LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless rollout

projects

Paper Title
Author Name

INTERNAL

LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless

rollout projects
Ahmed Alaa Sarhan A00315759

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

LTE History:
LTE started off as an idea in 2004 as NTT DoCoMo of Japan proposed LTE as the
international standard. While the first presentation of an LTE demonstrator offering HDTV
streaming (>30 Mbit/s) and Mobile IP-based handover between the LTE radio test subject and the
commercially available HSDPA RAT was shown during the ITU trade fair in Hong Kong in
December 2006 by Siemens (today Nokia Siemens Networks).
In February 2007, Ericsson demonstrated for the first time in the world LTE with max
throughput of 144 Mbit/s, later in September of the same year, NTT DoCoMo demonstrated LTE
data rates of 200 Mbit/s with power level below 100 mW during tests. Eventually, LTE technology
was introduced commercially in December 2009 by TeliaSonera in Norway and Sweden.

LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless rollout

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Figure (1): LTE commercial map around the globe, 2015

LTE Throughput:
Upon the introduction of LTE, many have seen or heard about wild figures, mainly pushed by
system vendors and consumed by operators, journalists and writers who like to wow the readers
while promising 1 or 2 GBit/s throughput.
On the network operator side (customer), the capacity expectations has negative
consequences as capacity mainly impacts the cost of the network both on the access side and the
backhaul side. Exaggerated capacity figures would lead to under-dimensioning on the access side
and over-dimensioning on the backhaul side. So, for example, if we think LTE cell will provide
100 Mbps of throughput while in reality it can only offer 50 Mbps, the operator will be short by
50% of capacity in the access network resulting in a "Below Expectations" user experience and
will be 50% over the required capacity for backhaul in which case its investment in capacity that's
sitting idle. This is why it is important for Vendors to match the capacity expectations right and the
customer to be realistic about their demands.
While many have heard about the standard and realistic LTE's peak throughput, e.g. 300
Mbps, it's not a standard by any means and can vary based on a lot of dependencies starting from
the hardware equipment all the way to the transmission medium conditions. In this paper, we will
explain the calculations of theoretical throughput for both the LTE FDD and TDD systems and
how to use this knowledge in the design and acceptance phases of wireless LTE rollout projects.
Overview of LTE Physical Layer:
The LTE physical layer deals with parameters like frequency, bandwidth, modulation
scheme, cyclic prefix and coding rate which play important roles in the calculation of the
peak throughput of LTE networks.
LTE system uses OFDMA as access technology in downlink to increase the spectra
efficiency and SC-FDMA in uplink due to low peak-to-average power ratio advantage.
LTE supports both TDD and FDD duplexing, flexible bandwidth i.e. 1.4,3,5,10,15 and
20 MHz and modulation schemes QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM. Below we will discuss the
significance of each parameter.

LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless rollout

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(A) OFDM: OFDM is used in LTE as users can be allocated to different resources in BOTH time
and frequency domains, unlike TDMA or FDMA where the user was mainly
allocated to different resources in one of the two domains and fixed in the other.
OFDM main advantage is the spectral efficiency, as it eliminates the usage of guard
bits in the frequency domain which allows the maximum and most efficient use and
transmission
of
data.

Figure (2): Orthogonal Frequency Subcarriers eliminate the usage of guard bands

LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless rollout

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One of the other main advantages of using OFDM is resistance to multipath

interference effect, which is done through inserting a guard time slot in the time
domain, usually referred to as "Cyclic prefix". In LTE we have 4 types of Cyclic
prefixes:

Figure (3): Cyclic Prefix Types

Figure (4): Cyclic Prefix to eliminate the effect of multipath

LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless rollout

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(B) Resource Block: Combining the previous information about the OFDM, we can now understand the
concept of a resource block. Resource Block - A unit of transmission resource
consisting of 12 subcarriers in the frequency domain and 1 time slot (0.5 mSec) in
the time domain.

Figure (5): Resource Block in Frequency and Time Domains

Frequency subcarriers: Each subcarrier is 15 KHz with no guard bands, each

resource block contains 12 subcarriers.
Number of RB in frequency channel = Channel Freq. in KHz / 12 * 15 KHz
Time Slot: 0.5 millisecond time period of LTE frame corresponding to 7 OFDM
symbols (which is equal to 7 Cyclic Prefixes) when Normal - Type 1 Cyclic prefix
is used and varies when other types of cyclic prefixes are used.

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(C) LTE Frame: An LTE frame consists of 10 ms = 10 subframes = 20 time slots. While an LTE
subframe or TTI, which is the least resource that carries data in LTE consists of two
slots i.e. 1 millisecond in time.

Figure (6): LTE Time Frame / SubFrame System with CP in Time Domain

Figure (7): LTE Frame in Frequency Domain

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Calculation and Factors:

Before anything, think of LTE domain as 2-D plane. Where both frequency and time are
utilized to carry data. Like the following diagram putting together LTE frame, Frequency Channel
& Resource Block.

Figure (8): LTE Frame format in Time and Frequency Domains

For Each channel frequency we'll have different number of resrouce blocks and higher througput,
in this case, let's assume the 20 MHz channel, remove 10% as total guard bands (used to
compensate the inter-bit loss).

Figure (9): Different LTE Channel Frequencies related to subcarriers after guard bands

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So, our bandwidth now is 18MHz.

