Broadband Wireless Consortium of India

Newsletter
Volume 4 Issue 3 November 2011

General Updates
Chairman of BWCI and Hon. Director of CEWiT, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, has taken over as the new Director of IIT Madras. BWA Workshop Series BWCI, COAI and CEWiT are jointly organising a series of workshops on BWA in India and how Indian telecom industry is to get prepared to spearhead the deployment of LTE technology specifically the TDD flavour of it. First workshop of the series, India Pioneering th TD-LTE Deployment was held on September 19 in New Delhi. It covered various aspects of TD-LTE like the current market scenario and deployment of the technology and the implementation specific issues. Second workshop of the series, LTE Technology th in Indian Telecom was held on October 17 in Bangalore. The sessions covered various R&D activities which are happening in India and also pointed out to some key issues to be addressed for LTE in India. Details of the remaining workshops lined up through the next 8 to 10 months are available on the BWCI web site. LTE Training Course Experts from CEWiT delivered two advanced LTE training programs to two telecom companies in Bangalore. Similar events are planned stakeholders in the industry. for different

Research and Standardisation

LTE Release 11 Update The 3GPP RAN Plenary meeting held in Fukuoka from th September 13th 16 finalised the Work Items and Study Items to be taken up over the next 6 months by various RAN Working Groups. These are as follows: Study Items: Further Downlink MIMO enhancements for LTEAdvanced (RAN1) LTE Coverage Enhancements (RAN1) HetNet mobility improvements for LTE (RAN2) Further enhancements for HNB and HeNB (RAN3) Enhanced performance requirement for LTE UE (RAN4) RF and EMC Requirements for Active Antenna Array System (AAS) Base Station (RAN4) E-UTRA medium range and MSR medium range/local area BS class requirements (RAN4) Work Items: Further Enhanced Non CA-based ICIC for LTE (RAN1) Coordinated Multi-Point Operation for LTE (RAN1) LTE Carrier Aggregation Enhancements (RAN1) LTE RAN Enhancements for Diverse Data Applications (RAN2) Signalling and procedure for interference avoidance for in-device coexistence (RAN2) Further Self Optimizing Networks (SON) enhancements (RAN3) Network Energy Saving for E-UTRAN (RAN3) Carrier based HetNet ICIC for LTE (RAN3) The study on CoMP for LTE is completed. The outcome is captured in RAN1 TR 36.819.

BWCI Newsletter

November 2011

Indian Friends of 3GPP (IF3) A group of telecom companies have come together to form the Indian Friends of 3GPP. IF3 is envisaged as a virtual organisation with the main objective of holding 3GPP meetings in India on a regular basis. The first 3GPP meeting to be organised by this forum is being planned for 2012. Similar organisations exist in other parts of the world such as Japanese Friends of 3GPP (JF3), European Friends of 3GPP (EF3). 3GPP CT Working Groups Meeting Working Groups 1 and 4 of the 3GPPs Core Network and Terminals Technical Specification Group met in Hyderabad from October 10-14, 2011. It was jointly hosted by CEWiT, Ericsson, NSN, Qualcomm, and RIM. DO-Advance release of HRPD Research activity is ongoing for improvement in indoor capacity of HRPD networks through indoor personal relays. Collaborative proposals are being iterated in discussion with partners for putting to 3GPP2. Broadband Wireless Simulator (BWSim) Development of a flexible simulator by CEWiT is in advanced stage of completion. It has all the building blocks common to LTE-Advanced and IEEE 802.16m and supports pico, femto and relays apart from the regular macro deployment scenarios.

Study Groups
SIG on Indian Language SMS (SIGILS) The recommendations from SIGILS have been shared with Operators. It is planned to build a demonstration of the recommendations. CEWiT participated in the workshop on "Implementation of Mobile Web Standard in Indian Languages", organized by W3C India chapter. The keypad layout recommendations were discussed in the workshop and it was decided to move further in having a standard layout across the industry.

Other R&D Collaborations

Indo-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC): Various themes of IUATC project are in the final phases of the activity. An expert committee constituted by the Dept of Science and Technology did a final review of the project in October. A special Issue of Communication Technology - ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu with contributions from the IUATC themes has been released http://ictact.in/Scripts/JournalSpecialIssue.aspx?Id=2.

Members column
The following articles in subsequent pages are contributed by BWCI members: 1. Cell-edge throughput improvement and managing network level fairness, Satish K & Subramanian Vasudevan, Alcatel Lucent and Sendil K, RITCOE 2. Synchronisation Issues in TD-LTE Systems and Alternative solutions, Klutto Milleth, Babu Narayanan, CEWiT

Technology Demonstrators
LTE Radio Access Test Bed: Sasken, L&T Infotech and CEWiT are working on integration of uplink chain for eNodeB and UE. The Access test bed is being integrated with the EPC setup in the Core Network test bed project. 4G Core Network Test Bed: The Evolved Packet Core has been setup at CEWiT premises using the binaries provided by Tech Mahindra. This provides as Mobile Core for the transnational test bed being developed as part of the Indo-UK ATC project. It will be integrated with the LTE radio access test bed. Further plans for the Core Network Test Bed will be taken up in discussion with other BWCI partners.

