2012 Third International Conference on Intelligent Systems Modelling and Simulation

Development of Wimax Physical Layer Building Blocks

Amiro George R. G. Hanna

Faculty of Engineering Ain Shams University Cairo, Egypt amirogeorge@yahoo.com

Prof. Abdel Haliem Zekry

Faculty of Engineering Ain Shams University Cairo, Egypt aaazekry@asunet.shams.edu.eg

AbstractWimax has commercial networks in 149 countries and subscriptions have reached 10 million globally today and are projected to grow to 130 million subscribers by 2014. This Paper is covering the development of Wimax Physical Layer Building Blocks using MATLAB and Simulink, based on the ETSI TS 102 177 V1.5.1 Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN) HiperMan Physical Layer Standard, the scope and complexity of the standard creates challenges for designers of a standard compliant components. Model-Based Design for a Wimax transmitter with Simulink addresses these challenges by placing a system model at the center of the development process from requirements capture to implementation, testing and Verification.

Fig 2. Data Randomizer in Simulink For a Downlink (DL) subchannelization zone the randomizer is initialized with a vector as shown in figure 3.

I.

INTRODUCTION Fig 3. Scrambler DL initialization vector B. Reed Solomon Encoding The RS error correction works by adding some redundant bits to a digital data sequence. This is done by oversampling a polynomial constructed from the uncoded data. The polynomial is evaluated at several points and then these values are sent (or recorded). By sampling the polynomial more often than needed, the receiver can recover the original polynomial in the presence of a relatively low number of errors. The RS encoding used is derived from a systematic RS (N = 255, K = 239, T = 8) code using GF(28), where: N is the number of overall bytes after encoding. K is the number of data bytes before encoding. T is the number of data bytes which can be corrected. The number of parity symbols added is N K symbols (of T-bits each). The RS decoder can correct up to (N K)/2 symbols that contain an error in the encoded block. The RS encoder denoted as an (N, K) = (255, 239), is capable of correcting up to eight symbol errors per block. For the systematic code, the code generator polynomial g(x) where g(x) = (x +0 )( x +1 )(x +2 )to (x +21 ) , = 02HEX (2), and the field generator polynomial p(x) where (3) p(x) = x8 + x4 + x3 + x2 +1 This code is shortened and punctured to enable variable block sizes and variable error-correction capability. When a block is shortened to K' data bytes, add 239 - K' zero
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In this section, a description of the Wimax Transmitter basic building blocks and the equivalent Simulink model are presented. A. Data Randomization Randomization introduces protection through information-theoretic uncertainty, avoiding long sequences of consecutive ones or consecutive zeros. Data randomization is performed independently on each burst of the uplink and downlink data (i.e. not on pilots and preambles) on the subchannels in the frequency domain and OFDM symbols in the time domain. If the amount of data to be transmitted does not fit exactly the amount of the data allocated, padding of 0xFF ("1"s only) is added to the end of the transmission block for the unused integer number of bytes, up to the amount of data allocated. The Pseudo Random Binary Sequence (PRBS) generator used is (1) 1+ x14 + x15 Each data byte to be transmitted enters sequentially into the randomizer, most significant bit (MSB) first. The seed value is used to calculate the randomization bits, which are combined in an XOR operation with the serialized bit stream of each burst.

Fig 1. Data Randomization PRBS

978-0-7695-4668-1/12 $26.00 2012 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ISMS.2012.98

bytes as a prefix. After encoding discard these 239 - K' zero bytes. When a codeword is punctured to permit T' bytes to be corrected, only the first 2T' of the total 16 parity bytes shall be employed. The bit/byte conversion shall be MSB first.

Table 1. Channel Encoding Eight tail bits are introduced at the end of each allocation, which are set to zero. This tail Byte is appended after randomization.

D. Interleaving Interleaving is used to protect the transmission against long sequences of consecutive errors, which are very difficult to correct. These long sequences of error may affect a lot of bits in a row and can then cause many transmitted burst losses. Interleaving, by including some diversity, can facilitate error correction. The interleaver is made of two steps: Distribute the coded bits over subcarriers. A first permutation ensures that adjacent coded bits are mapped on to nonadjacent subcarriers. The second permutation insures that adjacent coded bits are mapped alternately on to less or more significant bits of the constellation, thus avoiding long runs of bits of low reliability

Fig 4. Reed Solomon Encoder in Simulink C. Convolutional Encoding The convolution code used has an original coding rate of 1/2. The convolutional encoder is a zero-terminating convolutional encoder. A single 0 00 tail byte is appended to the end of each burst, needed for decoding algorithm normal operation. Puncturing patterns defined in the standard can be used to realize the following different code rates: 2/3, 3/4 and 5/6.

Fig 7. Interleaver in Simulink Let Ncbps be the number of coded bits per OFDM symbol, Ncpc be the number of coded bits per subcarrier, i.e. 1, 2, 4 or 6 for BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM, respectively. Let s = ceil (Ncpc/2) . Within a block of Ncbps bits at transmission, let k be the index of a coded bit before the first permutation; mk be the index of that coded bit after the first and before the second permutation; and let jk be the index of that coded bit after the second permutation, just prior to modulation mapping. The first permutation is defined by the formula: mk = (Ncbps/12) x k mod(12) + floor (k /12) , where k=0,1,to, Ncbps -1 (4) The second permutation is defined by the formula: jk = s x floor (mk / s) + (mk + Ncbps floor (12mk / Ncbps (5) ))mod(s) ,where k = 0,1, to, Ncbps -1 Table 3 shows the bit Interleaver sizes as a function of modulation and coding.

