The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

Uplink Control Channel Design for 3GPP LTE

Amitava Ghosh, Rapeepat Ratasuk,
Weimin Xiao

Brian Classon, Vijay Nangia

Robert Love, Dale Schwent, David

Wilson

Motorola Networks

Motorola Labs

Motorola Mobile Devices

1501 West Shure Drive, Arlington Heights, IL

60004, USA

1301 E. Algonquin Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60196,

USA

600 North US Highway 45, Libertyville, IL

60048, USA

Abstract Long term evolution (LTE) of the UMTS

Terrestrial Radio Access and Radio Access Network is
aimed for commercial deployment in 2010. Goals for the
evolved system include support for improved system
capacity and coverage, high peak data rates, low latency,
reduced operating costs, multi-antenna support, flexible
bandwidth operations and seamless integration with
existing systems. To reach these goals, a new design for the
air interface is currently being specified in the 3GPP
standards body. The Uplink (UL) for LTE is based on
Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access. The UL
control channel carries non-data associated control
signaling like CQI, ACK/NACK, Scheduling request etc.
To maintain the low PA power de-rating, the single carrier
property of the UL has to be maintained. As such, special
consideration should be given to the UL control channel
design. This paper discusses in detail the LTE UL control
channel design and its performance.
I. Introduction
Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) is
aimed at commercial deployment around 2010 timeframe.
Long term goals for the system include support for high peak
data rates (100 Mbps downlink and 50 Mbps uplink), low
latency (10ms round-trip delay), improved system capacity and
coverage, reduced operating costs, multi-antenna support,
efficient support for packet data transmission, flexible
bandwidth operations (up to 20 MHz) and seamless integration
with existing systems. To reach these goals, a new design for
the air interface is envisioned. Single-Carrier Frequency
Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) is selected to efficiently
meet E-UTRA performance requirements for Uplink (UL). SCFDMA has many similarities to OFDM, chief among them is
that frequency domain orthogonality is maintained among
intra-cell users. SC-FDMA also has a low power amplifier derating (Cubic Metric / PAPR) requirement, thereby conserving
battery life or extending range. The UL control channel is
designed to carry non-data associated control signaling like
CQI, ACK/NACK, Scheduling Request (SR) etc. To maintain
the single carrier property of the UL special consideration
should be given to UL control channel design. This paper
provides a detailed view on LTE UL control channel design
and its performance.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, an
overview of E-UTRA uplink structure and frame format is
provided. Section III, provides a summary of the uplink control
signaling. In Section IV, multiplexing details of uplink control

1-4244-1144-0/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE.

signaling in the presence of data is discussed.

conclusions are drawn in Section V.

Finally,

II. Overview of SC-FDMA UL

In the uplink, Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
Access (SC-FDMA) is selected to efficiently meet E-UTRA
performance requirements. SC-FDMA has many similarities to
OFDM, chief among them for the uplink is that frequency
domain orthogonality is maintained among intra-cell users to
manage the amount of interference seen at the base station. SCFDMA also has a low power amplifier de-rating (Cubic Metric
/ PAPR) requirement, thereby conserving battery life or
extending range.
The baseline SC-FDMA signal is DFT-Spread OFDM
(DFT-SOFDM) [2] as shown in Figure 1. The only difference
from OFDM is the addition of the M-point FFT (DFT) in the
figure which spreads M symbols onto the M subcarriers
selected by the symbol to subcarrier mapping. The selected
subcarriers must also be either adjacent or evenly spaced to
maintain the low PA power de-rating. The signal is considered
single carrier as the first M-point FFT and the larger N-point
IFFT cancel each other resulting in a single carrier signal in the
time domain. The receiver can use simple frequency domain
equalization.

Figure 1 - Block diagram for DFT-SOFDM.

