Multihop Relaying in Wimax

Cooperative Principles and Relay Routing

Aditya Chaitanya Kurve

Email id: ack205@psu.edu Submitted on 30th April 2010

1. Abstract

The aim of this project was to study the characteristics and utility of relaying in future wireless systems.
The focus was mainly on the cooperative principles and relay selection in the case of mobile multihop relay structures. This project also included the study of IEEE 802.16j, the multihop relay specification for 802.16 or Wimax standard. It was an interesting assignment to study the practical realization of a concept that has evolved over a couple of years. I studied some relevant research papers (listed in the references section), modeled some simulation scenarios based on the results of these papers and gained a invaluable insight on some of the topics.

2. The concept of relay

The concept of relay originated as an information theoretical scenario in a paper Capacity theorems for the relay channel by T Cover and AE Gamal in 1979. In this paper they considered a relay channel along with the main channel where a relay acts as a helper node in the transmission of information bits. An upper bound on the capacity of this channel was found. Also the capacity was found in the case of degraded relay channel. The utility of such a helper node was not realized in practice until recently when some practical issues had solution based on this relay concept. Let us look at some of these issues typical to Wimax. i) Coverage limitation due to low Signal to Noise Ratio Figure 1 Relay Channel (SNR) at the cell edges. This is due to the significant signal attenuation caused when operating at high spectrum Poor signal reception due to coverage holes Higher cost of increasing the number of base stations High power requirement at mobile stations due to communicating at large distances at high speeds

ii) iii) iv)

The definition of a relay as provided in IEEE 802.16j is as follows: A generalized equipment set, dependent on a multihop relay base station (MR-BS) providing connectivity, to other RSs or subscriber stations (SS). A relay can be thought of as a miniature base station that enjoys line of sight connectivity with another relay or a base station. Unlike a base station a relay is not connected to the wired backhaul.

Figure 2 The concept of a relay

Most of the existing broadband wireless systems rely on line of sight (LOS) communications. Wimax has been targeted to provide speeds upto 30Mbps at large distances. Hence coverage as well as throughput goals of Wimax are very ambitious. Current cellular systems designed mainly for voice traffic can work without LOS constraint. Hence Wimax needs to increase the density of base stations to provide LOS communication to all mobile stations. This incurs a large infrastructural cost in deployment of Wimax. A relay is an alternative to this solution, since relays are expected to operate at lower powers and without connection to any wired backhaul. Also the proximity of relays to the mobile stations (MS) means that less power expenditure at the MSs. As a relay cannot transmit and receive at the same time due to large difference between the transmit and receive powers at the antennas, the end to end transmission between the base station (BS) and the mobile station (MS) and in the reverse direction occurs in two phases: Phase1: BS to RS communication Phase2: RS to MS communication The sequence for uplink transmission occurs in the exact reverse order.

Figure 3 Multihop Relays

The above statement holds during two hop relaying. There could be scenarios when more than two hops of relaying is employed. This means the existence of more than one relay between the BS and the MS. Then there will be more than two phases required for end to end transmission. Hence there is a penalty to pay in terms of the delay experienced by the mobile station as the number of intermediate relays increase

Another penalty to pay is the resource utilization by the relay in terms of bandwidth in FDMA system or time slot in TDMA systems. This is needed to orthogonalize relay transmissions from each other and also from the base station. A relay can be useful in the following scenarios: i) ii) iii) iv) Fixed Infrastructure: To improve coverage in shadow areas and increase throughput due to LOS communication In-Building Coverage: To fill the coverage hole inside the building Temporary Coverage: Stadiums or gatherings of people during an event. Also temporary replacement to a damaged relay. Coverage on mobile vehicle: Inside trains and buses. A complex relay is required that can handle quick handoffs

With the use of multihop relays comes the issue of routing, also known as relay selection. Note that relays operate at the baseband layer and hence routing should be done according to power constraints,

QoS constraints as well as delay constraints. Also relay routing should consider the use of cooperative diversity, which is described later in this report.

