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Impact of Angular Spread on Higher Order Sectorization in WCDMA

Systems

Conference Paper · October 2005

DOI: 10.1109/PIMRC.2005.1651447 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 Impact of Angular Spread on Higher Order Sectorization in WCDMA Systems
Afif Osseiran, Andrew Logothetis
Ericsson Research, SE-164 80 Stockholm, Sweden
{Afif.Osseiran,Andrew.Logothetis}@ericsson.com
Abstract— This paper analyzes higher order sectorization
(HOS) in WCDMA. Sectorization is achieved by splitting the
sites into smaller sectors using highly directional antennas. The
impact of angular spread on the system throughput is evaluated
using a dynamic radio network simulator. Increasing the number
of sectors per site from 3 to 6 and 12 in a typical urban radio
channel, yields a downlink system capacity gain of 80% and
200% respectively. Simulations have shown that the increase
in the ratio of users in soft and softer handover per sector
is negligible and the impact of angular spread on the system
performance of a 6 and 12 sector sites is minor and negligible
for the 3 sector sites.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A well known method that increases the capacity of a
cellular system is sectorization. This is done by splitting the
sites into smaller sectors. The site splitting is achieved using
highly directional antennas, that provide higher antenna gains
for the served users in the cell and ensure reduced interference
to adjacent cells. When signals transverse a radio channel the
signals become subject to spatial and temporal dispersions.
The spatial distribution of the signal power is known as the
Power Azimuth Spread (PAS). The standard deviation of the
PAS is commonly referred to as the Angular Spread (AS).
The degree of AS directly impacts the signal strength at the
mobile and correlates the signal power from adjacent antennas.
As the angular spread increases the effective antenna gain
decreases. On the other hand, as the angular spread decreases
the variation of the signal power from adjacent Base Station
(BS) antennas becomes increasingly correlated.
The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to investigate
the downlink (DL) system throughput gain going from a 3
sector to 6 or 12 sector sites in a WCDMA system, and
secondly to analyze the system degradation due to spatial
and temporal dispersions of the radio propagation channel.
Very few studies have evaluated the impact of AS on higher
order of sectorization. For instance, [1] and [2] assumed a
simplified AS model and evaluated sectorization using a static
simulator. Similarly, [3] and [4] used a static system simulation
with no soft handover or power control and simplified angular
spread modelling to evaluate sectorization. Recently [5] and
[6], evaluated sectorization using a Uniform Linear Array
(ULA) [5] in a dynamic system simulator but either did not
investigate the impact of AS [5] or did not even considered
it [6]. Finally, [7] reported only the gains that 12 sector sites
offers in terms of SIR using ULAs or circular arrays in a static
system simulator. In this paper, sectorization is evaluated in
a dynamic system simulation taking into account the impact
of AS in the system performance using an accurate intra- and
inter-cell interference modelling involving instantaneous SINR
calculations.
II. S YSTEM S ETUP
The simulated area consists of a central site and two
surrounding tiers of sites. The total number of sites is 19.
Each site comprises of 3, 6 or 12 sectors (i.e. cells). Users
are dynamically generated in the central site and the first tier
(which consists of 6 sites). The second tier consists of 12 sites
where no users are generated. Instead the Base Stations (BS)
power of the second tier is time varying and is modelled as
a random walk with upper and lower bounds determined by
the 90th and 10th percentile of the BSs power located in the
central site and first tier. An illustration of the simulated area is
drawn in Fig. 1. Each star represents a site where the center of
each star represents the site’s coordinates. The arrows indicate
the orientation of the cells. In Fig. 1, sites with 6 sectors are
assumed.
The site-to-site distance is 3 km. Note that the simulation
tool is similar to the one used in [8]. On each iteration of
the main loop, the simulator time is increased by the duration
of one frame and all radio network algorithms are executed,
except for the power control which is executed on a slot
level. The most relevant system parameters are summarized
in Table I.
System parameter Value
Number of sites 19
Site type: HOS 3, 6, 12 sectors per site
Site-to-site distance [m] 3000
Max TX power [W] 20 per sector
Channel model COST259, Typical Urban
Number of RAKE fingers 10
SF of the 64 kbps user 32
TABLE I
S YSTEM PARAMETERS .
A. Propagation Environment
The propagation model used is the COST 259 channel
model [9], which is a spatial temporal radio propagation
model that includes the effect of fast and slow fading. The
COST 259 version used in the current system simulator yields
an instantaneous Power Delay Profile (PDP) pm , the Rice
factor κm , and the angular spread σm for the mth link in the
system. The COST 259 can model several radio environments.
Here we investigate the Typical Urban (TU) channel model
which has a median AS of 8 degrees. In an urban environment
 where Nm , Gm , Pm and N0 denote the spreading factor, the
5000
path gain, the transmitted power to the mth user, and the
4000
thermal noise respectively. Po is the total BS power allocated
3000
to signals using the same scrambling code as m. Im is the
2000
interference from the non-orthogonal signals originating from
1000
the own cell and other cells. Finally αm is the downlink
Distance[m]

