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Abstract—In this paper, we investigate the applicability of have to be designed in order to increase link reliability. In this
the 3GPP Long Term Evolution standard to mobile satellite paper, we propose an inter-TTI (Transmission Time Interval)
systems. In order to counteract the satellite specific propagation interleaving technique that is able to break the channel cor-
conditions, we propose a novel inter-TTI (Transmission Time
Interval) interleaving technique allowing to break the channel relation in slowly varying channels by exploiting the existing
correlation in slowly time varying channels. The Inter-TTI HARQ facilities provided by the LTE physical layer.
transmission is achieved through the reuse of the existing HARQ The paper is organized as follows: in section II a brief
facilities provided by the LTE physical layer. Simulation results overview of the LTE standard is provided, section III gives
show that the proposed technique can be successfully used to a detailed description of the proposed inter TTI interleaving
improve the performance of the LTE physical layer when applied
to the transmission over satellite links. Performance improvement technique. Section IV describes the channel models considered
depends on the considered parameters, while complexity can be for the analysis, which is reported in V. Finally, conclusions
traded off with the data rate to achieve the best quality of service are given in section VI.
for the considered system.
Index Terms—LTE, Satellite, Circular Buffer, Forced Retrans- II. LTE P HYSICAL L AYER OVERVIEW
mission.
3GPP LTE is the name given to a project within the Third
Generation Partnership Project to improve the UMTS mobile
I. I NTRODUCTION phone standard to cope with future requirements. Goals in-
3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) [1] is gaining momentum clude improving efficiency, lowering costs, improving services,
and will be an important player in the 4G scenario along making use of new spectrum opportunities, and better integra-
with other emerging technologies such as mobile WiMAX tion with other open standards. The ability to provide high bit
(i.e., IEEE 802.16e). One of the key factors for the successful rates is a key measure for LTE. LTE standardization activities
deployment of mobile satellite systems in 4G networks is are progressing at a fast pace, and specifications are being
the maximization of the technology commonalities with the finalized for physical and access layers. For what concerns
terrestrial systems, in order maintain implementation costs this study, we refer to the physical layer specifications.
to a minimum. An effective way of achieving this objective A general block diagram of the LTE transmitter is shown in
consists in considering the terrestrial radio interface as the figure 1. The main ingredients of the LTE physical layer are the
baseline for the satellite radio interface, introducing only adoption of turbo codes [2], OFDM modulation, and multiple-
those modifications that are strictly needed to deal with the input-multiple-output (MIMO) techniques [1]. The adopted
satellite peculiarities, such, for example, non linear distortion turbo coding scheme is characterized by a fixed code rate equal
introduced by the on-board power amplifiers, long round-trip to 1/3. Nevertheless, the rate matching increases the system
propagation times, and reduced time diversity. flexibility by allowing to reach variable code-rate by means
In this framework, an important aspect of the 3GPP LTE of puncturing and repetition. In particular, the rate matching
physical layer that has to be considered when dealing with block takes as input each of the three streams coming from the
satellite systems is the absence of a large time interleaving able encoder, and performs interleaving and interlacing as shown in
to cope with long channel fades. In the terrestrial deployment, Figure 2. The interleaved and interlaced bits are then written in
channel fading is in fact dealt with by exploiting those a Virtual Circular Buffer. Eight redundancy versions (RV) are
frequency bands experiencing satisfactory channel conditions defined, each specifying a starting bit index in the buffer. The
and through Hybrid Automatic Repeat-reQuest (HARQ) tech- transmitter reads a block of coded bits from the buffer, starting
niques. However, neither of these techniques is efficient in from the bit index specified by a chosen RV. Different RVs are
satellite environments where the large round trip delay hinders used for different retransmissions, so as to transmit different
the accuracy of the channel quality indicators and sounding parts of the coded word in different time instants, decreasing
signals, continuously exchanged between users and the base the overall code rate after each retransmission. For a desired
station to keep updated channel estimates, and of the HARQ code rate of operation, the number of coded bits to be selected
acknowledgement messages. Therefore, alternative techniques for transmission is calculated and passed to the rate matching
time and in the frequency dimension, and HARQ techniques. TURBO P1 2nd Tx
The former technique consists in exploiting the channel state ENCODER Interleaver
RV=1
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3
IV. S CENARIO AND C HANNEL M ODEL In addition, to properly model the satellite link, a High
Power Amplifier (HPA) is introduced within the satellite
In our analysis we assume a scenario in which GEO satellite
channel. Power amplifiers are typically operated close to the
broadcasts services to mobile terminals, and one or more Com-
saturation region to maximize output power and operating ef-
plementary Ground Components (CGC) are foreseen in order
ficiency. Under these operating conditions, non-negligible non
to expand the service availability and coverage. Both satellite
linear distortion is introduced, increasing significant spectral
and terrestrial components work at the same frequency, thus re-
regrowth and in-band distortion. These effects can impair the
alizing a Single Frequency Network (SFN). In order to model
use of high order modulations and severely reduce system
this hybrid terrestrial/satellite scenario, we follow the work
capacity, due to the increased adjacent channel interference. To
done in [5]. In particular we adopt the channel model named
mitigate and keep under control non linear distortion effects,
case number 5. This channel derives from the assumption
we introduce a waveform predistorter. The details regarding
having a line-of-sight link coming from one satellite, three
the HPA and the predistorter adopted in our system model
terrestrial repeaters, and receiver located in an open area in
are given in [4]. The adopted HPA is a Traveling-Wave
an urban environment. The resulting propagation model is
Tube Amplifier (TWTA), while the predistorer is a fractional
characterized by ten paths. The line of sight path is modeled
predistorter based on Look Up Table [7]. The HPA is assumed
by a Ricean distribution with Rice Factor equal to 7dB, while
to work with an Input Back-Off (IBO) of 4dB.