BWCI Newsletter

November 2011

Cell-edge throughput improvement and managing network level fairness

Sendil Kumar (RITCOE), Satish Kanugovi & Subramanian Vasudevan (Alcatel-Lucent)

Background
Users in a wireless cellular network are spread across the coverage area of a base station. Users geometrically closer or experiencing less propagation and shadow loss from the base-station (BS) are referred to as the in-cell users. The in-cell users can be served with higher throughput compared to the users at the cell-edge (located towards the edge of the BS coverage or in the overlapping coverage area of multiple BS). The strength of received signal decreases with the distance from transmitter which implicitly reduces the data rate supported on such a downlink. Moreover, when the users are at cell-edge, the received signal comprises of signals transmitted from the adjacent base-station transmitting on the same carrier. The interference due to adjacent cell transmissions reduces the SINR (Signal-to-Interference-plus-noise ratio) of the signal from the intended base-station to a receiver (UE) and hence, limits achievable throughput in downlink. Improving the user experience of the cell-edge users is a significant aspect in a wireless network deployment. In this article, we present the efforts taken in 3GPP2 for improving the throughput for the celledge users in the EVDO - a CDMA based, packet only technology that is deployed on 1.25MHz carriers and the related aspects related to network level fairness. Single carrier multi-link (SCML) is a technique supported in the Revision C of the EVDO standard to improve the data throughput delivered to the cell-edge users. SCML allows a receiver to request independent downlink transmission from multiple transmitters. The selection of such transmitters is based on the quality of signal strength from each of the transmitting base-stations.

SCML Operation
Enabling SCML feature in a deployment requires support at the receiver or the User Equipment(UE) to be able to handle multiple simultaneous downlink and flow control at the RNC. The base-stations involved in serving the UE which are under SCML connections can operate independent of each other. In other words, the base-station can manage the multiple UEs in its sector independent of whether UEs have one or multiple connections with another base-station. Based on the downlink selection criteria, there will be a set of UEs that can operate with multiple downlinks. The UEs with multiple downlinks, SCML UEs, feed back the supported datarate based on the SINR of the individual link to the respective base-station on the uplink. This information on the uplink is masked with the base-station specific sequence which is used by the appropriate base-station to identify information intended for it. Independent of the data-rate requested to other base-stations, each base-station allocates the downlink transmission to the SCML UE. Hence, the SCML UE experiences an overall throughput improvement due to the throughput delivered by the additional link(s). The additional throughput gain depends on factors like the SINR of this additional link and the number of users contending in the cell serving that link. For e.g., in the case where an UE is connected with two base-stations, if the primary and the secondary link quality are almost equal strength and number of users in both the sectors are comparable, then the achievable throughput by such a user almost doubles compared to the single link communication. Figure 1 describes the impact of the SCML operation on the users located differently. The cell-edge users, UE1 and UE2, gain due to SCML since they are able to add a second downlink from the neighboring base-station. The other UEs, in-cell users, are not able to add a second base-station in the downlink since the neighboring base-station transmissions would be too weak near the centre. This leads cost to in-cell users and the overall cell throughout which can be balanced by coordination between basestations as described in the next section.

BWCI Newsletter

November 2011

Fairness in SCML system

Though the objective of SCML is to improve the throughput of the cell-edge users, it also impacts the other users in the cell depending on the new loading and traffic mix conditions due to SCML users. Users at cell edge are able to benefit from transmissions from more than one base-stations that are operating independently but within the same cell now more users contend for the same resources, leading to unfairness to its non-SCML users. This could lead to throughput degradation for the non-SCML users depending on the new traffic mix and loading. Also, since the SCML users are typically located in poor geometries, the throughput gained by SCML users due to additional scheduling opportunities they receive on the additional link would be less as compared to the throughput that could have been served to the in-cell or non-SCML users had they been scheduled. This can lead to degradation in the overall cell throughput. To address this issue, there is a need of exchange of the information (for e.g throughput served, loading w.r.t to other users, etc ) of a SCML user between its the serving base-stations. This additional information could be used to manage the resource allotted to the SCML users with a fairness that does not impact the nonSCML users significantly. A related challenge to be considered in this co-operation scheme is the additional backhaul bandwidth required to exchange the feedback, which needs study and evaluation through system simulations. To enable coordination through exchange of feedback information between different basestations,, changes have been proposed to the EVDO/HRPD standards.

Figure 2 describes the mechanism of coordination between the basestations by exchange of feedback information. The throughput served to the SCML UEs can be controlled depending on this additional information. E.g: If Cell A determines that UE1(SCML UE) is already getting sufficiently, per the QoS needs, served by Cell B, then it may choose to reduce the opportunities for downlink transmissions to UE1 in favor of other non-SCML UEs in the cell. This will mitigate the losses as experienced by the non-SCML UEs and also improve the cell throughput.