−1000
orthogonality factor, which represents the fraction of the
−2000
wide band received power of the orthogonal signals causing
−3000 interference to user m. It can be shown (see [11]) that the
−4000 orthogonality factor may be written as follows:
−5000

−6000 −4000 −2000 0 2000 4000 6000 F −1

nX
|rm,l [k]|2 /|rm,0 [k]|2
Distance[m]
αm [k] = (4)
l=−nH +1,l6=0
Fig. 1. The simulated cell plan for 6 sector sites.
where {rm,l [k] : l = −nH + 1, . . . , nF − 1} is the impulse
response of the combined effect of the transmit weights, radio
the power azimuth spectrum (PAS) is accurately described by channel and the receiver filter at time instance k. nH and
a Laplacian pdf [10], that is: nF are the channel length and number of receiver filter taps
respectively.
√ |θ − θm |
 
1
f (θ|θm , σm ) = √ exp − 2 (1)
2σm σm
where θm denotes the nominal direction to the mobile. Let D. Antenna Configuration:
a(θ) denote the spatial signature, i.e. the response of the BS The antenna configuration employed in this study consisted
antennas when a planar wave is impinging from an angle θ. of placing 3, 6 or 12 antennas equally spaced on a circle of
Given the PAS the user dependent channel correlation matrix radius r. The antenna patterns of the three, six and twelve
is given by sector antennas are shown in Fig. 2. The 3 dB beam-width of
Z ∞ the 3, 6 and 12 sector beams are 63◦ , 35◦ and 20◦ , respectively.
R(θm , σm ) = a(θ)aH (θ)f (θ|θm , σm )dθ (2)
−∞

The correlated channel impulse responses for the mth link can
straightforwardly be derived from Eq. (2). 25
3 Sector Ant
6 Sector Ant
20 12 Sector Ant

15
B. Receiver Structure
10
Each mobile is assumed to have a single receive antenna.
5
Furthermore, perfect channel estimation is assumed in the
Antenna Gain (dBi)

terminals. The terminals employ a conventional Maximum 0

Ratio Combining (MRC) receiver, i.e. a RAKE receiver with −5

10 fingers for the TU channel model. Power Control (PC) is −10

also implemented and consists of inner and outer loop. The
−15
inner loop power control and the fast fading act on slot level.
−20
The inner loop PC assumes ideal Signal to Interference plus
Noise Ratio (SINR) estimation (i.e. no measurement error is −25

considered). After the slot loop, the instantaneous SINR are −30
−150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150
averaged and mapped to a BLock Error Probability (BLEP). Angle (degrees)