Fig 5. Convolutional Encoder of rate

Fig 6. Convolutional Encoder in Simulink Puncturing patterns and serialization order which can be used to realize different code rates are shown in table 2.Transmitted bits are denoted by 1 and removed bits are denoted by 0. X and Y are in reference of figure 5.

Table 3. Block Size of bit interleaver E. Modulation After bit interleaving, the data bits are entered serially to the constellation mapper. BPSK, Gray-mapped QPSK, 16-QAM, and 64-QAM as shown in figure 8. The constellations which are shown in figure 8 are normalized by multiplying the constellation point with the indicated factor c to achieve equal average power. For each modulation, b0 denotes the LSB. The first bit out of the interleaver is mapped to the MSB and so

Table 2. Convolutional code puncturing configuration

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forth.

In the frequency domain, each OFDM symbol is comprised of multiple carriers (see figure 11), which belong to one of three types: Data carriers - for data transmission. Pilot carriers - for channel estimation and other purposes. Null carriers - for guard bands and the DC carrier.

Fig 11. OFDM symbol frequency structure Table 5 shows the OFDM symbol parameters where NFFT is the nominal size of the FFT operator and Nused is the number of carriers used to transport either data or pilots within a single OFDM symbol

Fig 8. Modulation Constellation

Table 5. OFDM symbol parameters Fig 9. Modulator in Simulink Rate_IDs, which indicate modulation and coding to be used in the first DL burst, are shown in table 4.

Table 4. Rate ID encodings F. OFDM Symbol Construction An OFDM waveform is then created by applying an Inverse-Fourier-transform to the source data. The resultant time duration is referred to as the useful symbol time Tb . A copy of the last Tg s of the useful symbol period, termed Cyclic Prefix (CP), is prepended to enable the collection of multipath at the receiver, without loss of orthogonality between the tones. The resulting waveform is termed the symbol time Ts. Figure 10 illustrates this structure.

Fig 12. OFDM symbol construction in Simulink II. METHODOLOGY

Since many of a communication standards technical requirements are mathematical, MATLAB and Simulink are well suited to the task of creating an executable specification. Creating a Simulink model is itself a translation of the Wimax standard, however, and so we must proceed carefully. Fortunately, Section 4.3.5 of the standard [1] includes test cases that we can use to build and test our model step by step. The channel coding section of the Wimax standard includes five steps: data randomization, forward error correction (FEC), interleaving, modulation and OFDM symbol creation. Starting with a framework of empty subsystems as shown in Figure 13, we build up the transmitter block by block, using data from the standard [1] to check each block before proceeding.

Fig 10. OFDM symbol time structure

Fig 13. Framework for Wimax Transmitter

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In the first Wimax test case, the input data vector is 35 bytes long and given in hex notation. It is easily expressed in MATLAB using the sscanf function to create a row vector:

By doing a sweep on the SNR parameter of the AWGN block and applying the curve fitting and extrapolating functions as shown in figure 16, we are able to get the SNR @ BER of 10-6 and thus we can compare the simulation results with the ones published in the standard [1], shown in Table 6.

Fig 14. Input Data Test Vector This row vector is the source data that we use to test our model as we incrementally build it. Then we use a similar technique to import the other test vectors into MATLAB. As we build each block and run the Simulink model, we compare the generated output with the corresponding test vector. This is a straightforward procedure, Like most communication standards, Wimax specifies the signal processing in the transmitter only. This approach guarantees interoperability while letting manufacturers select their own receiver implementation. Once we have a complete Simulink model of the Wimax transmitter, we can use it to design a standardcompliant receiver. Our model not only provides continuity and prevents misinterpretation of the standard, it is also a natural test harness for the receiver design and rather than relying on the handful of test vectors supplied in the printed standard, we can use the model to generate an inexhaustible supply of test cases. III. MEASUREMENT SCENARIO AND RESULTS In order to measure and simulate the bit error rate performance of our Transceiver, we use the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel and the error rate calculation blocks from the Simulink library. Fig 16. M-File for calculation of BER

Fig 17. Bit Error Rate Curves for Different Modulation/FEC-CC Rate The choice between different burst profiles for implementation of link adaptation procedures can be obtained from Table 6, proposed in the standard [1]. These SNR thresholds are for a BER, Bit-Error Rate, measured after the FEC that is smaller than 10-6.

Fig 15. Bit Error Rate Test Model Table 6. Normalized CINR per modulation (BER=1e6) IV. CONCLUSION enables continuous test and verification making errors of translation much easier to identify and correct. In this Paper we used Model-Based Design to build an executable specification for a Wimax transmitter and discussed how to test and verify that the model matches the standard [1] requirements. REFERENCES
[1] [2] ETSI TS 102 177: "Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN); HiperMAN; Physical layer". ETSI TS 102 178: "Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN); HiperMAN; Data Link Control (DLC) layer".

In a document-based design approach, requirements are assembled in a product specification that is subsequently elaborated, partitioned, and translated into sub specifications for each design team. Every new document is a translation of the requirements, and can introduce errors or omissions that may not be discovered until compliance testing. An executable specification

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[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7] [8]

IEEE 802.16-2004: "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks - Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems". IEEE 802.16e-2005: "IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks - Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed and Mobile Broadband Wireless Access Systems - Amendment 2: Physical and Medium Access Control Layers for Combined Fixed and Mobile Operation in Licensed Bands and Corrigendum 1". Directive 1999/5/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 1999 on radio equipment and telecommunications terminal equipment and the mutual recognition of their conformity (R&TTE Directive). IEEE Std 802.16TM-2009: "IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks Part 16: Air Interface for Broadband Wireless Access Systems. Jeffrey G. Andrews, Ph.D. Fundamentals of Wimax Loutfi Nuaymi: WiMAX: Technology for Broadband Wireless Access

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