A Radio Channel Estimation Scheme Using the CQI Feedback Information in High Speed Downlink Packet Access

Junsu Kim, Young-Jun Hong, and Dan Keun Sung Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Channel Quality Indicator (CQI)

Mobile terminals do not report the measured SINR directly to base station Mobile terminals measure their own radio channel status and report the quality in uplink direction to base station using a Channel Quality Indicator (CQI). Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) which is a sampled and quantized version of the measured SINR.
CQI is another version of Signal-to-Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR), more information about radio channel states of mobile terminals can be extracted CQI is an indicator carrying the information on how good/bad the communication channel quality is.

Base station utilizes CQI feedback information for scheduling, Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) Factors play important roles to CQI measurement.
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) Signal-to-Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) Signal-to-Noise plus Distortion Ratio (SNDR)

Channel Quality Indicator (CQI)

Based on careful observation of reported CQI information by base station, the mobile speed and geographical environment of each mobile terminal can be estimated. Depending which value User Equipment (UE) reports, network transmit data with different transport block size.
If network gets high CQI value from UE, it transmits the data with larger transport block size and vice versa.

What if UE report high CQI even when the real channel quality is poor? In this case, network would send a large transport block size according to the CQI value and it would become highly probable that UE failed to decode it (cause CRC error on UE side) and UE send NACK to network and the network have to retransmit it which in turn cause waste of radio resources.
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Proposed Scheme for Channel estimation

An effective channel estimation scheme in which large scale and small scale fading are estimated simultaneously at a base station using the feedback information from mobile terminals. The proposed scheme decomposes a radio channel model into a large-scale fading component and a small-scale fading component using the feedback information. The Large-Scale fading component is determined by the distance from base station and its surrounding geographical environment. The Small Scale fading component depends on the mobile speed. These components affect the Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) measured in a mobile terminal. The analysis with the measured SINR values is still valid for CQI with some quantization errors.
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Proposed Scheme for Channel estimation

The mean of SINR represents the large-scale fading and the level crossing rate (LCR) of the normalized SINR, which is the SINR value divided by its average value, only depends on the small-scale fading. A two-dimensional 'Mean-LCR Plane' to efficiently estimate the radio channel status of mobile terminals. Proposed estimation scheme is able to estimate the radio channel status of mobile terminals including the small and large-scale fading components

Overview of HSDPA
The HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) system consists of a single Node-B (base station) and multiple user equipments (UE, mobile station) in a cell. A UE measures its channel quality using a known pilot channel and determines a CQI value to obtain the target QoS, such as Frame Error Rate (FER) or BLock Error Rate (BLER), and the CQI value is reported to Node-B. Then, the scheduler in the Node-B selects a UE based on an appropriate policy using the reported CQI values. In HSDPA, the CQI value ranges from 0 ~ 30. Value 30 indicates the best channel quality and 0.1 indicates the poorest channel quality.
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Measured CQI and SINR values in HSDPA

Figure shows the relation between the SNR and CQI values, when the UE's mobile speed is 5km/h. In the figure, the solid line indicates the measured SINR and the discrete steps indicate the corresponding CQI values. Since only 30 CQI values are defined in HSDPA, the CQI values cannot indicate the whole range of SINR values 7

Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

A. Environment and Assumptions
A cell model which consists of a home-cell and outer cells. We assume that all the Node-Bs transmit constant power and the transmitted power from the outercell Node-Bs becomes outer-cell interference to a UE in the homecell. The cell radius is R km and the distance from Node-B to the UE is r km. Single path Rayleigh fading as a small-scale fading model and the path loss as a large-scale fading model.

Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation The path loss from the Node-B in the cell (i, j) can be expressed as

where K is a constant factor, ro is a reference distance in km, and n is a path loss exponent. Outer cell interference can be derived as where Nt denotes the number of tiers.

Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation The received signal power of a UE in the home cell can be written as:

SINR can be derived as

Where No is the gaussian thermal noise

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation

This equation includes random variables in both denominator and numerator, it is very complex to derive the probability density function (PDF) of SINR directly. In order to simplify this the variances of the signal component and the interference component are investigated. If the variance of the interference component is much smaller than that of the signal component, then the interference component can be approximated as a constant in the viewpoint of the signal component. In other words, the signal component dominates the statistical characteristics of the SINR. 11

Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation

Where i,j is the mean power of fading coefficients i.e. 2i,j thus we can

assume i,j = 1. The ratio of the above variances is given by

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation
Simulation result in a 2-tier cell model, where the cell radius is 1 km, and x-axis indicates the distance from the home-cell Node-B to the UE. Variance of the signal component is 10 times larger than that of the interference component, at a location of 0.9 km apart from the homecell Node-B, and even 100 times larger at a location of 0.6 km. This means that the characteristics of the signal component dominate the statistical characteristics of entire SINR in the inner area of the home cell. IOC(r) ~ E[IOC(r)]. Since No is relatively smaller than the interference component, we can neglect the thermal noise component.

