniform random distribution of subcarriers over entire
spectrum.

 Frequency diverse scheduling is best suited for control signaling and delay sensitive services.

Multiantenna Techniques

Multiantenna Techniques provides solution to improve link robustness, system capacity and
spectral diversity some of the techniques supported in LTE includes:

1. Transmit diversity: To combat multipath fading in wireless channel this technique is

employed. It sends copies of same signal , coded differently over multiple transmit antennas.
LTE transmit diversity is based on space-diversity block coding(SFBC) techniques
complemented with frequency shift time diversity (FSTD) when four antenna are used.
Transmit diversity is also applied to user transmissions such as low data rate VoIP. It also
increases system capacity and cell range.

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2. Beamforming: Multiple antennas in LTE can also be used to transmit the same signal for
each antenna element, such that the effect is to focus the transmitted beam in the direction of
the receiver. Which improves received Signal to interference ratio. Beamforming can
improve coverage range, capacity, and reliability and battery life. LTE supports beamforming
in the downlink.
3. Spatial multiplexing: Here multiple independent streams can be transmitted in parallel over
multiple antennas and can be separated at the receiver using multiple receive chains. Spatial
multiplexing provides date rate and capacity gains proportional to the number of antennas
used. It works well under good SNR and light load condition. LTE standard supports spatial
multiplexing with up to four transmit antennas and four receiver antennas.
4. Multi-user MIMO: As spatial multiplexing is not supported in the uplink due to complexity
and cost consideration, MU-MIMO are employed. MU-MIMO , allows multiple users in the
uplink, each with a single antenna to transmit using the same frequency and time resource.

IP based Flat network Architecture:

Flat here implies fewer nodes and a less hierarchical structure for the network. It also means fewer

nodes interfaces and protocol related processing and reduced interoperability testing, which lowers the

development and deployment cost. The below figure shows 3GPP network architecture evolved over

few releases. The architecture has four network elements in the data path: The base station or Node-B,

radio network controller (RNC), serving GPRS service node (SGSN), and gateway GPRS service node

(GGSN). Release 7 introduced a direct tunnel option from the RNC to GGSN, which eliminates SGSN

from the data path. LTE has only two data paths: the enhanced node B or eNode-B and System

Architecture Evolution Gateway (SAE-GW).LTE control path includes a functionality entity called

Mobility Management Entity (MME).A key aspect of LTE flat architecture is that all services including

voice are supported on the IP packet-switched network using IP protocols. LTE envisions only a single

evolved packet-switched core, the EPC over which all services are supported, which provide operational

and infrastructural cost.

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Fig: 3GPP evolution toward a flat LTE SAE architecture

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, reduced latency, flat architecture that reduces
cost and supports enhanced quality real time services.

The EPC includes four new channels:

1) Serving Gateway (SGW), which terminates the interface toward the 3GPP radio access networks.
2) Packet data Network Gateway (PGW), which controls IP data services, allocates IP address,
enforces policy, and provides access for non-3GPP access networks.
3) Mobility Management Entity (MME) which supports user equipment context and identity as well
as authenticates and authorizes uses : and 1) Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), which
manages QoS aspects.

Serving Gateway (SGW): The SWG acts as a demarcation point between the RAN and core network
and manages user plane mobility. It serves as the mobility anchor when terminals move across areas
served by different eNode-B elements in E-UTRAN.SWG does downlink packet buffering and initiation
of network-triggered service request procedures. Packet routing and forwarding, transport level packet
marketing in the uplink and the downlink, and inter-operator charging.

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Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW) : The PGW acts as the termination point of the EPC toward
other Packet Data Networks (PDN) such as Internet, private IP network. It serves as an anchor point for
sessions towards external PDN and provides functions such as user IP address allocation, policy
enforcement, packet filtering. policy enforcement includes operator defined rules for resource allocation
to control data rate.