An advantage for DFT-SOFDM as a SC-FDMA technique
is that the numerology can match the OFDM downlink, with
excellent spectral occupancy due to the IFFT providing pulse
shaping of the signal. Table 1 provides the uplink subframe
numerology for different spectrum allocations. The OFDM
numerology provides for an additional vacant DC subcarrier to
simplify some receiver architectures; a vacant subcarrier
cannot be used with DFT-SOFDM without affecting the low
PA de-rating property of DFT-SOFDM. In this case, normal
cyclic prefix is applied as shown in the table. An alternate
frame structure with extended cyclic prefix length of 16.67 s
is available to handle large cells.

The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

III. UL Control Signaling

Table 1. Parameters for UL transmission scheme.

SC-FDMA
(s/#of occupied subcarriers
/samples)

20

66.67/1200/2048

15

66.67/900/1536

10

66.67/600/1024

66.67/300/512

66.67/144/256

1.4

66.67/72/128

CP duration
(s)

(4.69 s) 12,
(5.21 s) 2

The physical uplink shared channel is defined by one

subframe and the parameters NTx and k0, used in the generation
of the SC-FDMA signal. The variables NTx and k0, determining
the transmission bandwidth and the frequency hopping
pattern, respectively, are under control of the uplink scheduler
and may vary on a per-sub-frame basis. The number of SCFDMA symbols in a slot depends on the cyclic prefix length
configured by higher layers. The uplink slot format (a subframe consists of two slots) with normal cyclic prefix (CP) is
shown in Figure 2 with seven SC-FDMA symbols. For frames
with extended cyclic prefix, only six SC-FDMA symbols are
present. The uplink supports QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM
modulation.
Tcp

Td
LB
Data

LB
RS
0.5 ms

Figure 2. Uplink slot format.

Two types of reference signals (RS) are supported on the
uplink - (a) demodulation reference signal, associated with
transmission of uplink data and/or control signaling and (b)
sounding reference signal, not associated with uplink data
transmission used mainly for channel quality determination if
channel dependent scheduling is used. Orthogonality of
reference signals is obtained via frequency domain
multiplexing onto distinct set of sub-carriers. The RS
sequence length is equal to the number of sub-carriers in the
resource blocks. The RS sequence is generated either by
truncation or cyclic extension of ZC (Zadoff-Chu) sequences
depending on the allocation size. It was observed that for a
given size, neither truncation nor cyclic extension was the best.
Many options exist for selecting either truncation or cyclic
extension RS construction method, including:
1. Choose the method that for a given resource block (RB)
size minimizes the amount of truncation or cyclic extension,
2. Choose the method that for a given RB size
maximizes the number of sequences with Cubic Metric <= the
target data modulation (e.g., QPSK).

In principle, uplink control signaling can be divided into two

categories: data-associated and data non-associated control
signaling. Data-associated control signaling is always
transmitted with and used in the processing of data packet.
Examples of this control signaling include transport format,
new data indicator, and MIMO parameters. In LTE it was
agreed that this type of control signaling is not necessary.
Control signaling not associated with data is transmitted
independently of uplink data packet. Examples of this control
signaling include ACK/NACK, CQI, and MIMO codeword
feedback. When users have simultaneous uplink data and
control transmission, control signaling is multiplexed with data
prior to the DFT to preserve the single-carrier property in
uplink transmission. In the absence of uplink data
transmission, this control signaling is transmitted in a reserved
frequency region on the band edge as shown in Figure 3. Note
that additional control regions may be defined as needed.

Figure 3. Control regions for uplink.

Allocation of control channels with their small occupied
bandwidth to carrier band edge resource blocks reduces out of
carrier band emissions cause by data resource allocations on
inner band resource blocks and maximizes the frequency
diversity benefit for frequency diverse control channel
allocations while preserving the single carrier property of the
uplink waveform. This FDM allocation of control resources to
outer carrier band edge allows an increase in the maximum
power level as shown in Figure 4 as well as maximizes the
assignable uplink data rate since inserting control regions with
consecutive subcarriers in the central portion of a carrier band
requires that the time+frequency resources on either side of the
control region to be assigned to different UEs.
28.0

Max Power Level (dBm)

Spectrum
Allocation
(MHz)

QPSK - 5MHz, Band Edge RBs for Data

27.0

16QAM - 5MHz, Band Edge RBs for Data

QPSK - 5MHz, Band Edge RBs for Ctl

26.0

16QAM - 5MHz, Band Edge RBs for Ctl

25.0

Max Power Practical Limitation due to EVM

and other considerations

24.0
23.0
22.0
0

10

12

#RBs of size 25 subcarriers

Figure 4. Increase in maximum power level if control is

mapped to band edge.

