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Interference in 900 Mhz Band from the Lte 850/CDMA BTSs

The Cellular communication licensing system in India permits various cellular


technologies which come under different frequency bands, yet in close by spectrum ranges. Out of these
technologies, GSM 900 and CDMA (IS 95 /1xEvDo currently used as Lte 850 Mhz) are widely used in India
with the following frequency bands.

Technology Up Link Band Down Link Band Total Wideband Power


CDMA / Lte 850 Mhz 824 – 849 Mhz 869 – 894 Mhz 160 W (4X4 MIMO with 40W each stream)
GSM 900 890 – 915 Mhz 935 – 960 Mhz 20 W per carrier

It is obvious that there is an overlap between CDMA/Lte 850 Down Link and GSM Up Link. The Up Link
of any cellular technology makes the communication possible from handset to operator’s equipment.
This means the transmitter in Uplink is the mobile phone and receiver is the BTS. In other words the
transmitter is a low power (typically up to 0.8 Watts or 29dBm) and receiver is a highly sensitive device
for detecting the feeble signals (of -85dBm to -110 dBm typically / 3.16 Pico watts to 10 femto watts)
travelling all the way from a low power transmitter (mobile phone) and reaching the BTS antenna.

Due to the overlap and close by frequency ranges of both technologies, there exists a risk of
interference from the downlink of Lte 850/CDMA to the uplink of GSM 900. The effect of this
interference at the GSM (or any technology which uses this spectrum in Uplink) is so severe because the
interferer (now act as a transmitter) is not a low power device (0.8 watts) but a very high power BTS
(max 160 W). This strong signal can mask/trouble the reception capabilities of the receiver section of the
BTS.

The commonly observed performance issues due to these types of interference are:

1. Poor Call Set up success rate


As the uplink is affected by the strong interfering signal, the communication from the
handset towards the BTS, to set up a call (Random Access Procedure) cannot be successful.
Phone sends the request for a call to BTS, but BTS can never decode as the uplink interference is
too high. The GSM operator’s CSSR report may not reflect this because the operator never knew
that the customer tried for a call (or any other service like Data/SMS/USSD etc.). If 900Mhz is
used for any other technology, there also same effect will be created.

2. Poor speech quality


In an interfered BTS, if a call set up is succeeding, the call will be subjected to degraded
quality on the Uplink. The degradation can vary from disturbed or muffled speech to one way
speech (no speech in Uplink). Usually the customer at the affected cell’s area will hear the
speech from the other end, but the other end customer cannot hear the speech from the
customer in affected cell’s area.
3. Handover Fails
There can be Handover fails at the neighboring cells of the affected BTS as the incoming
handover access towards the affected cell would fail due to the reason as explained in call set up
failure case.
All of these observations are not detectable in the drive test processes, as the drive tool
can capture information only on Downlink of the radio interface. And the similar effects can be
observed on any cellular technology which uses the spectrum in 900 Mhz.

The spectral measurements of the explained situations are attached.

1. PGSM Uplink with no interference.

2. Interference from Lte 850 Mhz Down Link spillage extending to PGSM 900 Uplink
Interference from the wideband boosters

A variety of signal boosters are available in online and local market which are purchased and
installed by individuals and offices with or without information to the operators, in a totally unrestricted
manner. Most of these boosters/repeaters work as plain radio amplifiers (both way Uplink and
downlink) with a bandwidth spanning across multiple technologies and/or multiple operators’ spectrum.
Though it appears to be totally harmless activity where someone is boosting the coverage inside their
private premises, this can adversely affect the serving as well as other operators’ services.