Fig: Evolved Packet Core Architecture

Mobility Management Entity (MME): The MME performs the signaling and control functions to
manage the user terminal access to network connections, network resources and Mobility Management
function such as idle mode location tracking, paging, roaming and handovers. MME controls all planes
related to subscriber and session management. It provides security functions such as temporary identities
for user terminals, interacting with Home Subscriber Server (HSS) for authentication and negotiation of
ciphering problems. MME is also responsible for selecting the appropriate PDN Gateway and selecting
legacy gateways for handover to other GERAN or UTRAN networks.

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Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF): The PCRF is the concatenation of Policy Decision
Function (PDF) and Charging Rules Function (CRF).The PCRF interfaces with PDN gateway and
supports service data flow detection, Policy enforcement, and flow-based charging.

Wireless Fundamentals:

The Cellular concept: In Cellular systems, the service area is sub-divided into smaller geographic
areas called Cells, which are served by their own base station. To minimize interference between cells,
the transmit power level of each base station is regulated to provide required signal strength. Then
propagation path allows for spatial isolation of different cells operating on the same frequency channels
at the same time.

Practically, the rate at which frequencies can be reused should be determined such that the interference
between base stations is kept to an acceptable level. So frequency planning is required to determine a
proper frequency reuse factor and a geographic reuse pattern. The frequency reuse factor f is defined as
f ≤ 1,where f = 1 means that all cells reuse all frequencies. F =1/3 implies that a given frequency band is
used by only 1 out of every 3 cells.

The below fig shows an example of hexagon cellular system model with frequency reuse factor
f = 1/7, where cells labeled with the same letter use same frequency channels. Here in this model the
cluster is outlined in bold and consists of seven cells with different frequency channels.

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The cellular system allow the overall system capacity to increase by simple making the cells smaller and
turning down the power.As cell size decreases the transmit power of each base station also decreases
correspondingly Eg: if the radius of cell is reduced by half when the propogation path loss exponent is
4, the transmit power level of a base station is reduced by 12dB(= 10 log16dB).Since the cellular
systems support the user mobility , seamless call transfer from one cell to another should be provided.
The handoff process provides a means of the seamless transfer of a connection from one base station to
another.

Analysis of Cellular System: The performance of wireless cellular systems is significantly limited by
co-channel interference (CCI), which comes from other users in the same cells. The other cell
interference (OCI) is a decreasing function of the radius of cell and increasing function of transmit
power. What determines performance is the SIR, i.e the amount of desired power to the amount of
transmitted power. The Spatial isolation between co-channel cells can be measured by defining the
parameter Z, called co-channel reuse ratio, as the ratio of the distance to the center of the nearest co-
channel cell (D) to the radius of the cell.

In a hexagonal cell structure, the co-channel reuse ratio is given by Z= D/R = √ .............. Where 1/f is the
size of cluster and the inverse of the frequency reuse factor. A lower value of f reduces co-channel
interference so that it improves the quality of the communication link and capacity. However overall
spectral efficiency decreases with the size of a cluster. So f should be chosen small enough to keep
received SINR signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio above acceptable levels.If number of interfering

cells is N1, the SIR for a mobile station can be given by where S is the received power of
∑

the desired signal and Ii is the interference power from the ith co-channel base station. The received SIR
depends on the location of each mobile station. The receiver SIR at the cell boundaries is of great
interest as this corresponds to the worst interference scenario. The received SIR for the worst case
shown in above fig is expressed as

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The denominator term can be approximated as a lognormal random variable and then received SIR
follows a lognormal distribution. The outrage probability is derived in the form of Q function.

Pout = P[SIR < γ] = Q( ) where γ is the threshold SIR level in dB.

The below figure shows the OCI problem in a cellular system if universal frequency reuse is adopted.

It shows the region of cells in various SIR bins with frequency reuse f = 1/3. The OCI problem can be
mitigated if higher frequency reuse is adopted as shown in above fig.