14

The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

Table 2 provides the required quality targets for uplink control

signaling.
Table 2. Uplink control signaling target quality.
Event

Target quality

ACK miss detection

(1e-2)

DTX to ACK error

(1e-2)

NACK to ACK error

(1e-4)

CQI block error rate

FFS (1e-2 1e-1)

A. Channel Quality Information

The CQI structure is shown in Figure 5. The transmission
spans the entire 1ms sub-frame and up to six users may be
multiplexed within the sub-frame via different cyclic shifts of a
Constant Amplitude Zero Auto-Correlation (CAZAC)
sequence, e.g. Zadoff-Chu sequence. Data is modulated on top
of the CAZAC sequence using QPSK modulation.

perform joint channel estimation and decoding. This in turn

depends on the number of CQI bits to be supported. Two types
of receivers are possible Type 1: Channel estimation is first done based on the
reference signals, and then CQI decoding is
performed based on these channel estimates.
Type 2: Channel estimation and decoding is done
jointly using all possible CQI codewords. While this
receiver is more complicated than Type 1 receiver,
complexity is manageable for the CQI codeword
length being considered.
Performance comparison between the two receiver types is
shown in Figure 4 with Type 2 outperforming Type 1 receiver
by approximately 2-3 dB. This is because, for this receiver,
channel estimation is aided by CQI codeword detection.
However, as shown in Figure 5, two reference signals per slot
were chosen so as not to mandate particular receiver
architecture at the Node B.
10-bit CQI, TU, QPSK, Non-Ideal Chan Est

10

3 km/h
120 km/h
350 km/h

-1

BLER

10

10

The number of CQI bits may vary between 5-10 bits depending
on whether wideband or narrowband CQI reports are
transmitted. However, larger CQI reports may be transmitted
using multiple subframes. In addition, repetition may be used
to ensure reliable reception from cell edge users. An example
of CQI performance is shown in Figure 6 for various coding
schemes.

10

CQI (5-bit, 10-bit), TU, QPSK, Receiver Type 2, Non-Ideal Chan Est

10

-1

BLER

10

-2

10

5-bit CQI, (32,10) Reed-Muller

5-bit CQI, Convolutional
5-bit CQI, (24,12) Golay
10-bit CQI, (32,10) Reed-Muller
10-bit CQI, Convolutional
10-bit CQI, (24,12) Golay

-3

10

-4 0017

10

-20

-15

-10
SNR per antenna (dB)

-5

Receiver Type 2
(24,10), 1 RS

-2

Figure 5. CQI channel structure.

Figure 6. CQI performance with various coding schemes.

It should be noted that the number of reference signals required
depends on the feasibility of using an advanced receiver to

Receiver Type 1
(20,10), 2 RS

-3

-15

-10
-5
SNR (dB) per antenna

Figure 7. CQI performance with advanced receiver.

B. ACK/NACK
Figure 8 illustrates the ACK/NACK channel structure.
Note that in this case only acknowledgment is present (no CQI
or data). To provide the maximum number of multiplexed
users, both frequency domain and time domain code
multiplexing are used. In the frequency domain, different
cyclic shifts of a CAZAC sequence are used to differentiate
users. For instance, with sequence length of 12 corresponding
to one resource block, 6 available cyclic shifts are possible. In
the time domain, block spreading is used to further multiplex
additional users. For instance, within each cyclic shift of a
Zadoff-Chu sequence, reference signals are multiplexed using
DFT code of length 3 while the acknowledgments are
multiplexed using Walsh-Hadamard code of length 4. As a
result, acknowledgments from 18 different users may be
multiplexed within one resource block. The ACK/NACK is
then modulated onto the frequency and time-spread sequence.
Both 1-bit and 2-bit acknowledgements are supported using
BPSK and QPSK modulations.