3. Relaying Techniques
Relays can be classified broadly into three categories based upon their forwarding schemes: Amplify and Forward (AF), Decode and Forward (DF) and Compress and Forward (CF) Adaptive forwarding techniques based on the channel state information (CSI) between the BS and RS and also between the RS and MS has been considered.

i)

Amplify and Forward: These relays only retransmit the amplified version of the received signal. It is the simplest form of relaying technique which assumes minimal processing power at the relay. This technique can be employed as the non transparent relaying as described in 802.16j standard, which means that the MS need not be aware of the presence of the intermediate relay. However the relay also amplifies the received noise which might degrade its performance. This technique is useful for coverage extension and covering shadow areas. Decode and Forward: These relays decode the data received in the first phase and perform error correction before forwarding. The data is forwarded only when it is error free. This technique is generally used with hybrid ARQ (ARQ) to deal with errors during the first phase. DF relaying performs well when the BS to RS channel is good. This ensures that the bits are decoded correctly and avoids ARQ overhead. Based on the codebook used for forwarding DF technique is classified into two types: Regenerative DF and Non-Regenerative DF. The former uses different codebook than the one with which it receives data while the later uses the same codebook. Advantage of DF relaying lies in the fact that different Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) technique can be used during the two phases based upon the instantaneous CSI. Compress and Forward: These relays compress the received data in a lossy manner using Wyner-Ziv lossy source coding before forwarding. It is assumed in this case that the MS also has access to direct transmission from the BS. Using this transmission as the side information the MS can decode the data. The lossy source coding ensures shorter second phase. However it is computationally intensive at the RS. Also CF technique always performs better than direct transmission i.e. without a relay irrespective of the channel states. CF technique has not been considered for Wimax standard. Adaptive Forwarding: In this case the relaying strategy is changed based upon the knowledge of CSI of the BS to RS channel and RS and MS channel. A comparative study of various adaptive techniques is considered in [3]. Adaptive Forwarding performs best among all the schemes provided instantaneous and accurate availability of CSI at the relay.

ii)

iii)

iv)

4. Cooperative Diversity
Diversity implies the gain due to the multiple copies of received signal either in frequency, time or space. Space diversity is a type of diversity exploited in wireless systems due to the broadcast nature of the channel. Space diversity can be realized by using multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or the receiver which creates multiple independent fading paths, and hence adds redundancy. It is highly improbable that all the different paths experience deep fade at the same time. The additional advantage of using a relay is that multiple paths are created i.e. one between the BS and MS and between the different RS and MS. These multiple paths can be used to exploit spatial diversity. In such a case the multiple transmit antennas are distributed between the BS and the RSs. Cooperative diversity has been closely associated with the concept of relay. [2] gives us a useful list of important papers in this area. i) User cooperative Diversity (Sendonaris et al. 1998) ii) Cooperative coding (Hunter and Nosratinia 2002) iii) Parallel relay channel (Gastpar et al. 2002) iv) Multihop diversity (Boyer et al.2004, Gupta and Kumar 2003) . As shown in the figure the RS and BS form a virtual antenna array. The relay can exploit both receive and transmit diversity. However receive diversity with single antenna at MS is possible which is explained later on. Space time block codes can be used in a distributed fashion to get an array gain without the knowledge of CSI. Cooperative diversity schemes can be classified into following types: Figure 4 Cooperative Diversity 1. Cooperative MIMO Diversity: The MS and the RS listen to the transmission of BS in the first phase. In the second phase BS and RS simultaneously transmit to MS. During the second phase BS and RS make use of STBC. The MS used maximal ratio combining (MRC) to combine the multiple copies of data. This scheme is the combination of both transmit and receive diversity, hence called MIMO diversity. BS and the RS should use the same AMC scheme during the second phase. 2. Cooperative Transmit Diversity: The MS does not listen to the transmission of BS during the first phase. During the second phase BS and RS simultaneously transmit to MS using STBC. The advantage of this scheme is that AMC scheme can be different between two phases. Hence good channel conditions between the RS and MS can be exploited.