Sectoring:

Techniques to SIR without sacrificing much bandwidth is usage of sectoring .This is employed by using
directional antennas instead of omni directional antennas, the channel interference can be reduced
significantly. As shown in below figure, for sectoring amount of bandwidth used is 3X. Here no capacity
is lost from sectoring because each sector can reuse time and code slots, so each sector has same
capacity. As shown in figure (a), if each sector 1 points the same direction in each cell, then inference
can be reduced drastically

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The below figure shows the region of 3sector cell in various SIR bins of the system with universal
frequency reuse and 1/3 frequency reuse.

Sectoring improves SIR at cell boundaries even when universal frequency reuse is adopted.If sectoring
is adopted with frequency reuse, the received SIR can be improved as shown in figure (b) where both f =
1/3 frequency reuse and 120 degreee sectoring are employed.

The Broadband Wireless channel: Fading

One of the most important aspect of wireless channels is fading phenomenon, that is different from path
loss or shadowing due to distance and obstacles.

Fading is caused by reception of multiple versions of the same signal. The multiple received versions are
caused by reflections, referred as multipath. The reflections may arrive at very close to the same time. If
there is a local scattering around the receiver or the reflections may arrive at relatively longer intervals.
The below figure shows the multiple different paths between transmitter and receiver.

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Some reflections may arrive at the same time ,the effect of those reflection is seen in below fig

Depending on the phase difference between the arriving signals, the interference can be constructive or
destructive. Which shows the visible difference in the amplitude of received signal, even for short
distances.

Lets now discuss on time-varying tapped delay line channel model of basic wireless communication
system.

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As the transmitter or receiver move relative to each other, the channel response h(t) will change. This
channel response can be of two dimensions: delay dimension τ and time dimension t as shown in
below fig:

Since the channel changes over distance, the values h0, h1,h2….hυ may be totally different from time
t Vs time t +Δt as channel is highly variant both the τ and t dimensions.

Delay Spread and Coherence Bandwidth

The delay spread is a very important property of a wireless channel, since it specifies the duration of the
channel impulse response h(T.t).

Intuitively, the delay spread is the amount of time that elapses between the first arriving path and the last
arriving path.

The delay spread can be found by inspecting A(ΔT,0)Δ AT(ΔT); that is by setting Δt=0 in the channel
autocorrelation function.

AT(ΔT) is often referred to as the Multipath Intensity Profile, or power delay profile. If AT(ΔT) has non
negligible values from (0, Tmax), the maximum delay spread is Tmax.

This is an important definition because it specifies how many taps υ will be needed in the discrete
representation of the channel impulse response. Since

υ ≈ Tmax/Ts

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Where Ts is the sampling time. But, this definition is not rigorous since it is not clear what “non-
negligible” means mathematically.

The average and rms delay spread are often used instead of Tmax, and are defined as follows:

Trms gives a message of the “width” or “spread” of the channel response in time. A large Trms implies
a highly dispersive channel in time and a long channel impulse response (i.e., large v), whereas a small
Trms indicates that the channel is not very dispersive, and hence might require just a few taps to
accurately characterize. A general rule of thumb is that Tmax = 5 Trms .

The channel coherence bandwidth Bc is the frequency domain dual of the channel delay spread. The
coherence bandwidth gives a rough measure for the maximum separation between a frequency f1 and f2
where the channel frequency response is coorelated. That is:

Just as Tmax is a “ballpark” value describing the channel duration, Bc is a ballpark value describing the
range of frequencies over which the channel stays constant.

Given the channel delay spread, it can be shown that

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“Exact” relations can be found between Bc and Trms by arbitrarily defining notions of coherence, but
the important and prevailing feature is that Bc and τ are inversely related.

Doppler Spread and Coherence Time

The power delay profile gives the statistical power distribution of the channel over time for a signal
transmitted for just an instant, the Doppler power spectrum gives the statistical power distribution of the
channel versus frequency for a signal transmitted at a just one exact frequency. Whereas the power delay
profile was caused by multipath between the transmitter and receiver. The Doppler power spectrum is
caused by motion between the transmitter and receiver. The Doppler power spectrum is the Fourier
transform of At(Δt), i.e

The Doppler power spectrum is non-zero strictly for Δf ϵ (-fD ,fD), where fD is called the maximum
Doppler, or Doppler spread. That is, Pt(Δf) is strictly “band limited,” The Doppler spread is

Where v is the maximum spread between the transmitter and receiver, fc is the carrier frequency, and c
is the speed of light. A large bandwidth the Doppler will change since the frequency over the entire
bandwidth is not fc. However, as long as the communication bandwidth B << fc, the Doppler power
spectrum can be constant.