Each block is then classified as erroneous or not, which gives

the block error rate (BLER) estimates. The BLER estimates Fig. 2. Gains for 3, 6, and 12 sector antennas.
are used by the outer loop algorithm in order to decide if the
SINR target should be increased or decreased.
Note that the COST259 channel model yields a position
C. Orthogonality factor dependent AS. In the TU case the 90th percentile of the AS
is 19 degrees, thus more severe losses in the effective antenna
As shown in [11], the SINR is a function of the orthog- gains are anticipated. As an example, Fig. 3 shows the effective
onality factor. The expected SINR for the mth user after antenna gains for a 12 sector site when AS is 8 degrees, which
despreading is generally modelled as follows corresponds to the median AS in the TU case. It is clear that
Nm Gm Pm AS results in reducing the maximum effective antenna gain
SINRm = (3) and widening of the main lobe.
αm Gm Po + Im + No
 Antenna Gain 12 sectors, respectively. Similar results for Q2 are obtained.
90
25
0 deg.
8 deg.
The results are summarized in Table III. Obviously, a narrower
120 60
20 beam is more susceptible to the effects of the angular spread.
15
150 30
Stream64k, PCPICH Tune=Off
10 65

60
180 0

55

Average user bitrate (kbps)

210 330 50

3Sec, AS0
45 6Sec, AS0
240 300
12Sec, AS0
3Sec, TU
270
6Sec, TU
40 12Sec, TU

35

Fig. 3. Antenna gains of a 12 sector site with and without AS.

30
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
Normalized system throughput

E. Mobility & Traffic Models

Fig. 4. Average user bit rate versus the relative system throughput in the
The mobile users are uniformly distributed in the cells. The TU and AS0 radio channels.
average user speed is 3 km/h with small variations around
the mean value. A poisson distribution time of arrival is
assumed for the users. Furthermore, the user session time is
Sectors Criterion Relative Gain
exponentially distributed with mean holding time of 5s. The 3 1.0
data are transmitted in a continuous stream (no TCP) using a 6 Q1 1.77
64kbps RAB (Radio Access Bearer) with retransmissions. 12 3.11
3 1.0
6 Q2 1.65
F. Performance Measure 12 3.13
The total system throughput is defined by the sum of TABLE II
correctly delivered bits to all users connected to the central site S YSTEM THROUGHPUT IN TU.
divided by the simulation period and the number of simulated
cells in the central site. The user bit rate is given by the ratio
of the total received bits over the length of the user’s session
Sectors Channel Relative Loss
time. The Quality of Service (QoS) depends on the user bit Q1 Q2
rate. Two QoS are defined, Q1: when 90 percent of the users 3 AS0 1.00 1.00
are guaranteed on the average 50kbps or better, and Q2: when TU 0.98 0.99
the average bit rate of all users is greater than 50kbps. The 6 AS0 1.00 1.00
system capacity is defined as the total system throughput when TU 0.90 0.95
the QoS is met1 . 12 AS0 1.00 1.00
TU 0.84 0.91
TABLE III
III. R ESULTS
R ELATIVE S YSTEM THROUGHPUT IN AS0 AND TU.
A. Impact of Angular Spread
The system performance is evaluated with and without
angular spread modelling. Fig. 4 shows the average user bit
rate versus the system throughput for 3, 6 and 12 sector sites. B. Power consumption
The system throughput results are normalized to the system
The cumulative density function (cdf) of the link and the
throughput of the 3 sector TU case and is summarized in Table
total BS power for two Offered Traffic (OT) loads (OT = 5
II. The performance when the standard deviation σm of the
and OT =10) are shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the
AS is set to zero, which is labelled as ”AS0” in Fig. 4, is also
link and BS power increased as the number of sectors per site
shown for 3, 6 and 12 sector sites. It is clear, based on Q1
increases. It has been observed (but not shown here) that the
that the AS induces a 2%, 10% and 16% system throughput
increase is mainly due to the inter-sector interference. In fact
loss in a TU channel compared to the AS0 case for 3, 6, and
the interference increases more rapidly due to the substantial
1 Absolute numbers depend on many parameters. The focus should be on increase of the number of users per site when going from 3
relative performance, instead. to 6 and to 12 sectors.
 Stream64k, TU, PCPICH Tune=Off
100 mobiles periodically report this measure. It is a common rule
80 to allocate 10% of the BS power to the P-CPICH, but from
60
3Sec, OT=5
3Sec, OT=10
analyzing Fig. 6, it can be seen that for low loads (OT=5),
6Sec, OT=5
90% of the users have a CIR around -15 dB and -14.5 dB
cdf