3. Cooperative Receive Diversity: The MS and RS receive data from the BS during the first phase and during the second phase only the RS transmits to the MS with the same AMC scheme. This scheme can never outperform Cooperative MIMO diversity. 4. Cooperative Selection Diversity: BS dynamically chooses between conventional relaying and direct transmission. Conventional relaying means that the RS receives data from the BS in first phase and during the second phase MS simply listens to RS. 5. Adaptive Cooperative Diversity: The best method is to choose from the above mentioned schemes, based on the cooperative diversity gain, delay, availability of resources, and complexity. The following table gives us the effective post processing throughput at the receiver for different relaying schemes. I referred to [3] for these. BR is the SNR from BS to RS Table 1 Throughput formulae for different relaying schemes Sr No 1 2 Relaying Scheme No relay Simple relaying Effective throughput (BM ) thr(BR )thr(RM ) R BR + R RM 0.5 BM + BR RM 1+ RM 1 + BR
1+ BR

BM is the SNR from BS to MS. RM is the SNR from RS to MS.

Comments Direct BS to MS communication DF relay is assumed here. Two phases must be of equal duration.

Tx Diversity AF

Tx Diversity DF

thr(BR )thr(hat ) R BR + R hat where hat = BM + BM

2

Two phases can be of different duration.

Rx Diversity AF 0.5

BM + BR RM
1+ BR

Two phases must be of equal duration.

BR 2 BM + 1 + RM + RM BR 2 1 + BR BR 0.5thr(BM + BM ) Two phases must be of equal duration.

Rx Diversity DF

Simulation 1: Aim: To study the throughput improvement due to relaying in a practical scenario. System Model: Single BS in a cell with four equally spaced relays at distance of 10km from the BS

BS transmit power = 27.3 dB; RS transmit power= 20.3 dB; BS to RS distance = 10km Power of additive noise = -130 dB; Path loss exponent = 3.5; Then the SNR at the mobile station is given by: SNR (dB)= Pt(dB)-Pn(dB)-35log(r) Where r is its distance of MS from BS Adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) is employed which means that the transmitter chooses a suitable modulation scheme and coding rate based upon the instantaneous value of SNR. Results: Figure 5 No relay

Figure 6 Simple Relay

Figure 7 Decode and Forward Relay Observations: The throughput improvement with DF relaying is significantly large. Simple relaying helps to increase coverage and also throughput in some areas in the cell. Following graphs show the areas in the cell where simple relaying does give an advantage over direct transmission for two different relay powers.

Figure 8 Relay Power of 20.3 dB

Figure 9 Relay power of 17.3 dB

This shows that relay power is an important criterion which decides the gain we get from simple relaying as compared to direct transmission. Matlab code: http://www.personal.psu.edu/ack205/EE_497_4_Norelay.m http://www.personal.psu.edu/ack205/EE_497_5_simplerelay.m http://www.personal.psu.edu/ack205/EE_497_3_cooprelay.m

Simulation 2 Aim: To compare different cooperative diversity schemes as listed in Table 1, for the system model used in simulation 1. Results:

Figure 9 Comparison of relaying techniques

Observations: DF schemes provide better performance than the AF schemes. However DF schemes are more computationally intensive at the RS. Also transmit diversity seems to perform better than receive diversity. However receive diversity does not need the BS to transmit during the second phase. Hence it can schedule another user in this slot. The benefit of receive diversity will be visible when we do network simulations. Matlab code: http://www.personal.psu.edu/ack205/Comparative_study.m

5. Mobile Multihop Relaying in Wimax

In March 2006 an IEEE task group was created to for incorporating mobile multihop relay capabilities in the mobile Wimax standard IEEE 802.16e. This group came up with an amendment to the 16e standard which is called 802.16j. This amendment is fully backward compatible. The addition of relay capability does not affect the design of MS unless MS has to exploit some optional features such as receive diversity. The BS needs to change slightly and is called MR-BS to differentiate it from BS with no MMR capabilities. Features of 802.16j amendment 1. The scope of 16j is limited to the OFDMA PHY mode of the 802.16j 2. There is no limit on the number of hops 3. In order to accommodate the transmission and reception by a RS, the PHY frame both in uplink and downlink is divided into two zones: access zone and relay zone (shown in figure 10). 4. Relays can be transparent (those which donot transmit control information to MS, instead the BS does. The MS is not aware of its presence) or non-transparent (those which transmit control information along with data) 5. Transmit diversity is introduced with the option of using space time codes. All the schemes use only one relay to realize diversity. 6. Relay routing takes place centrally at the BS. There is no specific algorithm proposed 7. Scheduling can occur in centralized (at the BS) or distributed (among the RS) manner. 8. A new MAC layer called RMAC defines the additional communication between the BS and the RS. 9. RMAC also has a portion called tunnel connection which takes care of routing the packets for different MS served by a common RS. Relay Selection Algorithm and Network Entry Process Network entry phase for a relay station (SS) or a mobile station (MS) consists of identifying the best RS to connect to from the choice of RS. Normally in a scenario without RS in existence, a MS would receive the UCD (Uplink channel descriptor) transmitted by each base station (BS) periodically to decide the best BS that can serve the MS. In this case the MS considers only the BS to MS path metric and the QoS that the BS can offer to make its decision. When we consider a cell with a single BS and mobile multi hop relaying scheme, the problem of choosing the best relay station is slightly trickier. In this case, the new MS or the RS has to consider end to end path metrics and the QoS to decide. [4] proposes an elegant scheme that modifies the DCH slightly to