Due to the time frequency uncertainty principle , since Pt(Δf) is strictly band-limited its time-frequency
At(Δt) cannot be strictly time-limited. Since At(Δt) gives the correlation of the channel over time.

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The channel exhibits non-zero correlation between any two time instants in practice it is possible to
define a channel coherence time Tc, which, similarly to coherence bandwidth, gives the period of time
over which the channel is significantly correlated. Mathematically:

The coherence time and Doppler spread are also inversely related, Tc = 1/ fD . This makes intuitive
sense: if the transmitter and receiver are moving fast relative to each other and hence the Doppler is
large, the channel will change much more quickly then if the transmitter and receiver are stationary.
Values for the Doppler spread and the associate channel coherence time are given, in table below for
two plausible LTE frequency bands.

The channel may change upto 1000 times per second, placing a large burden on overhead channels.
Channel estimation algorithms, and making the assumption of accurate transmitted channel knowledge
additonally, the large Doppler at high mobility and frequency can also degrade the OFDM. Subcarrier
orthogonality as discussed.

Angular spread and coherence distance: The rms angular spread can be denoted as θrms and refers to
the statistical distribution of the angle of the arriving energy.

A large θrms implies that received channel energy is coming from many directions, where as small θrms
implies that the received channel energy is more focused.

A large angular spread generally occurs when there is lot of scattering. The dual of angular spread is
coherence distance, Dc. As the angular spread increases, the coherence distance decreases, and vice
versa.

A coherence distance of d means that any physical positions separated by d have an uncorrelated
received signal amplitude and phase. Dc = .2λ / θrms.

In case of Rayleigh fading, assumes a uniform angular spread, Dc = 9λ / 16Π

Angular spread and coherence distance are important in multiple antenna systems.

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MITIGATION OF NARROWBAND FADING

To overcome Mitigation of Narrow band Fading in modern communication system, there are many
techniques collectively called as diversity. Without diversity, high data rate wireless is virtually
impossible.

The effects of Unmitigated Fading

The probability of bit error (BER) is the basic metric of interest for physical layer(PHY) communication
system. For a QAM based system, the BER is an additive white Gaussian noise(AWGN, no fading) can
be given by

Pb ≤ 0.2 where M ≥ 4 is the MQAM alphabet size.

As the probability of BER decreases very rapidly with the SNR, decreasing the SNR linearly causes the
BER to increase exponentially. As the channel is constant, the BER is constant over time. But in fading
channel, the BER becomes a random variable that depends on channel strength. When the required
average BER is very low, virtually all errors are made in deep fade.
The average BER is given as P b  . BER now goes down very slowly with SNR that is seen below

fig , where we see that BERs like 10-5 to 10-6 the required SNR is over 30 dB higher in fading, which is
not desirable.

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A common analytical measure in LTE is Packet Error Rate(PER) or Block Error Rate(BLER) or Frame
Error Rate (FER).All these measures refer to the probability that atleast one bit is in error in a block of L
bits. An expression for PER is PER ≤ 1- (1 - Pb) L

Where Pb is the BER and L is the packet length. If bit errors are correlated, then PER improves. It is
clear that PER and BER are directly related to each other.Diversity is the key to overcoming the
potentially devastating performance loss from fading channels and in improving PER and BER.

Spatial Diversity

Spatial Diversity is a powerful form of diversity. It is achieved by having two or more antennas at the
receiver and/or the transmitter. The simplest form of space diversity consists of two receive antennas,
where the stronger of the two signals is selected. As these antennas are sufficiently spaced , the two
received signals will have uncorrelated fading. This type of diversity is sensibly called selection
diversity, as shown in below fig. Even though this technique completely discards half of the received
signal, most of the deep fades can be avoided and average SNR is also increased.

