HSDPA

High Speed Downlink Packet

Access

UMTS Training Group

Version 3.0

Proprietary and Confidential

 Introduction

• HSDPA – High Speed Downlink Packet Access

• Part of release 5 3GPP specifications

• HSxPA can also be referred to as 3.5G as it is an adaptation of the 3G

standards

• HSDPA increases air interface data rates from 384kbps to 14Mbps

• HSDPA is suited to high data rates and bursty applications

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 2

 What’s New with HSDPA

• Fast Link Adaptation

– Instead of using power control to compensate for varying radio environment, the
data rate can be adjusted every 2ms.

• Fast HARQ with soft combining

– Instead of handling all retransmissions at the RNC, a new HARQ process is
introduced at the Node B to realize rapid retransmission of erroneous data

• Fast Channel Dependent Scheduling

– Scheduler is implemented at the Node B as opposed to the RNC to allow for fast
scheduling to accommodate the user environment.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 3

 HSDPA Channels - New

• HS-PDSCH – High Speed Physical

Downlink Shared Channel
–
NodeB
Carries user data
– 1 – 15 codes per channel
– Always SF16
– QPSK or 16QAM

• HS-SCCH – High Speed Shared Control

Channel
– Informs the UE of how and when to receive

HCP D
the HS-PDSCH

HCS DP

HCCP D- S H
- S H x 51- 1
– SF128

det ai c oss A

HCCS- S H x 4 - 1
• HS-DPCCH – High Speed Dedicated
Control Channel
–
–
ACK/NACK
CQI report
UE
– SF256

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 4

 HSDPA Channels - Existing

• A-DCH – Associated Dedicated Channel

– One A-DCH is required per HSDPA user NodeB
– Carries signaling and uplink data
– Typically has a downlink rate of 0
– Uplink rate can vary, minimum is 64kbps
up to 384kbps and peak HSDPA rates will
require EUL
– Uplink data rate usually 5-6% of downlink
rate (higher layer signaling).

HCP D
HCS DP

HCCP D- S H
- S H x 51- 1
det ai c oss A

HCCS- S H x 4 - 1
UE

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 5

 HSDPA Protocol Stack

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 6

 New NodeB HSDPA Functionality
Node B Terminal
RNC

Packets
Scheduler HARQ &
& Buffer Coding
Flow Control

ACK/NACK &
Feedback
Decoding

• Scheduler & Buffer: Buffering of data, Terminal scheduling, Coding &

Modulation selection – QPSK is still used and a new modulation type
16QAM introduced
• HARQ, Retransmission Handling and coding
• Uplink Feedback Decoding
• Flow Control towards the SRNC

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 7

 New Terminal HSDPA Functionality
RNC Node B Terminal

Packets 16QAM HARQ

demodulatio decodin
n g

Flow Control
ACK/NACK Soft
& buffer &
Feedback combinin
generation g

New terminal functions:

• 16 QAM demodulation
• HARQ decoding and Retransmissions Handling
• Buffering & Soft combining
• Fast Uplink Feedback Generation & encoding

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 8

 UE Categories

• 12 Categories of UE have been specified

• UE category is sent in the UE Capability message transmitted to RNC

during call setup

• RNC & Node B restrict data, number of codes or air interface coding
schemes depending on the UE Capability

• Due to processor limitations in some implementations, processing of

consecutive TTIs is not possible.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 9

 UE Categories
Transport
HSDPA
Modulation Inter-TTI (MS) Block size 5 Codes 10 Codes 15 Codes
Category
(bits)

11 QPSK only 2 3630 0.9 Mbps - -

12 QPSK only 1 3630 1.8 Mbps - -

1/2 QPSK/16QAM 3 7298 1.2 Mbps - -

3/4 QPSK/16QAM 2 7298 1.8 Mbps - -

5/6 QPSK/16QAM 1 7298 3.6 Mbps - -

QPSK/16QAM 1 14411 - -
7/8 7.2 Mbps

QPSK/16QAM 1 20251 - -
9 10.1 Mbps

QPSK/16QAM 1 27952 - -
10 14.0 Mbps

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 10

 Q
Modulation Q

1011 1001 0001 0011

10 00
1010 1000 0000 0010

I I

1110 1100 0100 0110

11 01
1111 1101 0101 0111

QPSK 16QAM
2 bits / symbol 4 bits / symbol
480 kbit/s/HS-PDSCH 960 kbit/s/HS-
max. 7.2 Mbit/s PDSCH
max. 14.4 Mbit/s

