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SDR Frequency Planning

Special Subject Manual

Version: V1.1

Released by:

GSM Network Planning & Optimization Dept.

Engineering Service Division
ZTE Corporation

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.

GSM Network Planning & Optimization Dept.

Special Subject Manual

Version introduction:
Version

Date

V1.0

2009-06-

Writer
Chen Chun

06
V1.1

Assessor

Translator

Amendment records

Chen Ni, Tang

Feng XiaoYing

None

Feng XiaoYing

RU80 is changed to RSU60.

YaLing
2009-12-11

Cao Ye

Chen Ni

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.

Internal Use Only

Key words:
Dual-mode RRU, 10MHz frequency band limit, OTSR, MCUM

Abstract:
This manual mainly introduces the effects that SDR equipment features have on
frequency planning, including the following aspects:
10MHz frequency band limit of dual-mode RRU;
Baseband hopping MAlist should not cross UBPG;
Application of MCUM.

Abbr.:
MCUM: Multi-Carrier Unite Mode
RRU: Remote Radio Unit
OTSR: Omni-Transmission Sectorized Receiving
UBPG: Universal Baseband Processing board for GSM

References:

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.

Internal Use Only

Contents
1

Overview

10MHz Frequency Band Limit of Dual-Mode RRU 2

UBPG Baseband Hopping MAList Not Allowed to Cross UBPG

Application of Multi-TRX Combination

600KHz Frequency Space

Appendix A Frequency Planning for P Project 10

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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Table contents
Table 2-1 Working bandwidth for different no. of TRXs in dual-mode RRU.................................2
Table 2-2 working bandwidth of dual-mode RRU..............................................................................3
Table 3-1 Summary of scenarios for frequency hopping..................................................................5

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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1 Overview
This manual does not involve introduction to the conventional frequency planning
methods, but focuses on the effects that SDR equipment features have on frequency
planning, which include:
1)

10MHz frequency band limit of dual-mode RRU;

2)

Baseband hopping MAlist should not cross UBPG;

3)

Application of MCUM.

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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2 10MHz Frequency Band Limit of DualMode RRU

RF unit of SDR equipment falls into two types:
1)

Single-mode RF unit: used in RU02 and RU02A of macro BTS;

2)

Dual-mode RF unit: used in RU60, RSU60 of macro BTS and R8860 of

distributed BTS.

The bandwidth limit mentioned in this chapter is directed at dual-mode RRU, and there
is no such limit on single-mode RRU. Specific principles are as follows:
For UMTS broadband signal, the only condition for achieving good performance is that
the feedback bandwidth is 3~5 times of signal bandwidth; while for GSM narrowband
signal, the feedback bandwidth is required to be 9 times of signal bandwidth to reach
good inter-modulation distortion(IMD) performance. If the downlink working
bandwidth of RRU/RU is 20MHz, then the feedback ADC bandwidth is required to be
180MHz. However, the feedback bandwidth of current feedback signal ADC is only
90M. Therefore, under GSM mode, downlink working bandwidth is 10MHz, that is the
GSM TRXs of the same RRU/RU are distributed within the bandwidth of 10MHz. The
actual working bandwidth is closely related to the PAR of multi-carrier signals, for the
multi-carrier signal that different PAR represents makes PA operate in different linear
zone. Because the PAR of TRXs of different numbers is different, the actual operating
bandwidth is different. See Table 2 -1:
Table 2-1 Working bandwidth for different no. of TRXs in dual-mode RRU
No. of TRXs for RRU/RU operation

Working bandwidthMHz

2*G

20

4*G

15

6*G

10

1*W+2*G

20

1*W+4*G

20

2*W+2*G

20

However, in actual planning the operating bandwidth is not divided according to the
number of TRXs configured. For GSM system, the unanimous bandwidth limits are
shown in the following table:
Table 2-2 working bandwidth of dual-mode RRU

Types of multi-TRX RU

GSM single- GU dual-

Remarks

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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mode
RU60/

10M

mode
20M

R8860 GU906/GU186

RSU60/R8860
15M
GU908/GU188/GU858/GU198

1,

GUdual-mode,

bandwidth

20M

currently

can

reach

the

total

17M,

ie.

GSM12MUMTS 5M.
2, 60W mode: GSM single-mode is 10M,
and the frequency points used must be within
5M (left & right) from the central frequency
point
3, 80W mode: G single-mode is 15M, and
the frequency points used must be within 7.5M
(left & right) from the central frequency point

As the flexibility of frequency planning is limited by the bandwidth available, the

following aspects should be considered in performing frequency planning for SDR
equipment (taking 10M bandwidth as an example; provided the frequency resource is
rich, which exceeds 10M):
1)

Packet multiplexing of frequency resource, especially the segmentation of BCCH

and TCH frequency; should not follow the past ideas.

