3GPP TSG RAN WG1 Meeting #41 Athens, Greece, 9 13 May, 2005

Agenda Item: Source: Title: Document for: 13.2 Huawei Soft Frequency Reuse Scheme for UTRAN LTE Discussion

R1-050507

1 Introduction
The objective of UTRA evolution study item is to develop a framework for the evolution of the 3GPP radio-access technology towards a high-data-rate, low-latency and packet-optimized radio-access technology [1]. The new requirements on higher spectrum efficiency and increased data rate at the cell edge, along with consideration of alternative transmission technologies such as OFDM, open the question of the frequency reuse factor in EUTRA. In this contribution we show some benefits of the so-called soft reuse scheme for the application in the EUTRA along with multi-carrier based transmission technologies, such as OFDM for example. The optimum reuse factor at the cell edge is analysed in Section 2. The soft frequency reuse scheme, which is characterised by frequency reuse factor 1 in the central region of a cell, and by frequency reuse factor greater than 1 at the outward cell region close to the cell edge, is defined in details in the Section 3. The benefits of soft reuse scheme are pointed out in section 4. Finally, some conclusions are given in Section 5.

2 Frequency Reuse Factor Analysis

In a multi-carrier telecommunication system, the frequency reuse can be achieved in 2 ways: 1. 2. Carrier method: different carriers in different cell, same to traditional frequency reuse method. Sub-carrier method: same carrier and different sub-carriers in different cell which illustrated in Fig. 1.

In a wireless cellular communication system, the signal to interference ratio (SIR) can be generally described as:

SIR =

Pint ra cell

Prx + Pint er cell + Pn

(1)

P rx : the received power of the expected user signal

P int ra cell : inner cell interference power

P int er cell : other cell interference power

P n : white noise power
We assume that advanced MA scheme or receiver is used, the intra-cell interference is eliminated, and the SIR representation can be simplified as:

SIR =

Pint er cell +

Pn reuse _ factor

Prx

(2)

In case of flat fading channel, according to the Shannons theorem, the channel capacity is given as:

C=

W log 2 (1 + SIR ) reuse _ factor

(3)

b- r su r i e r ca

po w er de ns it y

BS 2

sub car ri e r pow er den si t y

M S2 M S3

BS 1

M S1

Fig.1 Sub-carrier frequency reuse scheme

Tab 1 RF Parameters Used in Computation

Parameters Carrier Bandwidth W (MHz) White noise power density (dBm/Hz) Receiver Noise Figure (dB) White noise power (dBm) Tx power (dBm) Cell Radius (km) Path loss Model (dB)

Value 20 -174

Computation Equation A B

5 -96 45 1.0 137.3

C D=10*log(A)+B+C E F G137.3 + 35.2*log(F)

According the above equations and RF parameters, we calculate the SIR and channel capacity at the cell edge. A 27 cell network is used for computations, as shown in Fig. 2. Mobile stations are located at the intersection of 3 adjacent cells which are represented by the red dot. In the network, the transmitting power of the serving and interfering cell is 45dBm.

ca sub rr ie r
BS3

er w po

it ns de

C16 C15 C4 C 8 C2 C 7 C6 C14 C13 C12 C1 C11 C3 C5 C18 C9 C10 C17

Fig.2 Network deployment used in the computation

The SIR and cell edge channel capacity variation with the reuse factor are depicted in the following Fig. 3 and Fig.4 respectively.

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 -6 1 2 3 4 reuse f act or
Fig.3 SIR at the cell edge

C el l edge SI R ( dB)

C el l edge channel capaci t y (M bps)

20 15 10 5 0 1 2 3 4 reuse f act or
Fig.4 Channel Capacity at the cell edge

From the above two Figures, some arguments are listed below: 1. 2. 3. Smaller the reuse factor corresponds to larger available bandwidth for each cell, and lower signal to interference (SIR) due to co-channel interference. On the contrary, larger reuse factor corresponds to smaller available bandwidth and higher SIR. In the case of reuse factor is 1 or 2, due to the co-channel interference from the adjacent cell, the SIR at cell edge are -4.4dB and -1.1dB respectively, which are very low. This is the reason for a low channel capacity at the cell edge, which are 8~9Mbps. In the case of reuse factor is 3, due to the elimination of co-channel interference from the adjacent cell, there is an obvious improvement in the SIR at the cell edge. The SIR value reaches 5.89dB in the computation example. Although the available bandwidth is 1/3 of the total bandwidth, the gain in SIR can counteract the loss in the bandwidth; the channel capacity reaches 15Mbps, which is near double of the capacity at the case of reuse factor 1. With the increase of reuse factor, the co-channel interference continues to decrease, and so the SIR continues to improve. However, the increments of SIR can not counteract the loss in bandwidth, so the channel capacity decreases. In the computation example, the intra-cell interference is not considered. Here, the assumption is that the intracell interference can be eliminated by advanced multiple access scheme such as OFDM, MC-CDMA and advanced receiver algorithm such as frequency domain equalizer, etc. The main noise comes mainly from cochannel interference from other cell and white noise. However, in the traditional CDMA/RAKE receiver system, the premise does not exist. The intra-cell interference is the main contributor of the noise, so the reuse factor 1 is the optimal choice in that case. After the reuse factor exceeds 3, the channel capacity at the cell edge decrease at a relatively slow rate, and remain above the channel capacity of reuse factor 1 and 2. However, higher reuse factor leads to a low cochannel interference and high SIR. This means the noise-resistant capability is poor. The unpredictable noise, such as environment noise will result in a sharp decrease in the SIR and channel capacity.

