UNIT IV

Long Term Evolution (4G): Introduction to Long Term Evolution (4G)- LTE
Architecture, Radio Spectrum, Frame Structure, Resource Blocks, OFDMA

.
Principle with block diagram, Physical channels, UL, DL transmission

Dr MNS

Requirements for the 4G

• Reduced delays, in terms of both connection establishment and
transmission latency;
• increased user data rates;
• reduced cost per bit, implying improved spectral efficiency; •
greater flexibility of spectrum usage, in both new and pre-existing
bands;
• simplified network architecture;
• seamless mobility, including between different radio-access
technologies;
• reasonable power consumption for the mobile terminal.
Introduction

• Long Term Evolution.

• 3GPP Release 8, 2009.
• ITU Approved 4G (Oct 2010) - LTE-Advanced IP based packet switch network
• 1.0 Gbps peak rate for fixed services with 100 MHz
• 100 Mbps for mobile services.
• Seamless connectivity and global roaming with smooth handovers High-Quality
Multimedia
• Many different bands: 700/1500/1700/2100/2600 MHz
• Flexible Bandwidth: 1.4/3/5/10/15/20 MHz
• Modulation type- OFDM with QPSK, 16 QAM, 64 QAM
• Multiple access-OFDMA for downlink, Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SCFDMA) for uplink
• Short Frame Sizes of 10ms and 1ms
• IP based flat network architecture

• IP Multimedia Core Network Subsystem (IMS) is a standardised

architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia services
• Various voice over IP technologies are available on smartphones; IMS
provides a standard protocol across vendors.
• Increase the support of QoS for the various types of services (e.g. VoIP)
• IMS was originally designed by the wireless standards body 3GPP, as a
part of the vision for evolving mobile networks beyond GSM

there
are actually two separate radio access networks, namely the GSM EDGE radio access
network (GERAN) and the UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN). These use
the different radio communication techniques of GSM and UMTS, but share a common
core network between them
• Evolution of the system architecture from GSM and UMTS to LTE
 LTE EPS

Architectu
re
LTE aims to provide seamless Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity between User Equipment
 (UE)
and the Packet Data Network (PDN), without any disruption to the end users’ applications
during mobility
EPS provides the user with IP connectivity to a PDN for accessing the Internet, as well as for
running services such as Voice over IP (VoIP).
 universal
subscriber identity
module (USIM)
mobile termination (MT), handles all the
communication functions,
terminal equipment (TE), terminates the
data streams.
The universal integrated circuit card (UICC) runs an
application known as the USIM

UE
• Mobiles can have a wide variety of radio capabilities such as • the
maximum data rate that they can handle,
• the different types of radio access technology that they support,
• the carrier frequencies on which they can transmit and receive, radio
access network by means of signalling messages, so that the E-UTRAN
knows how to control them correctly
EPC
• In the new architecture, the evolved packet core (EPC) is a replacement for the
packet switched domain of UMTS and GSM.
• There is no equivalent to the circuit switched domain, for voice calls • It
routes packets using the Internet Protocol (IP) and supports devices that are
using IP version 4, IP version 6
• IP-Connectionless protocols are more efficient for real-time streaming or voice
communication, where low latency is crucial.
• EPC provides users with connectivity to the outside world, by setting up a
basic connection for a device when it turns on and maintaining that
connection until it turns off.
• EPC contains mechanisms to specify and control the data rate, error rate and
 delay that a data stream will receive
• EPC is also required to support inter-system handovers between LTE and
earlier 2G and 3G technologies.
EPC Entities
a. PGW (packet data network
Gateway) b. SGW (Serving Gateway)
c. MME (Mobility Management
Equipment) d. HSS (Home Station
Subsystem) e. PDN (packet Data Network)
f. PCRF (Policy Control Radio Function)
• The packet data network gateway (P-GW)
• It is point of contact with the outside world.
• allocates different IP addresses.
• Through the SGi interface, PDN gateway exchanges data with one or more
external devices or packet data networks(network operator’s servers, the
internet or the IP multimedia subsystem).
• Each packet data network is identified by an access point name (APN)
• A network operator typically uses a different APNs; one for the internet and
one for the IP multimedia subsystem
• Each mobile is assigned to a default PDN gateway when it first switches on
• The serving gateway (S-GW)
• It acts as a high-level router and forwards data packets between the eNB and
 the PDN gateway. It is for routing in user plane (data packets)
• A typical network might contain many of serving gateways, each of which
controls the mobiles in a certain geographical region.
• Each mobile is assigned to a single serving gateway, but the serving gateway
can be changed if the mobile moves. Coordinates with MME for handovers. •
The mobility management entity (MME)
• Manages signalling and authentication messages
• MME is central to managing the mobility of users
• controls the high-level operation of the mobile, by sending it signalling
messages and such as security management of data streams
• IDLE State Management when a device is not actively transmitting dataturns it
to IDLE state to save battery life
• MME also plays a role in ensuring interoperability with other network types, like
2G, 3G, or non-3GPP networks
• PCRF provides handover from one generation to another generation
• It can be integrated for billing, charging, rating, subscriber
databases. manage network as well as subscriber related policies in
real time.
It has ability to route and prioritize traffic efficiently and
dynamically. It provides key inputs for bandwidth management.