6Sec, OT=10
40 12Sec, OT=5
12Sec, OT=10 for 3 and 6 sectors per site, respectively. Hence less power
20
can be allocated to the P-CPICH without sacrificing the cell
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
coverage. Since the P-CPICH quality is load dependent, for
Total BS power (W)
high loads and certain antenna configurations, the P-CPICH
100 power needs to be increased.
80 The proposed tuning method is compared to the case when
60
the power of the P-CPICH is fixed at 33 dBm in Fig. 7. At high
loads (see Fig 7), it is clear that tuning the P-CPICH power
cdf

40
ensured that 90% of the users met their P-CPICH quality
20
regardless of the number of sectors, whereas for the fixed P-
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 CPICH power case, slightly less than 85% of the users were
Link power (W)
able to meet the required P-CPICH quality for the 6 and 12
Fig. 5. cdf of the link and the total BS power in the TU channel. sector sites.

Stream64k, TU, OT=15

100

C. Primary CPICH: Coverage and Tuning 3Sec, PCPICH Tune=On

6Sec, PCPICH Tune=On
90 12Sec, PCPICH Tune=On
3Sec, PCPICH Tune=Off
The cumulative density function of the CIR of the primary 80
6Sec, PCPICH Tune=Off
12Sec, PCPICH Tune=Off
control physical channel (P-CPICH) for various offered traffic
70
loads is shown in Fig. 6. A target of -16.5 dB is considered
more than adequate to detect the cell and perform measure- 60

ments on the P-CPICH [12].

cdf

50

40
Stream64k, TU, PCPICH Tune=Off
100
3Sec, OT=5 30
3Sec, OT=10
90 6Sec, OT=5
6Sec, OT=10 20
12Sec, OT=5
80 12Sec, OT=10

10
70

0
60 −24 −22 −20 −18 −16 −14 −12 −10 −8 −6
CIR of the P−CPICH (dB)
cdf

50

40
Fig. 7. cdf of the CIR of the P-CPICH with and without P-CPICH power
30 tuning. High load (OT = 15).
20

10

The impact of the P-CPICH tuning on the system capacity

0
−24 −22 −20 −18 −16 −14
CIR of the P−CPICH (dB)
−12 −10 −8 −6
is shown in Table IV. There is no system capacity gain for
the 12 sector case when adaptively tuning the P-CPICH power.
However, we must point out that, it is necessary to adapt the
Fig. 6. cdf of the CIR of the P-CPICH for various OT in the TU channel.
P-CPICH power (especially in high traffic loads) in order to
ensure the desired P-CPICH quality for all the antenna systems
From Fig. 6, it can be seen there are occasions (e.g. 12 investigated here. In doing so, the relative system capacity gain
sectors with OT=10) where more that 10% of the users fail to going from 3 sectors to 6 and 12 sectors is 1.65 and 2.74,
meet the P-CPICH target. If the number of users in the system respectively.
further increases, then more users will not be able to decode
the P-CPICH. Thus the CIR of the P-CPICH is load dependent. Sectors Relative Gain
In order to compensate those users with unsatisfactory P- 3 12%
CPICH quality, and to ensure a fair comparison between the 3, 6 6%
12 0%
6 and 12 sectors, an adaptive P-CPICH tuning algorithm was
implemented. The algorithm proposed applies power control TABLE IV
to the transmitted P-CPICH signal from all the BSs such R ELATIVE S YSTEM THROUGHPUT GAIN WHEN P-CPICH IS TUNED ON
that 90% of the users have their P-CPICH CIR greater than VERSUS TUNED OFF .

