Hierarchical Cell Structure System for MBMS in UMTS Networks

Alexandra Boal1, Rui Salom1, Amrico Correia1,2

ADETTI1, Av. Foras Armadas, Edifcio ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal Instituto de Telecomunicaes2, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal Phone: +351-217903292, e-mail: americo.correia@iscte.pt
Abstract 1 To support the great demand of wireless bandwidth resource in the future, a high density microcell structure will be adopted. Among radio technologies, multipleinput multiple-output (MIMO) systems have attracted wide research interests in recent years. It is widely recognized that MIMO systems can be employed for achieving a high capacity and a high diversity order, for mitigating the effects of various types of interfering signals, and for supporting space-division multiple-access (SDMA). In this study a MIMO assisted cellular system using distributed antennas is proposed and investigated, where a big number of antennas are distributed in the area covered by the system. The proposed system is capable of providing a platform for possibly integrating the conventional cellular systems into the future advanced, high-flexibility, adhoc and cooperative wireless networks. This system is considered for MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service) that enables mobile operators to deliver rich multimedia to a huge number of subscribers by broadcasting over the radio frequencies assigned to WCDMA.

antennas), which are distributed within the area covered by a cell and connected to the Node-B using fiber or cable. In the proposed topology, the distributed antennas (DAs) are connected with a number of signal processing centers, which are referred to as base stations (BSs), using optical fibers or cables. Here we still use the concept of BS, however, it is now just a signal processing center, which may be converted from a conventional BS. The antennas at the BS of the proposed system have no priority in comparison with the other distributed antennas. The BS is responsible for the signal processing of the users within the area, which is covered by the distributed antennas connected with this BS. This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the Hierarchical Cell Structure System using distributed antennas, namely the system description and the typical characteristics. Section III describes the simulation aspects and Section IV shows the simulation results and contains a discussion of those results. Finally the Section V contains a brief conclusion of the subjects discussed in the previous sections. II. HIERARCHICAL CELL STRUCTURE SYSTEM A. System Description The novel concept of the proposed system using distributed antennas can be well described with the aid of Figure 1.

I. INTRODUCTION The MBMS is an unidirectional Point to Multipoint (PtM) service for delivering high bit rate multimedia services to a large number of mobile users. There are two modes of operation: multicast and broadcast. In a radio communication system, MIMO refers to links for which the transmitting end as well as the receiving end is equipped with multiple antenna elements. The idea behind MIMO is that the signals on the transmit antennas at one end and the receive antennas at the other end are combined in such a way that the quality (Bit-Error Rate or Block Error Rate - BER/BLER) or the data rate (bits/sec) of the communication for each MIMO user will be improved. In this study we integrated the MIMO principles into the hierarchical cell structure system using distributed antenna. The idea of Hierarchical Cell Structure (HCS) has been used in several wireless access technologies, including GSM and UMTS systems. Using this feature improves the network capability to achieve better routing/management, and to enhance the utilization of the network resources by the operators. It is well-known that, in conventional cellular systems [1], each cell is centered around a Node-B, which may employ a set of antennas. By contrast, in the proposed cellular system, each cell has numerous sets of antennas (distributed

Fig. 1. A conceptual cellular system structure with DAs. In the proposed system (Figure 1), the antennas near the borders may be connected with two or three Node-Bs. In more details, each of the antennas within the dash-dotted box are connected with Node-B of Cell 1 and Node-B of Cell 2,

This work is co-funded by the European Commission under the framework of IST-2005 27423 Project, C-MOBILE Advanced MBMS for the Future Mobile World.

