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3G Long Term Evolution

Behrooz Kamary Aliabadi

AbstractThis article is a brief overview of Long Term Evolution of third mobile phone generation which is called 3GLTE. Release 7 and 8 in 3GPP schedule are dedicated to LTE standard. Technical solutions and challenges of the new standard are discussed.

S YSTEM A RCHITECTURE E VOLUTION To reduce user and control plane latency the architecture needs to be revised with a less number of nodes. Because of processing delay in each node, best architecture is the one with least number of network nodes[8]. Evolved Packet Core (EPC) or SAE Core is the Core Network of LTE standard. In legacy 3G system NodeB performs low layer duties of wireless access network which contains radio equipments and antennas. The radio network controller (RNC) handles ciphering, macro diversity, radio resource control, broadcast signalling, open loop power control, etc. The gateway General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) support node (GGSN) node acts as an anchor/gateway between GPRS data network and other external packet switched networks. In other words GGSN provides address translation between radio access networks and other data packet networks such as Internet. The serving GPRS support node (SGSN) handles mobility management and session managment. Although, these subsystems are not necessarily physicaly built separated but they have their own signaling and data processing layers that makes latency in the system. In LTE as illustrated in Fig. 2 GGSN, SGSN and RNC are merged into Serving Gateway (S-GW). It handles GGSN, SGSN and RNC functions. In the user plane S-GW will handle functions like header compression, ciphering, integrity protection and automatic repeat request (ARQ). In Fig. 1 SAE Core architecture is illustrated [1]. MME and UPE are two important entities of EPC that are connected to legacy UTRAN and E-UTRAN and their tasks are summarized below.[6]. MME (Mobility Management Entity) distribution of paging messages to the eNodeBs. UPE (User Plane Entity)

I NTRODUCTION Obile communication has been main of interest since early twentieth century after advent of radio communication. In 90s after introduction of GSM and later its successors, mobile communications was known as a modern and global technology to revolutionize social communications and daily life. It did not take a long time to get used to it and later on, challenge its capabilities and weaknesses. Users demanded for more functionality, higher data rates and various services in addition to voice transmission. Evolutions took place gradually during last years and will continue to answer them. In 1999 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) dened IMT-2000 standard for 3G mobile systems. A few radio interfaces have been approved by ITU under IMT2000 framework. One of those is UMTS which commonly benets W-CDMA technology in its air interface. The WiMAX technology recently got accepted by ITU under IMT-2000 and is expected to compete UMTS in the future. 3GPP has had several releases for UMTS. The rst releases are UMTS Rel. 99 and Rel. 00 which improved legacy GSM and IS95 standards. Untill release 6 the system is still called 3G and 3.5G for later releases. To preserve UMTS competitiveness and quality for next 10 years future releases are dedicated to a new concept called 3G Long Term Evolution or Super 3G, which is basically as its called, would be evolution in CN and UTRAN toward 4G systems. The LTE was started November 2004 and supposed to be done by September 2007. In the beginning the objective was to develop a framework for the evolution of the 3GPP radio-access technology towards a high-data-rate, lowlatency and packet-optimized radio-access technology [6]. Upgrading 3G will have 8 releases and currently release 7 is published. The evolution concentrated on Core Network and UTRAN are called System Architecture Evolution (SAE) and Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN). Currently release 5 and 6 are being deployed by industry in which HSPA is introduced. In the following a brief overviw of the evolution is presented in two main parts. The rst, section study network architecture and the second part is dedicated to air interface issues.

IP Header Compression/Encryption operation on user data streams. Termination of U-plane packets for paging reasons. Switching of U-plane for support of UE mobility.

In LTE architecture there are new reference points to provide data exchange inernaly and externaly. A brief denition of them are as follows[6].

S1 It provides communication between Evolved UTRAN and Evolved Packet Core network. It must have ability of combination and separation of MME and UPE. S2a It provides access between trusted non 3GPP IP access and SAE Anchor. S2b It provides access between ePDG and SAE Anchor.

S3 It provides inter 3GPP access between SGSN and Evolved Packet Core. S7 It provides Quality of Services (QoS) data transfer and charging rules information from PCRF to Policy and Charging Enforcement Point (PCEP). SGi It provides access between the Inter AS Anchor (IASA) and an external or internal packet data network for provision of IMS services.