−16.5 dB. Feedback of the P-CPICH quality to the BSs

is possible, since according to the WCDMA standard, the
D. Handover ratio
The expected number of soft and softer links per sector
for the 3, 6 and 12 sector sites are shown in Table V.
Approximately the soft/softer handover overhead per sector
is between 30% to 40% in the non P-CPICH tuning case, and
40% to 50% in the P-CPICH tuning case. This implies that
on the average we expect up to 1 and a half links are utilized
per user. It is interesting to notice that the overhead is almost
traffic independent. In fact the overhead is tightly connected
to the log-normal fading and the antenna beam-width (which
impacts the overlapping region between the sectors, see Fig. 3
for the 12 sector site case).
Soft Softer
Sectors Tuning off Tuning on Tuning off
3 0.28 0.35 0.04
6 0.29 0.36 0.05
12 0.29 0.36 0.11
TABLE V
E XPECTED NUMBER OF SOFT AND SOFTER HANDOVERS PER USER .
It is worth mentioning that although the soft handover ratio
remains similar for the 3, 6 and 12 sector sites, the signalling
overhead over the Iub interface between the BS and the RNC
will more than double (when going from 3 to 6 sectors) or
quadruple (when going from 3 to 12 sectors).
The expected number of soft/softer links is also shown in
Table V when the P-CPICH power is adaptively tuned to the
radio conditions. A relatively small increase is observed. This
is not surprising since the quality of the pilot channels is
adjusted thus increasing the probability that more BSs will
be included in the active set of the mobiles.
E. Comparison to Prior Work on System Level Results
Although some assumptions of the system model (e.g. an-
tenna patterns and configuration, channel models, mobile
velocity, angular spread) may have been simplified in other
published work, the system capacity gain of 6 sector over 3
sector sites in WCDMA obtained here is in line with other
work. A system capacity gain of 1.6 to 1.7 were shown in
[3], [4] and [6]. Further [1] and [5] obtained a lower system
capacity gain (1.4 and 1.5 respectively) due to the total site
power limitation of 60W. A mere 20% gain was found in [13]
where the sector-to-sector isolation was rather poor.
A live field trial in a CDMA system using 6 sectors was
conduced by [14] and led to a gain of 1.73 compared to a 3
sector site. Higher order sectorization was implemented using
3 ULAs per site, each comprising of two antenna elements that
formed 2 sectors. In [7], it was shown that 12 sector sites offer
3dB gains in terms of SIR when implementing sectorization.
Unfortunately, it is not clear how much of the reported SIR
gain translates into system capacity gain. Finally in [5], a gain
of 1.8 was obtained using 18 sector sites, but the total BS
power was limited to 60W.
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
The system throughput gain going from 3 sector to 6 or 12
sector sites is evaluated in a dynamic system simulation with
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an accurate intra- and inter-cell interference modelling. The
relative gain of 6 and 12 sector sites compared to a 3 sectors is
approximately 1.8 and 3 respectively in a Typical Urban radio
channel. The system degradation due to spatial dispersion of
the channel is minor in terms of system throughput for 3, 6
and 12 sectors. Finally some interesting observations can be
mentioned:
• The ratio of users in soft and softer handover per cell
increased slightly which implies that the handover sig-
nalling over the Iub interface slightly more than doubled
or quadrupled when going from 3 to 6 or from 3 to 12
sectors, respectively.
• Besides ensuring a good quality for 90% of the users, the
Tuning on
tuning of the P-CPICH power, offered a 12% capacity
0.04 gain for 3 sector sites but little or no gain for 6 and 12
0.06 sector sites.
0.13
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