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 11

 Downlink HSDPA Code Allocations
SF=1

SF=2

SF=4 Legend:
Free code that can be
allocated to e.g. DPCH,
SF=8 HS-PDSCH (SF16) or
HS-SCCH (SF128).
SF=16
Code that cannot be
HS-PDSCH allocated due to
SF=32 allocations lower in the
code-tree / branch.
S-CCPCH
SF=64 Code reserved for a
S-CCPCH common channel.
SF=128
HS-SCCH

SF=256
CPICH P-CCPCH

• SF16 codes assigned to HS-PDSCH, 5, 10 or 15 (3GPP)

• SF128 assigned to the HS-SCCH (3GPP) (up to 4)
• Maximum of 15 codes in Ericsson and Nokia
• HS-PDSCH code resources are assigned to one user at a time

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 12

 Hybrid ARQ (HARQ)

• ARQ = Automatic Repeat Request – uses error detection to determine if a

PDU is received in error

• Hybrid ARQ uses forward error correction as well as error detection resulting
in improved performance over ARQ.

• Employed between the UE and the Node B

• UE transmits ACK/NACK to indicate the successful / unsuccessful reception

of a PDU.

• HARQ round trip time is longer (approx. 12ms) than a TTI period and as such
multiple HARQ processes are used to prevent waiting for ACK/NACK before
sending the next PDU

• Retransmissions are combined with original transmissions using soft

combining (called chase combining) to improve error correction.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 13

 Hybrid ARQ and Soft Combining

NB. If more than 4 NACK are received for the same packet, the coding rate
is changed to higher error correction or the buffer in Node B is flushed
and re-filled from the RNC.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 14

 Link Adaptation

• Transport Format Resource Combination

(TFRC) changes on the air interface are
adapted depending on a Channel Quality
Indicator (CQI) sent from the UE.

• The Node B uses this reported CQI as a

reference but fine tunes the actual TFRC
assignment depending on the last series of
ACKs or NACKs, UE capability, actual
transmit power, amount of buffered data etc.

• CQI levels change depending on UE type.

Attached is the CQI mapping for a CAT 8 UE.

• The TFRC can be modified in each TTI.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 15

 Link Adaptation

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 16

 Power Control

• Fast Link Adaptation provides a mechanism to adequately accommodate changes in

the radio environment.

• Initially power control of the HS-PDSCH was not used, however vendors have now
implemented various degrees of power control to reduce HSDPA impact to other
services.

• Ericsson
– HS-SCCH has power control
– HS-DSCH has power control

• For Nokia
– HS-SCCH has power control
– HS-DSCH is set at minimum power but can absorb extra power if available to increase
throughput.

• Associated DCH is power controlled using fast power control.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 17

 Schedulers
• The scheduler schedules the information that will be sent from the
Node B to the UE.
• The scheduler requires important information from the uplink HS-
DPCCH and other sources
QoS and Subscriber Profile
User History
Who is the subscriber? Platinum, Gold,
How long has user Traffic Model
Silver, Normal.
been waiting What type of traffic model should
What type of service is the
subscriber allowed? High priority, Best be used - according to period
effort of the day – Peak/Off Peak

Available Radio Resources

Uplink Feedback Scheduler Power
CQI and Ack/Nack Codes
information

UE Capability
Node B buffer status
How much data is in buffer
How fast is the data arriving

Users are scheduled according to their

requirements for transmission by the
Node B over the air interface

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 18

 Round Robin Scheduler
UE 1 Data UE 1 Data
Request sent
UE 6 • Simplest form of
scheduler
UE 2 Data UE 2 Data
Request sent • First in First out
UE 5
principle

UE 3 Data
• Advantages:
UE 3 data UE 4
Request sent • Easy to
implement
UE 4 Data UE3 UE 4 Data • Minimises waiting
Request sent time
• Fair
UE 2 UE 5 Data
UE 5 Data •
Request sent Disadvantage:
• System
UE 1 Throughput not
UE 6 Data UE 6 Data
Request sent optimal.