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Coding and Interleaving

A ubiquitous form of diversity in most of the contemporary digital communication system is the pair of
coding and interleaving. Coding means use of error correction codes(ECCs) also known also forward
error correction.

Coding techniques can be categorized by their coding rate r ≤ 1, that is inverse of redundancy. ECC
actually increase the achieved data rate even for r < 1 because the reliability increase they provide is so
great that the number of bits per symbol that can be successfully transmitted increases by a factor greater
than 1/r, producing a net gain.

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The below figure shows the convolutional encoder defined by LTE for use in the Broadband channel
(BCH).

This is
rate 1/3 code since there is one input bit (Ck ) and 3outputs dk. The constraint length of this code is 7.
There are 6 delay elements or 64 possible states. The generator polynomial G which consists of
generator Gi for each of the three outputs. Eg: G0 = 133 in binary form is 1011011, where a 0 means the
output doesn’t include this tap and a 1 means it does. Therefore d0k includes modulo-2 summed
contributions from the input and after delay elements 2, 3, 5 and 6. The decoder task is to take degraded
output symbols dk after demodulation and produce an original information signal Ck. If for a given
packet Ck = Ck, then the packet was successfully received or else it must be retransmitted. The most
common decoding technique for convolutional codes is the reduced-state sliding-window maximum ,
popularly known as the Viterbi decoder.

Turbo codes build upon convolutional codes to provide increased resilence to errors through iterative
coding. A rate 1/3 turbo code is also deployed in LTE as shown in below figure for both uplink and
downlink shared channels. The encoder is a parallel concatenated convolutional code that has 8 state rate
½ systematic encoder and an 8 state rate 1 systematic encoder that operates on an interleaved input
sequence, for net coding rate of 1/3. Systematic means that one output is generated by a linear modulo-2
sum of current encoder state that is a function of both the input bits and pervious states, while other
outputs are simply passed through to the output like xk as shown in below figure.

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Codes in LTE can also be punctured, that is some of the output coded bits are simply dropped to lower
transmission rate. Eg: if the output of rate 1/2 convolutional code had a punching factor of 1/4 i.e out of
every four output bits , one bit is dropped . Hence the effective code rate would code become 2/3, as
only three coded bits are transmitted for every two bits. At decoder , a random or fixed code is inserted
in the decoding process, that has 50% chance of being incorrect. Therefore the decoded sequence is less
reliable in case of lower-rate, un-punctured code.

A punctured code has worst performance than an unpunctured rate of same rate. Eg, a rate ½ code with
every 4th bit punctured to achieve a rate 2/3 code will usually have worst performance than a rate 2/3
code that actually produce three bits as a linear combination of every two input bits using two- state
machine. The reason puncturing is used is one of simplicity and complexity; since encoders and
decoders must have a different structure depending on the coding polynomial. Switching between many
different encoder structures has large complexity particularly on the decoder.

Interleaving is typically used in both conventional and turbo coding. For use with a conventional
convolutional code, the interleaver shuffles coded bits to provide robustness to burst errors that can be
caused by either bursty noise or interference. In such a noise, many adjacent bits in the transmitted

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signal will be degraded. Interleaving seeks to spread out coded bits so that the effects of a burst error,
after deinterleaving are spread roughly over a frame.

For turbo coding, the intuition is bit different: here an interleaver is used between the concatenated
codes in order to provide statistical independence between the two encoder outputs.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 to decorelate the soft outputs.

For both conventional and turbo codes, the interleaver block size would from a data reliablility
standpoint. larger interleaving blocks cause long interleaving and deinterleaving delays since the entire
block must be coded with bits before interleaving is performed and output is obtained .For this reason,
the interleaver block size is usually constrained to be over a single packet. Deinterleaving delays is one
of the primary impedements to turbo-coding as they cause latency.

Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ)

ARQ and Hybrid-ARQ is a technique used in modern communication system for LTE.ARQ is a MAC
layer retransmission protocol that allows erroneous packets to be quickly retransmitted. Such protocol
works in conjunction with PHY layer ECCs and parity checks to ensure reliable links. Since a single bit
error causes a packet error, with ARQ entire packet must be retransmitted even though rest of the
received bits were correct, this is inefficient. Imagine the situation where the same packet is dropped
twice in a row.

Hybrid ARQ combines the two concepts of ARQ and FEC to avoid such waste. Therefore Hybrid –
ARQ is able to extract additional time diversity in a fading channel.In H-ARQ a channel encoder such as
convolutional encoder and turbo encoder is used to generate additional redundancy. Here instead of
retransmitting all the coded bits, only a fraction of encoded bits are transmitted.This is achieved by
puncturing some of the coded 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
acknowledgementfrom the receiver. If the receiver was able to decode the information bits , then
nothing else needs to be done. If not, then transmitter can resend another copy of the encoded bits

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Type I H-ARQ commonly referred chase combining during retransmission the transmitter sends a copy
of the encoded bits that is identical to the first transmission and the receiver soft combines the received
bits with the previous transmission.

In Type II H- ARQ commonly referred to as incremental redundancy, the transmitter changes the bits
that are punctured during a retransmission.So with every retranmission the effective code rate at the
receiver decreases, in turn reduces error probability.

Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC)

LTE employes AMC to take advantages of fluctuations in the channel over time and frequency.

Basic idea is: Transmit at higher data rate as possible, when and where channel is good and transmit at
lower rate when and where the channel is poor to avoid excessive dropped packets. Lower data rates are
obtained by small constellation such as – QPSK and low rate error correcting codes such as rate 1/3
turbo codes. Higher data rates are achieved with large constellations such as 64 QAM and less robust
error correcting codes such as rate 3/1 puncture turbo codes.

A block diagram of an AMC system is shown in below figure. Here we will first consider a single user
system attempting to transmit as quickly as possible through a channel with a variable SINR, Eg: due to
fading. The goal of the transmitter is to transmit data from its queue as rapidly as possible, data being
demodulated and decoded reliably at the receiver.The feedback for AMC is critical: the transmitter
needs to know the “channel SINR” γ which is defined as the received SINR γr divided by the transmit
power Pt. The received SINR is thus γr = Pt γ

Practical example of AMC

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The below figure shows possible realization of AMC using three different code rates (1/2, 2/3,
3/4) and different modulation types (QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM).

In this example lowest offered data rate is QPSK and rate ½ turbo codes, while the highest data rate is
64QAM and rate 3/4 turbo codes. The achieved throughput normalized by bandwidth is defined as T =
(1-PER) r log2 (M) bps/Hz. Where PER is packet error rate, r ≤ 1 is the coding rate and M is the number
of points in the constellation. For Eg:64QAM with rate 3/4 codes achieves a maximum throughput of
4.5 bp/Hz, wjile QPSK with rate ½ codes achieves a best throughput of 1bps/Hz.

Tuning the Adaptive Modulation and Coding Controller

Challenges factor in AMC is to efficiently control three different quantities at one : transmit
power, transmit rate and the coding rate.

Guidelines can be developed to fine tune algorithm based on extensive simulations.

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PER and Received SINR: In AMC theory, the transmitter needs only to know the statistics and
instantaneous channel SINR.From the channel SINR, optimum coding/modulation strategy and transmit
power can be determined.But PER should be carefully monitored.

Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ): ARQ allows rapid retransmissions and Hybrid-ARQ generally
increases the ideal PER operating point by a factor of 10. For delay tolerant applications, it may be
possible to accept a PER upto 70 % .

Power Control: A Power control is a subtle system level issue , because objectives must be balanced.Eg:
In-theory the best power control policy for the capcity of parallel channela is the so-called water-filling
strategy.In which more power is allocated to strong channels and less power is allocated to weak
channels.Excess power causes interferences to the network.