Number of subcarriers= Channel Bandwidth / Subcarrier Bandwidth

= 18 MHz/15 KHz = 1200 Subcarrier
Number of Resrouce Blocks= Channel Bandwidth / (Subcarrier Bandwidth * Number of
subcarreris in 1 RB)
= 18 MHz/ 15 KHz * 12 = 100 RB
LTE supports both types of Multiplexing FDD and TDD.
FDD spectrum is also called paired spectrum, which means DL uses 20 MHz and UL uses another
20 MHz
TDD spectrum, however, is un-paired, which means DL and UL are using the same 20 MHz
channel
So upcoming, we'll see how FDD and TDD impact the throughput.
In Release 8, it's defined that LTE supports modulation like QPSK, 16QAM and 64 QAM in DL
and QPSK, 16 QAM in UL.
Each Modulation scheme has its bits carrying capacity per symbol. One QPSK symbol for
example can carry 2bits. One 16QAM can carry 4 bits and 64QAM can carry 6 bits.

Figure (10): QPSK vs. 16QAM vs. 64QAM

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While speaking of Modulation, we must also speak of a parameter called coding rate. Coding rate
defines the efficiency of particular modulation scheme. for example, if we say 16 QAM with
coding rate of 0.5, it means this modulation has 50% of efficiency i.e. as 16QAM can carry 4 bits
but with coding rate 0.5 it can carry 2 information bits and 2 redundancy bits for these
information.
This is called Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS). Below is the table for it. LTE supports 0 to 28
MCS in DL and 0 to 22 MCS in UL in R8.

Figure (11): MCS table for different modulation schemes

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One more factor to calculate is the UE category, this is reported in the UE capability report in LTE
signaling between UE and EUTRAN.
UE category 1-5 are for release 8 and 9 while UE category 6-8 are for release 10 (LTE-Advance).

Figure (12): UE category relevant to throughput bit rate

So back to calculation for the maximum throughput in LTE network.
Like we calculated before, in 20 MHz channel we have 100 RB.
Now, each RB contains a number of Resource Elements (RE), REs carry the modulated signal, so
the more REs in RB the more data it can carry.
Number of REs = No. of Frequency subcarriers * No. of OFDM symbols
= 12 * 7 = 84 RE in 1 RB
To get the number of REs in 1 time slot (1 millisecond) = number of REs in 1 RB * 2
= 84 * 2 = 168 RE/millisecond
So if we have 100 RB, this means we have 168000 Resource elements in the 20 MHz frequency
channel every 1 millisecond.
So that's 168000000 Resource elements in the 20 MHz freq. channel every 1 second.
Since we're using 64QAM, 1 RE will contain 6 bits. (Assuming no MCS)
Then in 1 second, we have 168000000 * 6 = 100.8 Mbit / Second
Then, assuming we use 4x4 MIMO system and that the UE can support this, then DL bandwidth =

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100.8 * 4 = 403.2 Mbit/Sec.

In UL, however, no MIMO is used, so UL throughput is 100.8 Mbps
Many simulation studies show that 25% normally of the total channel bandwidth is used by
overhead bits for controlling and signaling, calculated as follows:
- PDCCH channel can take 1 to 3 symbols out of 14 in a subframe. Assuming that on average
it is 2.5 symbol the amount of overhead is 2.5/14 = 17.86%
- Downlink RS signal uses 4 symbols in every third subcarrier resulting in 16/336= 4.76%
overhead
- Other channels (PSS, SSS, PBCH, PCFICH, PHICH) added together amount to approx.
2.6% of overhead.
Then added together will be almost 25.22%
So, roughly 25% of the 400 Mbps DL throughput, we have 300 Mbps DL and 75 Mbps UL when
using:

20 MHz channel
64QAM
Normal - Type 1 cyclic Prefix
No MCS
4x4 MIMO

But be noted that this is shared throughput for an eNodeB, which means this peak throughput will
be divided among users according the the QoS system of LTE

LTE Throughput calculation and application in wireless rollout

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Figure (13): QoS for different LTE services

The QoS will be scheduled according to one of three algorithms:

Max-C/I
Round Robin
PF/EPF
With each one of the three giving various throughput to each of the users.
Now, when implementing an LTE FDD solution in rollout projects, there are several factors that
you need to keep in mind when assuming or proposing the final throughput of the network.
1. Channel Frequency
2. Modulation Technique
3. Transmission Medium (Because if the medium is lossy, you cannot use high modulation
techniques otherwise interference will deliver very bad LTE signal or you will be forced
to use MCS)
4. General Users Equipment category
5. Cyclic prefix (Also to prevent multipath interference)
6. MIMO capabilities (according to UE capability)
These factors are integrated into the eNodeB Cell information when creating the eNodeB 6.0 data
configuration file as follows:
Using ADD CELL command:

ULCYCLICPREFIX > Uplink Cyclic Prefix Length, you can choose between
Normal and Extended
DLCYCLICPREFIX > Downlink Cyclic Prefix length, you can choose between
Normal and Extended
ULBANDWIDTH > Uplink Bandwidth, CELL_BW_N6 (1.4 MHz)
CELL_BW_N15 (3 MHz) CELL_BW_N25 (5 MHz) CELL_BW_N50 (10 MHz)
CELL_BW_N75 (15 MHz) CELL_BW_N100 (20 MHz)
DLBANDWIDTH > Downlink Bandwidth, CELL_BW_N6 (1.4 MHz)
CELL_BW_N15 (3 MHz) CELL_BW_N25 (5 MHz) CELL_BW_N50 (10 MHz)
CELL_BW_N75 (15 MHz) CELL_BW_N100 (20 MHz)
TXRXMODE > MIMO Mode, 1T1R (No MIMO), 1T2R (No MIMO), 2T2R
(throughput x2), 2T4R (throuput x2), 4T4R (throughput x4), 8T8R (througput x8)