The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)
5-bit CQI, TU (3 km/h), Receiver Type 2, Non-Ideal Chan Est

10

CQI BLER - (20,5) Code

1-bit ACK/NACK SER

-1

Error Rate

10

Figure 8. ACK/NACK structure - users are multiplexed using

different cyclic shifts and time-domain spreading.

-3

10

Figure 9 shows performance of 1-bit acknowledgments from

18 multiplexed users. Although not shown here, for 2-bit
acknowledgments the performance is approximately 3dB
worse.
0

-2

10

-4

10

-12

-10

-8

-6
-4
SNR (dB) per antenna

-2

Figure 10. Performance of 5-bit CQI and 1-bit ACK/NACK

(BPSK) at TU 3 km/h.

ACK/NACK Performance - 18 users, GSM-TU (3 km/h)

10

3 km/h

IV. Multiplexing of Control and Data

-1

BER

10

-2

10

-3

10

-4

10

-20

-18

-16

-14
SNR (dB)

-12

-10

-8

Figure 9. Performance of 1-bit acknowledgments (BPSK) at

TU 3 km/h.
C. CQI + ACK/NACK
When CQI and ACK/NACK are to be transmitted
simultaneously, they are coded separately and multiplexed in a
TDM fashion. This allows greater control of CQI and
ACK/NACK error requirements, and the ability to multiplex
ACK/NACK into CQI reports that are transmitted in multiple
sub-frames (either for large CQI report or through the use of
repetition) once CQI transmission has started.
Figure 10
illustrates the performance of 5-bit CQI + ACK/NACK under
TU 3 km/h channel with realistic channel estimation. In this
case, one SC-FDMA symbol per slot was used for
ACK/NACK.
As an alternative, scheduling restriction may be used to
ensure that CQI and ACK/NACK will not be transmitted in the
same sub-frame. However, this may place unnecessary and
complicated constraint on the scheduler. Alternately, only
ACK/NACK can be transmitted (CQI is not transmitted in the
sub-frame). This may result in some scheduling and resource
allocation efficiency loss as some CQI reports will be lost.

To preserve the single-carrier property of uplink

transmission, L1/L2 control signaling must be multiplexed
with data prior to the DFT when both data and control are to be
transmitted in the same TTI. This may be performed as shown
in Figure 11 where uplink data is uniformly punctured to
provide room for control signaling. Naturally, in case of turbo
coding, puncturing is only performed on the parity bits. Since
the Node B has prior knowledge of uplink control signaling
transmission, it can easily de-multiplex control and data
packets. In addition, a power boosting factor may be applied
when data is punctured to ensure similar data packet
performance to when control is absent. This is especially
important in the case of re-transmission since the data MCS
cannot be changed due to synchronous H-ARQ operation in the
uplink. This appropriate power boosting factor (in the order of
0.5-1.5dB) can be calculated based on the coding rate
reduction resulting from puncturing. With appropriate power
adjustment there should be little effect on the H-ARQ
performance at the receiver. Of course, power boosting is not
possible when the UE is power-limited (e.g. at the cell edge).

Data

Puncturing /
Insertion

DFT

Sub-carrier
Mapping

IFFT

CP
Insertion

N TX symbols
Control

Gain
Factor

Size-NTX

Size-N FFT

Figure 11. Multiplexing of control signaling with data.

Figure 12 illustrates typical performance degradation due to
turbo-code puncturing for both QPSK and 16-QAM. From the
figure, it is seen that the performance loss depends on the
initial coding rate. However, it may be observed that in
general the amount of resources required to accommodate
control information is small and less than 1dB degradation can
be expected. As a result, appropriate power boosting should be
comfortably accommodated unless the UE is already in a
power-limited situation (e.g. cell edge transmission).