Adaptive Modulation in OFDMA: In an OFDMA system, each user will be allocated a block of
subcarriers, each of which will have a different set of SINRs.

MITIGATION OF BROADBAND FADING

We know how frequency selective fading causes dispersion in time, which leads symbols to interfere
with each other T >>Tmax. As datarate R I proportional to 1/T, high data rate systems have multipath
delay spread i.e T<<Tmax and results in Intersymbol Interference (ISI).Some of the ISI mitigation
techniques are:

Spread Spectrum and RAKE receivers

Spread spectrum :Speeding up the transmission rate for a narrow band signal results in a wideband
transmission, this technique is called as spread spectrum. It is divided into two categories: Direct
sequence and frequency hopping.

Direct sequence spread spectrum also known as code division multiple access (CDMA) widely used in
cellular voice networks and effective in multiplexing large users.

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Frequency hopping spread spectrum is used in some low rate wireless LANs like Bluetooth and also for
interference averaging properties in GSM cellular networks.

For both types of spread spectrum, a larger bandwidth is used to send a small data rate, this is reasonable
approach for low data rate communication. For high data rate systems, it requires each user to employ
several codes simultaneously, that results in self-interference.

In short, spread spectrum is not a natural choice of wireless broadband networks. The data rate of
spectrum system is less than its bandwidth.

Equalization

Equalizers are most alternative for ISI- suppression to OFDM, as they don’t require additional antennas
or bandwidth and have moderate complexity. Equalizers are implemented at receiver and an attempt to
reverse the distortion obtained by the channel. Equalizers are classified into two classes: Linear and
Nonlinear (decision-directed).

Linear Equalizers: It runs the received signal through a filter that roughly models the inverse of the
channel.The problem is it not only inverts channel but also the received noise. This noise enhancement
can degrade the receivers performance, especially in wireless channel with deep frequency fades. Linear
Equalizers are simple to implement, but achieve poor performance in a time varying and severe-ISI
channel.

Nonlinear Equalizers: A nonlinear equalizers uses previous symbol decisions made by the receiver to
cancel out their subsequent interference, called as decision feedback equalizers. In a multipath, prior
symbol causes interference with later symbols. If the receiver knows the prior symbols,it can subtract
their interference . Problem with this approach is , it is common to make mistakes about what the prior
symbols were which causes “error propogation”.

Maximum Likellihood Sequence Detection (MLSD): is an optimum method of suppressing ISI, but
has complexity that scales like O( Mυ ), where M is constellation size and υ is the channel delay.
Therefore MSLD is impractical on channels with long delay spread or high data rate. MSLD is used in
low data rate outdoor systems like GSM. Delayed-decision feedback sequence estimation (DDFSE) is a
hybrid of MLSE and decision feedback equalization and reduced state sequence estimation (RSSE) are
reasonable suboptimal approximations for MLSE in practical aspects.

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Multicarrier Modulation: OFDM

Basic principle of OFDM: Instead of fighting the time dispersive ISI channel, why not utilize its
diversity. For this a large number of sub carriers (L) are used in parallel. So that symbol time for each
channel goes from L to LT. i.e 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. If B/L << Bc
each of the signal will undergo flat fading and time dispersion for each signal will be neligible. As long
as the number of carriers L is large enough, the condition B/L<< Bc cam be met.

Single carrier Modulation with Frequency Domain Equalization

A primary drawback of the OFDM approach to ISI-suppression is that the transmit signal has a peak-to-
average-ratio (PAR) relative to single carrier.

Are there any ways to effectively do OFDM without generating high PAR? Yes, we can ransmit a
single carrier signal with a cyclic prefix that has low PAR and then do all the processing at the receiver.
The processing consists of FFT to move signal into the frequency domain, 1-tap frequency equalizer,
and then IFFT to convert back to time domain for decoding and detection. In LTE , multiple uplink users
shares the frequency channel at the same time, the mobile station must still perform FFT and IFFT
operations. The resulting approach known in LTE as Single-carrier Frequency Domain Equalization
(SC-FDMA).

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