PDN (Packet Data Network)

data connection between a mobile device and a specific Packet Data Network.
PDN session is established when a mobile device, connects to the mobile
network and requests access to a specific Packet Data Network.
• E-UTRAN
• It handles the radio communications between the mobile and EPC with
evolved Node B (eNB).

• E UTRAN manages radio transmissions by downlink and uplink, using

signal processing functions of the LTE air interface.

• controls the operation of all its users , by sending them signaling

messages such as handover commands that relate to those radio
transmissions.
• E-NodeB(eNB) functionalities

• It handles the physical layer processing, modulation, coding, and

 decoding of data for wireless transmission.
• Radio Resource Management: The eNodeB manages the allocation and
control of radio resources, such as frequency bands, time slots, and
power levels, to ensure efficient utilization of the available spectrum.
• Handover Management: When a UE moves from one eNodeB
coverage area to another, the eNodeB facilitates the handover
process
• Mobility Management: The eNodeB tracks the mobility of UEs within
its coverage area.
• It manages parameters related to handovers, cell reselection, and paging,
ensuring that UEs are efficiently handed off between cells and receive
incoming calls or messages when in idle mode.
• Quality of Service (QoS) : It assigns appropriate radio resources,
prioritizes different types of traffic (e.g., voice, video, data), and
manages congestion to ensure that UEs receive the expected level of
service.
• IP Packet Routing: The eNodeB acts as a gateway between the RAN
and the core network. It performs IP packet routing functions,
forwarding user data between UEs and the core network entities,
Serving Gateway and the Packet Data Network Gateway.
• Synchronization: It ensures that the eNodeB in a network are
synchronized in terms of timing and frequency to avoid interference
and maintain proper coordination.
Radio Spectrum
LTE frequency bands include 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, and 2300 MHz

• Dynamic spectrum access (DSA), or spectrum sharing in other

 frequency bands, is an effective approach to maximize the spectrum
utilization
• LTE spectrum sharing (1) protect the primary users (2) ensure fairness
among other networks (3) integrate with the small cell air interface
• three types of spectrum resources are being considered for LTE data
aggregation
• the TV White Space (TVWS) channels
• frequently unused service-dedicated 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband
Radio Service (CBRS) spectrums
• 5 GHz unlicensed bands
• Small Cells and the Home eNB
• Small cells are short-range, low-power and lowcost cellular access points that
 support fewer users
• Operators can increase the capacity of their networks through the use of smaller
cells-home eNB, which is a base station that a user must purchase to provide
femtocell coverage within the home.
• Home eNBs provides better coverage and higher data rates to users and for
network operator by taking traffic load away from the surrounding macrocells.
• A home eNB can provide either exclusive or preferential access to mobiles that
also belong to the closed subscriber group stored by the USIM

• Home eNBs have lower power limitations than normal base stations, can control
only one cell
• On the S1 interface, a home eNB can communicate with the evolved packet core
either directly or through a device known as a home eNB gateway that shields the
EPC from the potentially huge numbers of home eNBs.
Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiple Access
• The technique used for radio transmission and reception in LTE is
orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).
• OFDMA has similar functions as any other multiple access, allowing the
base station to communicate with several different mobiles accessing
channel at the same time.
• OFDM is multicarrier modulation. OFDM transmitter takes a block of
symbols from the information stream and transmits each symbol on a
different radio frequency that is known as a sub-carrier.
• The bandwidth of each individual sub-carrier is small, so it can only support
a low symbol rate.
• however, the sub-carriers occupy the same bandwidth as a traditional single
carrier system
 LTE subcarriers
• In LTE OFDM, the sub-carrier spacing Δf is related to the symbol
duration T on each individual sub-carrier, Δf = 1/T
• the symbol duration is 66.7 μs, as the sub-carrier spacing is 15 kHz.
• Each cell can support a maximum of 1200 sub-carriers, which occupy
the central 18MHz of a 20MHz allocation
• The total number of subcarriers= N
• Of which number of data-subcarriers =NC, Ncp=CP subcarriers •
pilot-subcarriers =NP
• and null subcarriers= NV
• .N=NC+NP+NV
OFDMA TR
The transmitter accepts a stream of bits from
higher layer protocols and converts them to
symbols using the chosen modulation
schemes such as QPSK or QAM