Consider the case of a GSM customer of an operator who is operating in 900 Mhz band, who has
installed a booster at his premises. The booster, a both way radio amplifier, has two main features
which enable the coverage improvement for the user. The booster receives the signal from the BTS,
through an outdoor antenna, usually installed at rooftop of the building. This received signal is fed to the
amplifier (the powered device in the booster equipment) and it amplifies it by many folds (for example
30 dB gain is equivalent to 1000 times amplification). This amplified signal is radiated through the indoor
antenna. As this radiation is mostly confined to the indoor environment of the customer, it may not
pose any threat to the radio environment outside. However, for the working of any cellular technology,
there needs to be an uplink communication also, from mobile handset to the BTS. Here the booster
device will pick up the low power signal from the user’s handset and amplifies it with a certain gain and
radiates back to the BTS through the outdoor antenna. Now effectively, the low powered transmitter in
the uplink (the mobile handset) is replaced by a high power device (booster). This creates the same kind
of uplink interference or masking at the BTS, as explained in the Lte 850/CDMA interference case. This is
not only experienced by the service provider’s BTS, who serves the booster user, but also to any other
operator who operates in the spectrum which falls under the booster equipment’s operating band.
Generally the booster devices are off the shelf products and they work in all available bands from 800
Mhz to 2300 Mhz. The effect on the network is same as explained for CDMA/Lte 850 Mhz case.

For 3G and 4G booster cases also, there could be similar effects like poor CSSR and poor data
performance.

As per the licensing terms, every operator has an exclusive right on their licensed spectrum, for
the given period and hence the unauthorized use of an equipment, operating in a licensed band will be
illegal too. But the manufacturing and sales of such licensed band devices are happening without any
curb on them.

Some relevant screen shots from spectrum analyzer is attached for the radiations from
boosters.
1. Interference from a booster operating in frequency lower than BSNL licensed spectrum

2. Interference from a booster operating in the same frequency of BSNL licensed spectrum.

Interference from jammers and scramblers

Many of the Government agencies use jammers and scramblers for the purpose
of ensuring security at prison premises, VIP movement areas, military zones etc. These devices,
as per their definitions and purposes, are supposed to block the mobile communication at
certain parts of the locality, by employing a wideband interfering signal which can mask the
reception of any useful mobile signal. Technically (and also by the intended use) this means, the
jammers have to block the reception of mobile signals (or its use) at a certain location and is
not supposed to block the services at an area which is outside the location of concern.
It is observed that the jammers used to forbid mobile services at a particular
area often leads to total service disruption or serious quality degradation in a quite larger area
than intended (usually spanning to a few Kilometers range). This is happening due to a flaw in
the technical design of the jammer device. Every cellular technology which uses Frequency
Division Duplexing as the duplex technology (as is the case with most of the operators in India)
needs two frequencies for their operation. One is for down link and one is for uplink. Down link
the frequency transmitted by the operator’s equipment (BTS) & received by the user’s
equipment (handset) and Uplink is the frequency transmitted by the handset and received by
the BTS. Also, if any one of these, uplink or downlink, is blocked; the service is blocked.
The jammer devices are supposed to act on a given area, in which the mobile reception
is jammed. As the mobile reception happens in down link (uplink is the transmission from the
mobile), jammer needs to radiate the downlink frequencies only and not the uplink
frequencies. When the jammers radiate the uplink frequency, which are received by the BTSs,
the radiations will block the BTSs instead of mobile handsets. The blocked BTSs may be in fact
covering a much larger area than the intended the jammed zone. This leads to total service
disruption in a larger area, other than intended. Generally BTS antennae are placed at good
heights and are having sensitive receiving equipment at the BTS side. Therefore many BTSs in
the nearby area can pick up the signals from the jammer and get interfered or even masked. All
the customers served by these BTSs experience similar QoS or service rejection issues, as
mentioned in the case of CDMA/Lte 850 and booster scenarios.

For example, the jammer radiations from a device at a prison location at Electronic City,
Bangalore was found to cause service quality issues at Silk Board, Bangalore at a radial distance
of 6.2 Km in an urban environment.

All of the above mentioned issues can be avoided and still the purpose of the jammers
can be served, if a little care is taken in the jammer device design. The jammers need to have a
custom design, considering all licensed spectrum and standards of 3GPP/3GPP2/WiFi. The
radiation can be avoided for uplink frequencies of all technologies viz. GSM, Lte, UMTS, CDMA
etc. Suitable exceptions can be made only for Time Division Duplex technologies, where there
are no separate bands for uplink and downlink. Though this fact is known to the manufactures,
it is often avoided for the sake of easy design and lower cost. But the offset in cost will be
trivial, when considering the losses to the operators and inconvenience to a huge number of
subscribers.

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