include additional metrics. I tried to model a system with this algorithm as reference (with slight modifications). Each station (BS, RS or MS) stores the following three variables which are updated periodically. 1. Thrr : Link quality from the BS This is decided based on the SNR value at the station from the BS. The throughput is decided based upon the AMC look up table. It is actually the minimum value of all the links between itself and the BS. 2. BWr: This gives us an indication of current utilization of the path. Suppose all the sub channels allocated to a relay in the path are utilized then the BWr for any r that belongs to this path is zero. BWr is the minimum of the bandwidths of all relays in its path including itself. Figure 10 PHY frame for 3 hops 3. HPr: Hop count from the BS to itself

Procedure for network entry for a new RS 1. PHY tries to get course synchronization with the network 2. MAC attempts to acquire channel information and network parameters. 3. It builds up a physical neighbor list and stores the relay path parameters sent from neighbor RSs. 4. Then for each neighboring relay station it calculates its suitability as: S= Thrr* BWr/ HPr 5. It then chooses the RS or BS with maximum value of S. The network entry procedure is started with those RS that is closest to the BS and ends at one that is farthest. Simulation 3: Aim: To implement the above algorithm for network entry process and check for connectivity. Simulation Model: Single cell with BS at the center. 15 RSs with fixed positions (pre decided) Transmit power for RS and BS = 35.3 dB The BW associated with all RS and BS is assumed to be one i.e. full BW is available. Each RS/MS checks for RS/BS within 35 km of its radius. After network entry process of all the RS is completed the connection map looks like this. Figure 11 Relay selection algorithm

Matlab Code: http://www.personal.psu.edu/ack205/Relay_routing.m

6. Extension to this project

There were some things I had in my mind which I could not do in this project due to lack of time. The above network entry model can be extended to the case of mobile relays. The overhead due to the fast changing channel conditions can be measured. Also using suitable network simulation software, we can model large number of users. A distributed scheduling and relay selection algorithm can be simulated and tested for the overhead reduction versus throughput loss trade off.

7. Concluding Remarks
This project gave me a valuable insight into the efforts that go into making a concept into reality. One needs to consider many practical issues while implementing a protocol or a research idea in an actual system. No wonder then that standardization is a tedious and long process.

8. References
[1] R. Pabst, B. H. Walke, D. C. Schultz, P. Herhold, H. Yanikomeroglu, S. Mukherjee, H. Viswanathan, M. Lott, W Zirwas, M. Dohler, H. Aghvami, D. D. Falconer, and G. P. Fettweis, Relay-based deployment concepts for wireless and mobile broadband cellular radio, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 42, no. 9, pp. 8089, Sep. 2004 [2]Cooperative Principles in Wimax: Q Zhang, FHP Fitzek, MD Katz - WiMAX Evolution: Wiley publications [3] B. Can, H. Yomo, and E. De Carvalho, Link Adaptation and Selection Method for OFDM Based Wireless Relay Networks, Journal of Communications and Networks, Special issue on MIMO-OFDM and Its Applications, June 2007. [4] S. Ann, K.G. Lee, and H.S. Kim "A Path Selection Method in IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multi-hop Relay Networks" International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, Aug 2008. [5] The future of WiMAX: Multihop relaying with IEEE 802.16j Peters, S.W.; Heath, R.W.; Communications Magazine, IEEE Volume: 47 , Issue: 1