NodeB Buffers NodeB Packet

Scheduler

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 19

 Max CQI (Best Effort)
UE 4 Data • Highest CQI (greatest
UE 1 sent
CQI = 14
UE 6 throughput) user
schedule first.
UE 3 Data
UE 2 sent • Users with best radio
CQI = 8 UE 5 conditions are given
Check which preference
user
has requested UE 1 Data
UE 3 UE 2 highest sent • Advantages:
CQI = 18
data rate.
Prioritise
• Easy to
delivery UE 2 Data implement
UE 4 UE1 accordingly sent
CQI = 20 • Highest system
throughput
UE 5 Data
UE 5 UE 3 sent • Disadvantage:
CQI = 6
• Due to bad CQI
UE 4 UE 6 Data users may be
UE 6 sent starved of data
CQI = 4

NodeB Buffers NodeB Packet Scheduler

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 20

 Proportional Fair Scheduler

• Schedules users based on

– CQI
– Average throughput
– Retransmission (time between NACK reception and retransmission)
– Delay (time since last scheduled)

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 21

 Proportional Fair Scheduler

• Provides improved system throughput over round robin by scheduling

users when they are experiencing good radio conditions.
• Provides improved fairness over maximum CQI by considering average
throughput and delay in the scheduling decision.
• The “fairness” of the algorithm can be adjusted using parameters.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 22

 HSDPA Mobility

• There is no SHO for HSDPA

• This is due to
– Location of the scheduler (Node B level)
– Resource requirements on Iub / Channel Elements (CE)

• There are 3 methods for continuing data while HSDPA is in SHO area
1. Suspend data till SHO area has expired
2. Radio Bearer reconfiguration to a DCH in SHO area, then re-attempt a HSDPA call
setup when SHO area expires
3. SHO of the A-DCH and effectively do a cell reselection for the HS channel to the new
best server (depends on vendor support)

• Ericsson Supports SHO of A-DCH in P5, Nokia Supports in RAS 5.1

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 23

 SHO of Associated DCH
• New HSDPA mobility parameters have been introduced to allow the
manipulation of the HSDPA handover separately from RT and R99 NRT
services in both E/// and Nokia

• These parameters can be used to adjust the branch replacement window

(Event 1d) for HSDPA sessions

• This allows the A-DCH to be manipulated using the standard R99

parameters (and hence allows the A-DCH to enter into SHO)

• The Branch Replacement for HSDPA can then be placed well into the
neighbors cell to ensure a good CQI report when switched.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 24

 HSDPA Mobility - SHO for Associated DCH

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 25

 HSDPA Priority or DCH Priority

• In some Vendor RAN it is possible to set the priority for either DCH or
HSDPA traffic

• When the priority is set for either DCH or HSDPA and the RAN reaches an
over load event for the following, then either DCH or HSDPA traffic is
reduced or dropped to free capacity:
1. Iub Overload
2. Downlink Power
3. Downlink Orthogonal Codes

• The decision on priority depends largely on the penetration of devices in

the market.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 26

 Performance of HSDPA compared to R99
DCH
• HSDPA offers multiple advantages over R99 DCH
– Improved Air interface efficiency
– Faster Download speeds for users
– Improved Latency

• HSDPA is a shared resource, and user data rates vary greatly according
to the number of users in a cell

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 27

 Air Interface Efficiency - codes

• Users are time multiplexed onto the shared channels giving a more efficient
use of code resource.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 28

 Air Interface Efficiency – inactivity
timers
Data Transmission DCH holding time
Air interface, node B and Iub resources are reserved
even though there is no data transmission

DCH
FACH hold time
Iub resources reserved

FACH

wastage
Idle

t
t t t

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 29

 Air Interface Efficiency – fixed rate
bearers
• Only fixed rate DCH bearers are available
• Available bearers - 8,16,32,64,128,256,384 kbps
• Hence if the data to be transmitted is in between these bearers, the higher
bearer rate is assigned and the bearer is not full utilized

SF16 Bearer (128kbps)

Wasted Resource
User Data (75kbps)

SF32 Bearer (64kbps)

User Data

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 30

 HSDPA assignment

• When HSDPA is enabled on a cell – DSP capacity is permanently assigned

as a pool, this resource can not be used by other services.

• Only transmits when data is ready to transmit

• Power, code and transmission resource are temporarily reserved as

required

• No Hold times in HSDPA state (FACH hold time is applied but no Iub
reservation)

• HSDPA is a more efficient way of transporting bursty PS data than DCH

ever could be.

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 31

 Q&A

Proprietary and Confidential Slide 32