The serial-to-parallel converter then takes a

block of N symbols(say8 example), directs them
onto N parallel sub-streams.
The transmitter mixes each symbol with a
sub-carrier, whose frequency is an integer
multiple of 15 kHz.
The transmitter converts frequency-domain
data to time-domain by an inverse discrete
Fourier transform
By adding these sine waves together and
dividing by a scale factor of N, a single time
 domain waveform is obtained
• OFDMA RX
• The receiver accepts the incoming signal,
mixes it with a complex conjugate replica
of the original radio frequency and filters
the result.
• It then directs the signal to eight separate
paths and mixes each one with a complex
conjugate replica of one of the original
sub-carriers.
• The information that arrived on that sub
carrier is now at a frequency of zero.
• By integrating the result for the duration
 of one symbol, the receiver can extract
the amplitude and phase of the symbol
that arrived on that sub-carrier, while
rejecting any noise and interference
Block diagram of an OFDMA transmitter and receiver
• If the transmitter sends a signal on one sub-carrier, then the receiver
detects a signal on that one sub-carrier alone and does not pick up
interference on any of the others.
• Sub-carriers with this property are said to be orthogonal.
• As sub-carriers are orthogonal, an OFDMA transmitter can pack them
very closely together, without any risk of interference between them.
• Orthogonality relies on the fact that the symbol duration T is the
reciprocal of the sub-carrier spacing Δf
• LTE uses a slightly more complex technique known as cyclic prefix
insertion to avoid ISI
• the transmitter starts by inserting CP before each symbol by copying data
from the end of the symbol following, so as to fill up the guard period.

• The information flows between the

LTE channels
different protocols through channels
• LTE uses different types of logical,
transport and physical channel, which are
distinguished by the type of information
they carry
 • Data and signaling messages are carried on
logical channels between the Radio link
control(RLC )
• Medium access control(MAC) protocols
are carried by transport channels between
the MAC and the physical layer, and
physical data channels between the
different levels of the physical layer.
• the transport channel processor of transmitter creates control
information and sends this information to the physical channel
processor in the form of physical control channels.
• physical channel processor creates physical signals, that are sent to
the physical channel processor in the receiver, but not visible to higher
layers.
• LOGICAL CHANNELS- logical traffic channels carry data in the user
plane, while logical control channels carry signalling messages in the
control plane.
• dedicated logical channels are allocated to a specific mobile, while
common logical channels can be used by more than one.
Transport channels
• The main function of the transport channels is error management.
• uplink and downlink shared channels are the only transport channels
that use the techniques of automatic repeat request
• the only channels that can adapt their coding rate to changes in the
received signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR).
• Physical Data Channels
• The PDSCH and PUSCH are the only physical channels that can adapt their
modulation schemes in response to changes in the received SINR.
• The other physical channels all use a fixed modulation scheme, usually QPSK
 Resource block
• To accommodate large number of users, more bandwidth is required.
• These BWs are divided into a group/blocks of 12 subcarriers. • In 4G,
for 20 MHz band, there are 100 scheduling blocks
• LTE frame has 10 blocks having duration of 10 msec. Each block is known as
subframe.
• 1 LTE frame there are 10 subframes. One subframe is divided into 2 slots. •
Therefore 1 frame has 20 slots. These slots are called resource blocks (RB). •
12 OFDMA symbols/subcarriers in 1 RB.
• There are types of Frame Structure : Type 1 for FDD, Type 2 for TDD,
• Possible subcarrier spacing : 15 Khz only
• Two slots make one subframe, which is 1ms long
• 10 subframes make one frame, which is 10 ms long.
• Each frame is numbered using a system frame number, which runs
 repeatedly from 0 to 1023
• Number of Subcarriers within 1 RB : 12
LTE frame structure
• In LTE, information is organized as a function of frequency as well as time, using a
resource Grid . The basic unit is a resource element (RE), which spans one symbol by one
 sub-carrier.
• Each resource element usually carries two, four or six physical channel bits, depending
on if modulation scheme is QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM.
• Resource elements are grouped
into resource blocks (RBs), that
spans 0.5ms (one slot) by 180
kHz (12 sub-carriers).

base station uses resource blocks for

scheduling, by allocating the
symbols
and sub-carriers within each
subframe
in units of resource blocks.