2)

If mode 1*1 or 1*3 is used in RF hopping, the BCCH frequency point of each cell
plus hopping sequence should not exceed 10M. If the frequency range of single
cell has to exceed 10M, long hopping sequence should be segmented into short
hopping sequences; in the mean time, TRXs should be configured to different
RRU; if the cell is configured with only one RRU, it will lead to waste of RRU.
Therefore, its suggested that mode 1*3 or N*1 (N*3) be adopted for large site
[N*1 (N*3) is the variant of 1*1 or 1*3]; divide TCH frequency band into N
segments according to site configuration, and make multiplexing based on the site
groups.
Please refer to appendix A for details.

3)

For common frequency multiplexing and baseband hopping, the frequency band
of single site is allowed to exceed 10M. If the number of TRXs in the cell is under
6, the number of RRU needs to be increased, which could be a waste of RRU.

There is a concept of central frequency point relating to the limit of 10M bandwidth.
For cells with SDR equipment of the current versions, a central frequency point must
be configured, and the frequency points used by the cell must be within 5M (left &
right) from the central frequency point.

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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3 UBPG Baseband Hopping MAList Not

Allowed to Cross UBPG
In baseband frequency hopping system, each TRX is configured with a fixed
frequency; after coding and interleaving, each Burst on different frames is scheduled to
different TRX and transmitted, so as to achieve frequency hopping. SDR equipment
supports baseband frequency hopping as well as containing BCCH in the hopping
sequence (except TS0), but the frequencies in the MAlist of a cell is not allowed to
cross the baseband processing board (UBPG).
As shown in the following figure, a sites configuration is S8/8/8 with 24 TRXs in total
on two UBPG boards; the 8 TRXs of Cell2 are distributed on two UBPG boards. In this
case, if baseband frequency hopping is adopted, we have to make two MAlists for
Cell2, or we can avoid the problem by adopting imitated baseband frequency hopping.

The following table gives a summary of combination scenarios of UBPG and RRU,
when SDR equipment adopts frequency hopping.
Table 3-3 Summary of scenarios for frequency hopping

Scenari
o

Supposed distribution of
frequency bands
RRU1=0~10MHz;RRU2=10~20MHz

Feasibility
(Yes/No)

BB hopping between RRU1 and RRU2

per cell per UBPG

Yes

Synthesized hopping between RRU1

and RRU2 per cell

No

Synthesized hopping within RRU1 and

within RRU2 independently

Yes

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except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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4

Part of TRXs use BB hopping and part

use Synthesized hopping in one cell

Yes

The same TRX use both BB and

Synthesized hopping

No

Note: BB is the abbreviation of Baseband.

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except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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4 Application of Multi-TRX Combination

MCUM is the product of introducing 3G OTSR to GSM system. Configure a cell with
several sets of RRU which transmit exactly the same downlink signals and make
selectivity combination of uplink signals. In this way, single cell can use multipositioned and multi-directioned antennas to cover areas, which is applicable in special
areas (highways, railways) with the complicated coverage requirements.
For multi-TRX combination, the requirement for hardware configuration is: one TRX
must be configured on one UBPG, therefore the number of UBPG will necessarily
increase, so will the number of RRU.
As shown in the following figure, for a cell with 8 TRXs, usually 1 UBPG is enough; if
the configuration is OTSR3, 2 UBPG will be needed, each of which will carry 4 RRXs
and their clones.
The influence of MCUM on frequency planning is:
when baseband hopping is adopted, long hopping sequence must be segmented into
several short hopping sequences because MAlist is not allowed to cross UBPG. Long
hopping sequence and short hopping sequence may have different impact on the radio
performance of system, which is also related to channel allocation strategy, but
currently there is no simulation result to be referred to.

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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5 600KHz Frequency Space

The energy leakage at 400kHz and 600kHz frequency offset is -60dBc and -70dBc
respectively. 400kHz frequency space is the lowest threshold. 3GPP standards stipulate
that frequency space for multi-TRX test is 600kHz. Besides, in view of the dynamic
power control of 30dB, currently configuration of 600kHz frequency space for GSM
multi-TRX in SDR is recommended.
600kHz is recommended by R&D experts, but currently there isnt any final
conclusion. In case of rich frequency resource, we may as well adopt 600kHz in
planning of frequency space, but we must take into consideration the future expansion
in the planning process.

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
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Appendix A Frequency Planning for P

Project
Frequency
resource of P project.ppt

This document contains proprietary information of ZTE Corporation and is not to be disclosed or used
except in accordance with applicable agreements.
9