Alcatel Lucent and Reliance IITM Telecom Centre of Excellence (RITCOE) are jointly working towards introducing this mechanism and evaluating the information to be exchange in through system simulations in cooperation with other companies. The joint contributions to 3GPP2 are available in public domain at www.3gpp2.org.

BWCI Newsletter

November 2011

Synchronisation Issues in TD-LTE Systems

J Klutto Milleth, Babu Narayanan (CEWiT)

Background: Indian operators are all set to roll out the Wireless Broadband services based on TD-LTE technology. They will be using the BWA spectrum auctioned in June 2010 for delivering the services. It is a TDD spectrum, unlike the ones that have been used till now for 2G and 3G services, which are FDD bands. In TDD bands, both downlink and uplink use the same frequencies in different time slots, where as FDD bands use different frequencies for uplink and downlink separated by sufficient margin. During the BWA auction, two operators were allotted a block of 20 MHz each in every circle, all in the 2.3 GHz band apart from the 20 MHz given to the state owned operators in the 2.6 GHz band. In around 10 circles, the gap between the blocks allotted to the operators is just 2.5 MHz. Apart from the synchronization issues, deployment of TD-LTE in these bands thus poses an additional challenge to engineers in meeting the filtering requirements of the system. This is unique to the TDD spectrum based deployment and has not been faced by Indian operators till now while rolling out 2G/3G networks. Issues of synchronization in TD-LTE systems In TD-LTE systems, the eNodeB transmits for certain time duration while the UE receives after which UE transmits for certain dime duration while eNodeB receives, all using the same frequencies. When more than one eNodeB transmits to their UEs that are not frame synchronized and /or using frame with different UL:DL configuration in adjacent bands, there can be severe interference caused to each others signals in such a way that it may not be possible for the receiver to process the wanted signal. This phenomenon is called as receiver saturation or blocking, which depends on the transmit power and distance between the interfering eNodeBs and between the interfering UEs. This interference is in addition to the normal interference caused between eNodeB and UE pair in the DL and UL due to spectrum reuse. The two scenarios are shown below: a) eNodeBs without frame synchronization b) eNodeBs with different UL:DL configurations

These eNodeBs can be either from two different operators sharing the same tower or with single operator using heterogeneous network where a low power pico eNodeB is overlaid within the regular macro eNodeB coverage area. In the former case the guard bands available between the frequencies used by these eNodeBs may not be sufficient to avoid the interference, as will be the case in India. These lead to scenarios where an eNodeB or UE gets signals from the unwanted transmitters as given below. The figure shows the relative strengths of wanted and unwanted signals. The following are situations where the strength of unwanted signal is significantly higher than the wanted signal in such a way that the receiver will not be able to process the wanted signal.

BWCI Newsletter

November 2011

Two co-located operators operating in adjacent bands UE of Operator-1 is receiving while a nearby UE of Operator-2 is transmitting eNodeB of Operator-1 is receiving while eNodeB of Operator-2 is transmitting UE of Operator-2 is receiving while a nearby UE of Operator-1 is transmitting eNodeB of Operator-2 is receiving while eNodeB of Operator-1 is transmitting

Single operator operating in same carrier with hetnet deployment UE associated to eNodeB is receiving while an adjacent UE associated to HeNodeB is transmitting UE associated to HeNodeB is receiving while an adjacent UE associated to eNodeB is transmitting HeNodeB is receiving while eNodeB is transmitting

Single operator operating in same carrier in adjacent cells with Macro deployment UE associated to eNodeB1 is receiving while an adjacent UE associated to eNodeB2 is transmitting UE associated to eNodeB2 is receiving while an adjacent UE associated to eNodeB1 is transmitting

The net effect of this interference is that it will give a significant impact on the efficiency and the overall throughput in the network.

Solutions Frame synchronization can be achieved by appropriate synchronization techniques across the eNodeBs such as using GPS or IEEE 1588v2. Both techniques have their own merits and drawbacks. A common approach has to be evolved and deployed across the operators in the country. The issue of using different UL/DL configurations across operators or across multiple carriers of same operator will be mitigated if the operators adopt the same UL/DL configuration. However this limit on the choice and flexibility for the operator to choose the UL:DL configuration will not be considered as a good solution. A better approach is required for the operator to choose different UL:DL ratio with minimum coordination if at all necessary. CEWiT is working on such techniques and plans to take the solutions to the 3GPP standards. Since India is in the forefront of TD-LTE deployment, it is the onus of the Indian industry to innovate and ensure that the solutions arrived at get into the global standards. It is also time that the various players work together to find ways to overcome the issues and get the best out of the TD-LTE networks. BWCI as an industry-academic consortium is trying to facilitate the same.

BWCI Newsletter

November 2011