respectively, while the antennas within the dashed circle at the conner jointing Cells 1, 2 and 3 are all connected with respective Node-B of these cells. In the considered system, for the convenience of analysis, we assume that the cells are shaped as hexagons with the common radius of R. As shown in Figure 1, we assume that any pair of adjacent antennas are separated by a distance of r (in this study we assumed that r = 250m and R=1000m). Hence, each antenna is surrounded by numerous DAs located at the layered hexagons. Note that, the structure of Figure 1 is sufficiently general for approximately modeling HCS systems using distributed antennas that may have an arbitrary antenna density. This can be done by appropriately changing the radius value of R in Figure 1. In this system, we assume that the DAs only implement the functions of conveying a signal from radio frequency (RF) to baseband or from baseband to RF, in order to make the computation burden at a DA as low as possible. Hence, in our DA are conveyed to the BSs, where the processing is carried out. Simultaneously, all the DAs are also used for transmitting signals from the Node-Bs to the mobile terminals (MTs), in order to improve the DL transmission quality. B. Typical Characteristics The objectives of DAs in wireless systems include the increase of the system capacity, to decrease the transmission power, to reduce the dependence on the centralized control and to redeem the system capacity spent for system configuration in conventional cellular systems. In more details, in comparison to the conventional cellular CDMA systems, the distributed antenna cellular systems have the following typical characteristics: In HCS system using DAs, the system capacity can be extremely higher than that of the conventional 3rd generation (3G) cellular systems, as well as that of the possible cellular systems built on the conventional cellular concepts [2, 3, 4]. A distributed antenna aided cellular system is a high power-efficiency wireless system. In HCS system using DAs, each MT can be viewed as the center of a virtual cell and it communicates only with the antennas within its virtual cell. Due to the fact of short distances between a MT and the antennas around it, and the fact of relatively low transmission path-loss, satisfactory transmission power is possible in DA cellular systems, even in the case of transmitting a high data rate that can be supported by integrating the MIMO principles into the HCS system using DAs [1, 5]. In HCS system using DAs, the demand on power control can be relieved, or even use no power control at all. No matter where a MT is, it communicates with a number of antennas located within the LoS area of the considered MT or within its virtual cell. Hence, the signals sampled from the antennas in the virtual cell fall within the cluster of strongest signal. In more detail, as shown in Figure 1, the received power by antennas DA1, DA2 and DA3 from MT D will be usually higher than that from the other MTs or at least they are on a similar level.

Handover in HCS system using DAs is simply geometrically based and its principles can be readily understood with referring to Figure 1[1]. Specifically, in HCS system using DAs, the antennas near the borders may be connected with two or three BSs. In HCS systems using DAs, signal processing is location dependent, since a MT is only related to a number of antennas within its virtual cell. The signals in correspondence to a specific MT will become sufficiently weak at a location sufficiently away from the MT. III. SIMULATION ASPECTS In our simulations, we study two different topologies: Macrocell Topology and HCS Topology using DAs. The chosen tool to develop the simulator at the system level was JAVA, due to the fact of being a multi-platform technology and independent of any other simulation tool. For the Urban Macrocell Topology, 18 tri-sectorial base stations with a site to site distance of 1000m were considered. For the HCS Topology using DAs, were considered 18 tri-sectorial base stations with a site to site distance of 1000m, and some DAs with a site to site of 250m. The location of DAs was obtained by cell splitting twice with radius R/2. The following figure shows the Macrocell Topology (left) and the HCS Topology (right).

Fig. 2. Macrocell (left) and HCS (right) topologies. Table I presents some of the parameters used in both simulated scenarios. Table I Macrocell and HCS Topologies Parameters

We assumed that the base station total transmission power

is 20W (43dBm). The expected total transmission power of each distributed antenna is about 22dBm based on the considered factor of attenuation of the transmitted power of the cellular system (Cost 231) =3.5, so:

(D1 / D2 ) = (D1 / D2 )3.5 = (1/ 4)3.5 = 1/128

20W 8dBW 22dBm 128
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

(1) (2)

The link performance of the FACH channel is obtained for a chosen geometry factor (G) in terms of BLER vs Ec/Ior. This indicates the fraction of power that must be allocated to PtM MBMS transmissions to meet a specific target BLER at a receiver experiencing a determined geometry factor, i.e. for the worst case user to experience no worse than the target BLER. The geometry factor is given by the relationship between the own cell interference experienced by the mobile user and the interference from neighboring cells plus the White Gaussian Noise. A lower geometry factor is expected when user is located at the cell edge (the case where the interference received from the neighboring cells is higher than the interference experienced in its own cell), this way a relationship between the fraction of power allocated for the PtM transmission and the verified geometry factor can be made in a order where when the geometry factor decreases the corresponding Ec/Ior for a given BLER increases being necessary a higher transmitted PtM power to maintain the desired coverage. Figure 4 shows the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of geometry factors (most relevant range of value) obtained for the Macrocell and HCS environments. These simulations were made by populating the simulated topology in a random way, where the mobile users (Vehicular A case) at a speed of 3km/h were moving randomly across the topology and considering Rb=128kbps. For each of the users it was calculated the geometry factor at the different positions they were moving.

HCS topology we can observe that 95% of the users had geometry of -5.25dB or better and about 80% had a geometry factor of -2.75dB or better. Notice that the HCS scenario is a more benign environment due to the fact that better geometry distributions were obtained in this environment. This is essentially due to the fact that in this scenario there is less interference due to inherent macro diversity combining. Figure 5 presents the BLER versus the fraction of the total transmitted power with a single spreading code with SF=16. The S-CCPCH bit rates are 128kbps, 256kbps and 384kbps using SISO 1x1, MIMO 2x2 and MIMO 3x3, respectively, for G = 3dB .