The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

variable size which must be taken care of by the rate-matching

algorithm.

4
QPSK
16-QAM

3.5
3
Puncturing Penalty (dB)

CQI

Coding

Repetition

2.5

MUX

Modulation

1.5
ACK

Coding

Repetition

Figure 14. Mapping to multiple codewords.

0.5
0
-0.5

0.35

0.4

0.45

0.5

0.55
0.6
Code Rate

0.65

0.7

0.75

0.8

Figure 12. Performance loss due to puncturing (turbo code).

Since both control and data must be transmitted with the
same power, reliable reception of control information can be
achieved through appropriate selection of modulation and
coding. Since these control fields are generally small,
codeword mapping is use to provide additional protection.
Subsequent to codeword mapping, repetition (if necessary) and
modulation selection are performed according to information
about the channel. Obviously, this selection can be tied to the
MCS of the data block to aid in the decoding. In addition, it
should also depend on the uplink data transmission method (LFDMA or L-FDMA with hopping). This is because these two
localized transmission methods have different target error rates
for the same selected MCS. As a result, control power
requirement relative to the two transmission methods is
different.
Two possible codeword mappings for the control signaling
are as follows
(a) Single codeword: In this case, all control fields are
mapped into a single codeword (i.e. jointly coded) as shown in
Figure 13. If all fields are not present, dummy input values are
inserted which are then ignored at the Node B. Alternatively,
the UE may use the available fields to transmit some additional
information based on an agreed upon methodology (e.g. UE
that does not support MIMO may transmit wideband CQI in
the MIMO field). This results in codeword of the same length
which may simplify the multiplexing and de-multiplexing
process. However, with this approach it may be difficult to
satisfy performance requirements of different control fields.
Also, overhead is higher.
(CQI, ACK, MIMO, ...)

Coding

Repetition

Modulation

Figure 13. Mapping to one codeword.

(b) Multiple codewords: In this case, each control field is
individually mapped to a codeword with its own repetition
factor as shown in Figure 14. This allows individual
adjustments of transmission energy using different coding and
repetition so that performance of each control field can be
controlled. However, this results in a control portion of

Since control is multiplexed with data prior to the DFT,

appropriate modulation and coding selection for control is
required for reliable reception. As a result, the amount of
coded data to be punctured is variable based upon the MCS
selected for control. In this case, rate matching may be done in
one step. With one-step rate matching, the number of bits
punctured for control is factored in when computing the
effective coding rate.
V. Conclusions

This paper provided an overview of the UL control channel

design for 3GPP LTE.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]

3GPP TR 25.913, Requirements for Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA) and

Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN), v.7.3.0, March 2006.
3GPP TR 25.814, Physical Layer Aspects for Evolved UTRA, v.2.0.0,
June 2006.
R1-070777, E-UTRA Multiplexing of UL Control Signaling with Data,
Motorola, RAN1#48, St. Louis, USA, Feb 2007.
R1-070394, Multiplexing of L1/L2 control signals between UEs in the
absence of data, Nokia, RAN1#47bis, Sorrento, Italy, Jan. 2007.
R1-070782, Multiplexing of UL L1/L2 control signals in the absence of
data, Motorola, RAN1#48, St. Louis, USA, Feb 2007.
R1-070162, EUTRA UL L1/L2 Control Channel Mapping, Motorola,
RAN1#47bis, Sorrento, Italy, Jan. 2007.
R1-070778, CQI Feedback Overhead with CDM Uplink Control
Channel Region, Motorola, RAN1#48, St. Louis, USA, Feb 2007.
R1-070275, Ack/Nack transmission without reference signal overheadin
E-UTRA UL, TI, RAN1#47bis, Sorrento, Italy, Jan. 2007.
R1-070472, Uplink control Signaling Summary of e-mail
discussions, Ericsson, RAN1#47bis, Sorrento, Italy, Jan. 2007.

Note 3GPP documents may be downloaded from ftp://ftp.3gpp.org