E VOLVED HSPA High Speed Packet Access introduced in release 6 to legacy UMTS for provision of higher data rates. Its approach has two distinct versions for uplink and downlink which are called HSDPA and HSUPA. The Evolved version of HSPA is dened in release 7 by 3GPP. In spite of previous architecture that is later called 3.5G and has separate achitectures for uplink and downlink, E-HSPA provides a at architecture for both UL/DL. The at architecture uses IP based packet switching communications[2]. The next is High Speed OFDM Packet Access (HSOPA) and will be dened in release 8. P HYSICAL L AYER E VOLUTION Physical layer is the layer in which actual communication between users and RAN to be performed. To improve throughput of QoS along with increase in number of provisioned services, capacity and reliability, radio front-end/back-end must be improved. Radio links in cellular communications suffer from multipath fading, mobility and capacity limits imposed by shannons capacity criteria. Shannons capacity put a limit on exploited data rate in communication system in which transmission over a specic rate will not be possible or has high bit error rate. In other words transmitted information tends to zero caused by high error probability. Improved data rates in LTE are achieved by increasing bandwidth and utilizing MIMO. E-UTRA to operate in 1.25, 1.6, 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz bandwidths.
TABLE I P HYSICAL L AYER P ROPERTIES Link Downlink Uplink Modulation 4,16,64QAM 4,16,64QAM Access scheme OFDMA SC-FDMA Duplex TDD/FDD TDD/FDD Peak Rate 100 Mbps 50 Mbps

Fig. 3.

Evolved UTRAN Overall Architecture

D OWNLINK T RANSMISSION In downlink LTE standard requires Orthogonal Frequency Division Multilex Acces (OFDMA) which is also being used by WiMAX. Users have more downlink data transfer than uplink and providing proper qaulity and preserving it is vital for service providers. Users not only care about qaulity but also they pay attention to its changes. In the LTE releases optimized quality in cell ranges less than 5 Km and with a small degradation in throughput for cells up to 30 Km is dened. In the following OFDM technique without considering its multiple user capability is overviewed. Modication of traditional OFDM makes multiple user access possible which is discussed later. Downlink physical channels carry information of different layers from control and user planes in different physical channels that are introduced below. Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH) Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH) Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH)

Fig. 4.

Evolved UTRAN Overall Architecture

Fig. 1.

Evolved system architecture [3GPP TR23.882]

Fig. 2.

Current 3G UTRAN architecture (left) and Evolved UTRAN (right)

OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Modulation is a good candidate to combat frequency-selective channels. Urban channels have long delay spread property due to open radio propagation space with various sacattering objects like buildings and cars. Therefore, in urban radio channels we are witness of long delay spread and multi-cluster Power Delay Proles (PDP). Considering a channel frequency-selective or frequency-at is dependent on signal bandwidth. Transmitted signal bandwidth in urban enviroment, denitely faces a frequency-selective channel. OFDM technique introduces very many narrow-band subchannels/subcarriers to the heavily time dispersive radio channel. This is done by converting high data rate information and distribute it over number of carrier with a lower data rate in which, each data stream carried by a subcarrier subject to a frequency-at subchannel. OFDM benets from another technique called Guard Interval or Cyclic Prex to overcome multipath channel propagation. CP is a cut of OFDM signal appended to the original signal in order to make a circular convolution inside the transmission channel and make response of each subcarrier independent of others. In case cyclic prex length is longer than channel response the estimades channel matrix would be diagonal and equalization simplies to multiplication of subcarriers with a complex number. This is called Frequency Domain Equalization (FDE). This brings trade offs for the system. it must have specic length which cause waste of channel capacity and SNR. Moreover, it suffers from subcarrier synchronization, sensitivity to frequency offset and nonlinear amplication. OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) provides multiple user access on available frequency or time. Each user is assigned a specic temporary frequency and time slot for its data channel. This multiple access technique uses two traditional multiple access in time and frequency which are known as TDMA and FDMA. UE and eNodeB needs to have duplex communication. Duplex communication benets from scrambeled frequency and time slot access mentioned above. Therefore, both FDD and TDD could be used. UEs dont have priori-knowledge of scrambled frequency and time access schedule. They get these information frequently through a physical shared channel. U PLINK T RANSMISSION In mobile communications Peack-to-Average Power Ratio put constraints on system capabilities. PAPR or Crest Factor issue is more restrictive in OFDMA systems. In uplink, transmission direction is from User Equipment to eNodeBs and amplier nonlinearity in UE distorts the signal before propagation. Due to energy and power consumption limitations in UE it would be difcult and expensive to compensate the high PAPR. Thus, better solution for hand-held devices would be a solution with battery power considerations. There a few number of physical channels dened in uplink that are listed in the following. Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH)

Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH)

SC-FDMA In order to avoid mentioned problems and also with the prior knowledge that users need much higher downlink capacity in comparison with downlink, 3GPP has decided not to use OFDMA in uplink transmission. Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access SC-FDMA is used for E-UTRA[3]. In principle SC-FDMA is a Linearly Precoded OFDMA. Basic idea is sending subcarriers sequentially rather than parallel. This scheme reduces substantially PAPR at RAN terminals. Along with low PAPR it has low sensitivity to carrier offset[9].