4. 5.

6.

3 Soft Frequency Reuse Scheme

The analysis of above sections shows that, the inter-cell interference at the cell edge is greatly reduced through frequency reuse, and so improves the channel capacity. When the mobile station is near the antenna of the base station, the received power of the wanted user signal is strong, and the interference from other cell is weak. So at the inner part of the cell, all the sub-carriers can be used to achieve high data rate communication. The soft frequency reuse scheme is characterised by frequency reuse factor 1 in the central region of a cell, and by frequency reuse factor greater than 1 at the outward cell region close to the cell edge. An example of soft frequency reuse scheme is illustrated in Fig. 5.

b- s Su rier r ca

po w e rd en sit y

BS 2

subcarr ier

M S 22

BS 1

Pow er d e

M S 21

nsit y
M S 12 M S 11

M S 31

M S 32

Soft frequency reuse scheme in a multi-carrier system

In the above figure, mobile station 11 and 12 are linked to base station 1, mobile station 21 and 22 are linked to base station 2, and mobile station 31 and 32 are linked to base station 3. Mobile station 11, 21 and 31 are located at the intersection of 3 cells, mobile station 12, 22 and 32 are at the inner part of their respective cells. For the mobile station at the cell edge, different sub-carriers are allocated to them to avoid the co-channel interference. For the mobile stations near the base station, all the sub-carriers can be allocated to them to achieve high data rate. In this scheme, the frequency reuse factor is 3 for the cell edge and 1 for the inner part of the cell. For the inner part of the cell, through the limitation of the transmission power, some isolated islands are formed and do not interference each other. Fig.6 illustrates numerically the benefits of soft frequency reuse scheme.
60 Bi t Rat e( M bps) 50 40 30 20 10 0 15. 2 0. 0 0 10. 5 16. 3 0. 1 25. 1 0. 2 8. 1 6. 6 31. 0 5. 6 35. 6 4. 9 39. 3 4. 3 3. 9 3. 5 3. 2 3. 0 cel l edge bi t rat e i nner cel l bi t r at e

s ca ubrri er
BS 3

Po

rd we

s en

ity

42. 3

45. 0 47. 3

49. 4

51. 3

0. 3

0. 4

0. 5

0. 6

0. 7

0. 8

0. 9

Pi nner- cel l / Pcel l - edge

Fig.1 Cell throughput in soft frequency reuse scheme

The three mobile stations are located at the intersection of 3 cells, and 1/3 of the total bandwidth of 20MHz is allocated to each of them. Another 3 mobile stations are located at the position with the distance to their server base station being half of the cell radius, and 2/3 of the total 20MHz bandwidth are assigned to them. In Fig.6, the horizontal axis

represents the transmission power spectrum density ratio of inner cell to the cell-edge. The numerical example shows the following results: 1. 2. 3. When the power ratio is 0, the cell edge bit rate is 15.2Mbps, which is equivalent to the case of reuse factor 3. When the power ratio increase, the inner cell bit rate increases, and the cell edge bit rate decrease due to the increase of co-channel interference. However, the total throughput of the cell increases. When the power ratio reaches to 1, the cell-edge bit rate decreases to 2.96Mbps. This result corresponds to 1/3 of the cell edge bit rate at reuse factor 1. Because in this case the interference condition at the cell edge is same to reuse factor 1 and the bandwidth is 1/3 of the total bandwidth.

Through the adjustment of power spectrum density ratio from 0 to 1, the frequency reuse factor changes from 3 to 1 gradually. This is the reason why scheme can be called soft frequency reuse scheme.

4 Benefits of soft frequency reuse scheme

The benefits of the soft frequency reuse scheme include the following: Improved bit rate at cell edge; High bit rate at the cell centre; Avoid interference at the cell edge, so the following procedure is easier: Channel estimation Synchronisation Cell selection and reselection

Gives coordination for the scheduling in different NodeBs and make the algorithm more stable and efficient; No need for the resource coordination of different NodeBs in RNC(or corresponding node above Node B) in the fixed resource allocation method; If dynamic resource allocation algorithm are used in the node above Node B, load balancing in different cells can be achieved; No need for the communication of different NodeBs;

5 Conclusion
The combination of the frequency reuse factor 1 in the inner part of a cell, and the frequency reuse factor 3 at the outer ring of the cell, called soft frequency reuse scheme, is shown to improve both spectrum efficiency and the cell edge data rate in a EUTRA system based on multi-carrier transmission technology. It seems that this principle should be taken into account at the early stage of the EUTRA multiple access design, for both the UL and DL.

6 References
[1] Proposed Study Item on Evolved UTRA and UTRAN, RP-040461. [2] M.Sternad, T.Ottoson, A. Ahln and A.Svensson, Attaining both Coverage and High Spectral Efficiency with Adaptive OFDM Downlinks, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference VTC2003-Fall, Orlando, Florida, Oct. 2003