Signal and Interference Variance Ratio

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation
Rewriting the SINR formula with only one random variable

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

B. SINR Formulation

Mean and Standard Deviation of SINR

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

C. Normalized SINR Modeling and Level Crossing Rate
PDF of the approximated SINR

The LCR of a random variable with a threshold level of th is

determined by the Rice formula

Normalized SINR is independent of distance between the home cell Node-B and UE.

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

C. Normalized SINR Modeling and Level Crossing Rate
PDF of the approximated SINR

Normalized SINR is independent of distance between the home cell Node-B and UE. It only depends on the small scale fading coefficients LCR of the normalized SINR would be determined by small-scale fading regardless of the large scale fading in other words, regardless of the geographical characteristics

The time derivative of Y(r) can be derived as

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

C. Normalized SINR Modeling and Level Crossing Rate
Joint PDF of normalized SINR and time derivative of SINR

LCR of Y(r)

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

C. Normalized SINR Modeling and Level Crossing Rate
LCR of Y(r)

This equation is a function of threshold, Yth, and the mobile speed inherent in . It always has the maximum value at Yth = 0.5 regardless of mobile speeds. Figure shows the analytical LCR value of Y(r) for various thresholds and various mobile speeds. LCR always has the maximum value at a threshold of 0.5. Therefore, it is reasonable to use the threshold value of 0.5 to classify the mobile speeds.

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Mathematical Analysis of SINR and CQI

C. Normalized SINR Modeling and Level Crossing Rate
LCR of Y(r)
When the distance between the Node-B and the UE is less than 0.3km, the LCR of CQI becomes zero regardless of mobile speeds. This is due to the accuracy of CQI. Since there are only 30 CQI values, all the measured SINR values should be classified into one of 30 CQI values. Therefore, the UEs near the Node-B tend to have very high probabilities to report a maximum CQI value of 30. Although the SINR fluctuates as the mobile speed increases, the CQI value has a maximum value of 30. Therefore, the level crossing of CQI values hardly happens. However, if the distance between the Node-B and the UE is larger than 0.3km,
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Two Dimensional Channel Estimation

A. Channel Estimation in the Mean-LCR Plane
Mean of SINR depends on the large-scale fading including the distance from the Node-B to the UE. The LCR of the normalized SINR depends on the small-scale fading including the mobile speed. Mean SINR and the LCR of the normalized SINR together, can be used to estimate the wireless channel status of a certain UE.

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Two Dimensional Channel Estimation

A. Channel Estimation in the Mean-LCR Plane
Channel Classification based on the Mean and LCR values of SINR
Figure shows the LCR values of the normalized SINR according to the mean values of SINR for 20 UEs with different mobile speeds and different locations. In this figure, we can classify each UE using the position on the plane of both the mean and

the LCR values of SINR.

UEs in the right-bottom corner of the plane have better channel status than those in other parts of the plane.

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Two Dimensional Channel Estimation

A. Channel Estimation in the Mean-LCR Plane
Channel Classification based on the Mean and LCR values of CQI
The mean values of SINR are replaced by the

mean values of CQI and the LCR values of the

normalized SINR are substituted by the LCR values of CQI. Here the dots concentrated in the right-bottom corner of the plane. These dots are for the UEs located near the Node-B. The UEs near the Node-B have very low LCR values of CQI.

Although these UEs have relatively higher

mobile speeds, their channel status is good enough to be served by the Node-B.
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Two Dimensional Channel Estimation

A. Channel Estimation in the Mean-LCR Plane
Mean LCR plane
Here the plane is divided into 9 regions. The xaxis indicates the distance and the y-axis indicates the mobile speed. Each region is numbered according to the mean and LCR values of CQI/SINR about current wireless channel status. UEs in the smaller numbered regions have better wireless channels. Therefore, if the MeanLCR plane is managed in the Node-B, the NodeB can estimate not only the UE's current channel status but also the channel variation history in the past. This information is very valuable in HSDPA systems.

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Conclusions
A UE specific radio channel is mainly characterized by small-scale fading due to its geographical conditions and large scale fading due to the mobile speed of the UE. In this paper, it is possible to estimate the small-scale and large-scale fading using the mean values of SINR and the LCR values of the normalized SINR, respectively. The approximated SINR distribution is found out and analyze the mean and LCR values. A two-dimensional channel estimation scheme based on a 'Mean-LCR Plane' is proposed which is used to represent the UE's current radio channel status and its history. In HSDPA, CQI values are reported to Node-B instead of the measured SINR. CQI is a sampled and quantized version of the measure SINR. The analysis based on SINR is still valid for CQI with some quantization error by comparing this result with the simulation result. Therefore, we can efficiently manage the UE's radio channel status based on the 'Mean-LCR Plane' of the CQI version at the Node-B. Finally, we verify the performance of the proposed scheme using intensive system-level simulations. It is possible to develop more efficient scheduling algorithms or handoff schemes using the proposed channel estimation scheme for further work.
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Thank You

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