Fig. 5. BLER vs Ec/Ior for SISO (1x1), MIMO (2x2) and MIMO (3x3). The results obtained (coverage and throughput) are presented along this document for a service BLER of 1%, for both scenarios and for two of the 3GPP referred multipath channel models, namely Vehicular A and Pedestrian B. A Vehicular A In Figure 6 is illustrated the average coverage vs the Ec/Ior for Vehicular A at a speed of 3km/h, and both for Macrocell Topology and HCS Topology.

Fig. 6. Average Coverage vs Ec/Ior, Vehicular A. Fig. 4. CDF Geometry Macro and HCS cells. Observing Figure 4, we notice that for the Macrocell environment about 95% of the users experience a geometry factor of -5.5dB or better and about 80% of the users experienced geometry of -3dB or better. In the case of the As we can see in Figure 6, the results of the HCS Topology are better than the results obtained for the Macrocell Topology. We can see that for the required BLER of 1%, for HCS Topology and coverage of about 95%, the necessary fraction of transmitted power is about 85% (1x1), 48% (2x2) and

30% (3x3) of the total available power on the cell and for a coverage of 80% the minimum fraction should be about 44% (1x1), 30% (2x2) and 20% (3x3), for the case of Vehicular A scenario. For the Macrocell Topology and coverage of about 95% the necessary fraction of transmitted power is about 77% of the total available power on the cell and for coverage of 80% the minimum fraction should be about 49%. Notice that in the latter topology there is no macro diversity combining scheme. In Figure 7 is Error! Reference source not found.shown the average user received throughput for Vehicular A, at a speed of 3km/h, for both scenarios.

In Figure 9 is shown the average user received throughput for Pedestrian B, at a speed of 3km/h, for both scenarios.

Fig. 9. Average Throughput vs Ec/Ior, Pedestrian B. We also can see that high bit rates can be easily achieved for multicast/broadcast services in HCS Topology (1x1, 2x2, 3x3), however the same doesnt happen with the Macrocell topology. For the same fraction of total transmitted power the average throughput with Pedestrian B channel is higher than in the case of Vehicular A. V. CONCLUSIONS Fig. 7. Average Throughput vs Ec/Ior, Vehicular A. We can see that bit rates of 256kbps and 384kbps can be achievable for multicast/broadcast services in HCS environment (2x2 and 3x3), however the same doesn't happen with the Macrocell environment and HCS environment (1x1), where the bit rate of 128kbps can only be achievable requiring high power transmission. B. Pedestrian B In Figure 8 is illustrated the average coverage vs the Ec/Ior for Pedestrian B at a speed of 3km/h, and both for Macrocell Topology and HCS Topology. From the above presented results, it was demonstrated that high bit rates could be supported by the HCS Topology using distributed antennas, especially at the cell borders. The use of this topology increased the system capacity, decreased the transmission power, reduced the dependence on the centralized control and offered an almost uniform distribution of capacity throughout all area. The last feature is very important for broadcast/multicast services. As expected the HCS Topology using distributed antennas and MIMO is the environment that provides better performance results compared to the macrocell topology using SISO, the reference environment. With this study we conclude that MIMO/HCS is a key technology in modern digital communication to provide substantial capacity increments not only for unicast services but also for broadcast/multicast services. REFERENCES [1] T. S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications Principles and Practice. New York: Prentice Hall, Inc, 2 ed., 2002. [2] L. Hanzo, L. Yang, E. Kuan, K. Yen, Single and Multicarrier DS-CDMA, John Wiley, IEEE Press, 2003. [3] Gesbert, M. Shafi, and et. all, From theory to practice: An overview of MIMO space-time coded wireless systems, IEEE J. on Select. Areas in Commun, vol. 21, pp. 281302, Apr. 2003. [4] A. Goldsmith, S. A. Jafar, N. Jindal and S. Vishwanath, Capacity limits of MIMO channels, IEEE J. on Select. Areas in Commun., vol. 21, June 2003. [5] H. Zhuang, L. Dai, L. Xiao, and Y. Yao, Spectral efficiency of distributed antenna system with random antenna layout, Elec. Letters, vol. 39, March 2003.

Fig. 8. Average Coverage vs Ec/Ior, Pedestrian B. As we can see in Figure 8, the results of both topologies considering Pedestrian B are better than considering Vehicular A. We also conclude that HCS Topology has a better coverage than the Macrocell Topology.