1 Amplitude 0 1 15 10 5 0 5 10 Frequency 15 0 2 Time 4 8 6 10

Fig. 5.

SC-FDMA

M ULTI A NTENNA S OLUTIONS Multi antenna is one of solutions that are considered in LTE. Multi antenna at receiver and transmitter sides can be used to gain various advantages. The technologies being considered are MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) along with both Spatial Multiplexing and Space-Time Coding, and Beamforming. Multi antenna are being used to provide multiuser access and single user capacity improvement. Multi antenna solution is being considered here is microdiversity vs. macrodiversity which already exist in 3G systems. They are briey elaborated in this section. MIMO Diversity & Spatial Multiplex A technique that exploits stochastic properties of radio channel to reduce degradations of the system caused by multipath fading is called Diversity[10]. The basic idea behind diversity is, the receiver experience different and independent signal fading in its diversity branches. In diversity as the it implies, transmitter sends various copy of data over statistically independent channels. Therefore, the system take the advantage of branches with higher capacity to transceive higher data rate. This technique provides higher capacity

without increasing the bandwidth. It should be mentioned if the transmitted data streams are not the same then it would be spatial multiplexing. There are three major diversity schemes which are Time, Frequency, Space and Polarization diversity. The main advantage of space diversity is not to expand the total bandwidth. In time diversity, uncorrelated time slots could be too long in slowly fading channels. Multiple Input Multiple Output systems transmit coincidently various data streams in which effect of channel on them at the receiver point are statistically independent. In this scheme data stream is sent to a serial-to-parallel converter. Each data stream is modulated and transmitted through an independent antenna using same bandwidth. By this, system takes advantage of possible gain that might get from radio channel. Transmitting different information stream that each is affected independently through the channel brings the system higher capacity. To make space diversity as its depicted in Fig. 6 we need to have half a wavelength distance between antennas at the receivers. In transmitter, to make received signal statistically independent 20 distance is needed[10]. In LTE eNodeB and UE shall support for 1,2,4 antennas[4].Its been reported currently 2 2 is considered for deployment[11]. In Fig. 7 channel capacity of MIMO in frequency-nonselective rayleigh channels are illustrated. 2 = J0 (2d/) (1)

25 Nt = 1 , Nr = 1 Nt = 2 , Nr = 2 20 Nt = 2 , Nr = 3 Nt = 4 , Nr = 4 Capacity bits/s/Hz 15

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0 10

5 SNR [dB]

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Fig. 7.

MIMO Capacity in Rayleigh Channel

16QAM Modulation based on Alamouti STC With Alamouti Code 2x1 channel Without STC

10

10 Symbol Error Rate

Space Correlation 1 0.9 0.8 Correlation Coefficient 0.7 0.6

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10 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0 0.5 1 Mormalized distance d/ 1.5 2

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Fig. 8.

Alamouti Space-Time Coding scheme performance

Fig. 6.

Space correlation coefcient

Space-Time Coding The drawback of time diversity is low spectral efciency. One solution to this problem is using space diversity along with time diversity[10]. In Fig. 8 the performance of Alamouti scheme is illustrated which is a fundamental scheme in SpaceTime Coding technique[7]. C ONCOLUSIONS The proposed 3G-LTE denes next generation of radio access networks that are prepared to provide various high

quality services through IP packet switched network with lower complexity and latency in UE, E-UTRAN and EPC. The LTE benets from very many feasiable todays technologies and make external interfaces for legacy systems and its competitors such as WiMAX. This guarantees its success and coexistence with other similar technologies. Moreover, LTE provides a various options in deployment phase based on previous UMTS releases and avoids sudden changes. R EFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 3GPP. TR 23.882. 3GPP. TR 25.999. 3GPP. TS 36.211. 3GPP. TR 25.876. 3GPP. TR 25.913. 3GPP. Utra-utran long term evolution (lte) and 3gpp system architecture evolution (sae). 3gpp.org. [7] S.M. Alamouti. A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless communications. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 1998.

[8] J. Karlsson M. Meyer S. Parkvall J. Torsner H. Ekstrm, A. Furuskr and M. Wahlqvist. Technical solutions for the 3g long-term evolution. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2005. [9] Junsung Lim Hyung G. Myung and David J. Goodman. Single carrier fdma for uplink wireless transmission. IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, 1, 2006. [10] Ben Slimane Lars Ahlin, Jens Zander. Principles of wireless communications. [11] Rohde & Schwarz. Umts long term evolution (lte) technology introduction. Application Note 1MA111, 2007. [12] Michael Steer. Beyond 3g. IEEE Communications Magazine, 2007.