the remaining paths, pertaining to the complementary ground
components, are Rayleigh distributed. The corresponding de-
lay spread results to be Td = 1.774μs (see [5] for details). V. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
Terminal motion is taken into account by considering the In this section we report the numerical results obtained
Doppler spread. Two different speed are analyzed, that are through computer simulation. LTE provides a wide range
ν = 3kph and ν = 30kph. If a 3D representation of the of parameters which can be set based on the application
isotropic angle of arrivals is assumed, the resulting Doppler scenario. Here we made the following assumptions: the LTE
spectrum can be simply modelled through a rectangular shape signal is transmitted in a 5M Hz band located in S band
according to [6] yielding to an autocorrelation function with (carrier frequency f0 = 2GHz), the sub-carrier spacing is
a sinc behavior. Let us call fdm the maximum Doppler shift Δf = 15KHz, FFT size = 2048, TT T I = 1ms. In one
associated with the terminal motion, which is a function of TTI 12 OFDM symbols are transmitted, the OFDM symbols
the terminal speed ν according to the relation: time TOF DM is 83.33μs, while the cyclic prefix duration is
v TCP = 16.67μs. Therefore, the most important constraint of
fdm = f0 , (1) OFDM modulation is satisfied, that is:
c
being c the speed of light, equal to 3 · 108 m/s. The channel TCP > Td (3)
coherence time Tc , representing of the channel memory in the The turbo encoder is fed with 4096 information bits, while
time domain can be expressed as a function of the maximum the Virtual Circular Buffer size is assumed to be 6300, thus
Doppler spread: resulting in an actual system code rate R 2/5. Under
1 1 this condition, the system can provide up to 2.5mbps3 . All
Tc = , (2)
Kc 2fdm simulations consider QPSK modulation.
where Kc is a proportionality factor depending on the actual The curves show the bit error rate (BER) and block error
threshold selected to delimit the support of the autocorrelation rate (BLER) performance versus Eb /N0 , with Eb being the
function2 . It is easy to show that under this assumption energy per information bit and N0 the one-sided noise power
the channel coherence time results to be Tc 90ms and spectral density. The solid line curves represent the case in
Tc 9ms for ν = 3kph and ν = 30kph, respectively. which the number of transmitted OFDM symbols for each
As a consequence, the inter TTI interleaver parameters must retransmission (LSU B ) is 1, resulting in a total number of
be chosen in order to cope with such as channel correlation retransmissions RT T I = 12, while the dashed line curves
time. In table I, channel coherence time Tc , the selected inter depict the case with LSU B = 3 and RT T I = 4. In all the
TTI interleaver parameters LSU B and RT T I , and the resulting considered configurations we set the value of KT T I such
total protection time TT P T are reported for the two considered that the total protection time TT T I is larger than the channel
terminal speed. coherence time Tc (see Table I). Figures 3 and 4 represent the
BER and BLER performance for the of 30kph (Tc 9ms).
TABLE I In this scenario the simulated values KT T I are 4, 8, 16. As
I NTER TTI PARAMETERS AND T OTAL P ROTECTION T IME it can be observed, the solid line curves always outperform
the dashed line ones. This is easily explained considering the
ν [kph] LSU B RT T I KT T I [ms] Tc [ms] TT P T [ms]
3 3, (1) 4, (12) 40 90 121,(441) different diversity granularity: in the case of LSU B = 1 each
3 3, (1) 4, (12) 80 90 321,(881) OFDM symbol composing a TTI is transmitted in a separate
3 3, (1) 4, (12) 160 90 481,(1761)
30 3, (1) 4, (12) 4 9 13,(45) TTI. Therefore the codeword spanned over the 12 OFDM
30 3, (1) 4, (12) 8 9 33,(89) symbols composing the TTI can benefit of diversity degree
30 3, (1) 4, (12) 16 9 49,(177)
3 This represents the achievable data rate when no inter TTI interleaving is
2 In our analysis we fix Kc = 1. taken into account.
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4
0
10
equal to 12. On the other hand, if the case of LSU B = 3 NO interTTI
interTTI, L
SUB
= 1, K
TTI
=40
The same considerations still hold for Figures 5 and 6, where interTTI, LSUB = 3, KTTI=80
interTTI, LSUB = 1, KTTI=160
terminal speed is assumed to be 3kph. In this case the KT T I
−1
10
interTTI, LSUB = 3, KTTI=160
BER
−2
the inter TTI technique. Looking at Figure 4, at BLER equal 10
−2 SUB TTI
10 interTTI, LSUB = 3, KTTI=80
−1 interTTI, LSUB = 1, KTTI=160
10
interTTI, LSUB = 3, KTTI=160
−3
10
BLER
−2
10
−4
10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
E /N [dB] −3
b 0
10
−4
10
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
10 Eb/N0 [dB]
NO interTTI
interTTI, L = 1, K =4
SUB TTI
interTTI, LSUB = 3, KTTI=4
interTTI, LSUB = 1, KTTI=8 Fig. 6. BLER vs Eb /N0 . Terminal speed = 3kph.
interTTI, L = 3, K =8
SUB TTI
−1 interTTI, LSUB = 1, KTTI=16
10
interTTI, LSUB = 3, KTTI=16
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported in part by the ESA project ”Study of
BLER
−2
10
Satellite Role in 4G Mobile Networks”, AO/1-5115/05/NL/US.
−3
R EFERENCES
10
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