• Advantage
• In area 1 (metro area), high mobility service data is to be provided for good
speed internet access. - high bandwidth is offered.
• In 2nd area speed is not required less subscribers , low BW is offered to
that area
Bandwidth Options
 FFT size

128
256
512
1024
2048
2048

• EX
• In one of the area 1; If LTE BW for given application is 15MHz with
 75RBs, what will be total number of subcarriers ? And compute
occupied BW
• In area 2 speed is not required and there are less subscribers , low
BW is offered to that area to make calls which require 5MHz BW
.what changes you observe for requirement on subcarriers, occupied
BW, RBs and data rate
• Modulation method-adaptability
• In LTE, the modulation method is changed according to the reception status of the UE.
• For example, when the reception is good, it uses 64QAM, but when the reception is
bad, it uses 16QAM or QPSK to send data to avoid data errors
• Subscribers located away from the eNodeB - more robust modulation schemes but
lower throughput as they will experience unacceptable data loss rates.
• Each modulation scheme has a threshold SNR. Say
 Decrease in
signal quality64QAM
16QAM

QPSK
• Explain how the 4G LTE ensure efficient use of the spectrum by link adaptation •
Flexible Bandwidth Options: LTE supports various bandwidths, from 1.4 MHz up to 20
MHz, allowing operators to deploy LTE in different spectrum allocations efficiently • Use of
OFDMA : LTE uses OFDMA in the downlink and SC-FDMA in the uplink. OFDMA divides
the spectrum into small subcarriers, which are allocated to users that minimizes interference.
• Dynamic Resource Allocation: LTE's frame structure supports dynamic allocation of
Resource Blocks (RBs), which allows the network to adapt to changing user demands and
 channel conditions in real-time
• MIMO Technology: Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology increases the
capacity of a given bandwidth by using multiple transmit and receive antennas. • Adaptive
Modulation and Coding :LTE use adaptive modulation scheme and coding rate
dynamically based on the quality of the radio link.
• When channel conditions are good used , higher-order modulation schemes but lower coding
rates are used to provide increase in the data rate without requiring additional spectrum. • For
bad channel conditions, the system use more robust modulation and coding to maintain the link
quality.
Transmission and Reception
• In UE power amplifiers are used and To reduce peak to average power
ratio, SCFDMA scheme is used.
• In LTE, three main stages of those procedures -
• the delivery of scheduling messages from the base station,
• the actual process of data transmission
• the delivery of acknowledgements and any associated control information from
the receiver.

• Scheduling is the allocation of RBs by eNBs, to ensure there is no fading effect •

This allocation is performed by the "scheduler", which is part of the MAC layer in
the eNB.
• RBs are allocated to UE in units of 2 RBs.
• The reference signal (RS)is used to check fading status between the UE and eNB for
scheduling and feeds back the measurement results to the eNB.
• Scheduler Receives QoS data from EPC
• Scheduling assigns an RB to each user
Downlink Transmission and Reception
1. The eNB begins the procedure by sending the UE a scheduling command ,which is downlink control
information (DCI) and transmitted on the physical downlink control channel (PDCCH).
It alerts the UE about forthcoming data transmission and specify parameters -amount of data, the resource
block allocation and the modulation scheme.
2. eNB transmits the data on the downlink shared channel (DL-SCH) and the physical downlink shared
channel (PDSCH). The data comprise either one or two transport blocks, whose duration equals the subframe
duration of 1 ms.
3. In response to this, the UE composes a hybrid ARQ acknowledgement to indicate whether the data has
arrived correctly. It sends the acknowledgement on the physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) if it is
transmitting uplink data in the same subframe and on the physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) if it is
control.
• The eNB moves to a new transport block after a positive acknowledgement and re
transmits
the original one after a negative acknowledgement.

• The eNB when reaches a certain maximum number of re-transmissions without

receiving a positive response, then it moves to a new transmission on the basis that
the mobile’s receive buffer may have been corrupted by a burst of interference.

• The radio link control (RLC) protocol then resolves by sending the transport block
again from the beginning.
Uplink Transmission and Reception
 1 The eNB starts the procedure by sending the UE a
scheduling grant on the PDCCH .This grants permission for the mobile to transmit and states all the transmission
parameters that it should use, -the transport block size, the resource block allocation and the modulation
scheme.
2 UE carries an uplink data transmission on the uplink shared channel (UL-SCH) and the PUSCH(physical
uplink shared channel )
3 If the eNB fails to receive the data correctly then there are two ways for it to respond. it can trigger a non
adaptive re-transmission by sending the UE a negative acknowledgement on the PHICH and UE then re
transmits the data
Alternatively, the eNB can trigger an adaptive re-transmission by sending the UE another scheduling grant on
the PDCCH.
4 If the eNB does receive the data correctly then it can respond in two similar ways,
either by sending a positive acknowledgement on the PHICH so as to end the
procedure or by sending a new scheduling grant on the PDCCH so as to request a new
transmission.
5 If UE receives a PHICH acknowledgement and a PDCCH scheduling grant in the
same subframe, then the scheduling grant takes priority.

6 If the UE reaches a maximum number of re-transmissions without receiving a

positive reply, then it moves to a new transmission and leaves the RLC protocol to
solve the problem