Technical Overview of the LTE air

interface for Next Generation Networks.

Jonathan Borrill
Director of Marketing.
Anritsu (EMEA) Ltd.

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Mobile Communication
Technology Evolution
SMS MMS Browsing Video Share IPTV

Voice Packet MBMS IMS / All-IP

QPSK QAM MIMO

200K BW 5M BW Up to 20M BW

TDMA CDMA OFDM

2G 3G 3.5G 3.9G
Presented at RF Technology day,
26 November 2008
Radio Access Technology Roadmap
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
3GPP
Long Term Evolution
LTE
DL: 150 Mbps+
UL: 50 Mbps+

UMTS/HSPA Radio Access Network Evolution

HSDPA HSDPA/HSUPA HSPA Evolution HSPA Evolution
DL: 14 Mbps DL: 14 Mbps DL: 42 Mbps DL: 84 Mbps
UL: 384 kbps UL: 5.7 Mbps UL: 11 Mbps UL: 11 Mbps

EDGE Radio Access Network Evolution

EDGE EDGE Evolved
DL: 474 kbps DL: 1.9 Mbps
UL: 474 kbps UL: 947 kbps

3GPP2 CDMA2000/EV-DO Network Evolution

EV-DO Rev. 0 EV-DO Rev. A EV-DO Rev. B UMB 2x2 MIMO UMB 4x4 MIMO
DL: 2.4 Mbps DL: 3.1 Mbps DL: 14.7 Mbps DL: 140 Mbps DL: 280 Mbps
UL: 153 kbps UL: 1.8 Mbps UL: 4.9 Mbps UL: 34 Mbps UL: 68 Mbps

IEEE Mobile WiMAX Network Evolution

Mobile WiMAX Wave1 Mobile WiMAX Wave2
Fixed WiMAX IEEE 802.16m
DL: 23 Mbps DL: 46 Mbps
802.16d
UL: 4 Mbps UL: 4 Mbps

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 What is 3GPP LTE / SAE?
• Long Term Evolution (LTE) is an umbrella expression describing the work of
RAN WG, whose objective is to:
ƒ Create a new, evolved RAN (E-UTRAN)
ƒ Create a technology, which is intended to replace UTRAN and compete with
other emerging broadband wireless solutions such as WiMAX
• System Architecture Evolution (SAE) is a work item for SA2 WG (also
impacting other WGs). Its objective is to:
– Develop a framework for an evolution or migration of the 3GPP system to:
• Higher-data-rate
• Lower-latency
• Packet-optimized system
• Supports multiple RATs
– The work focuses on creating an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) including interfaces
to selected external network entities
• Work on LTE/SAE started in 2004

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 LTE Requirements
• Peak data rates: 150 Mbps DL and 50 Mbps UL in a 20 MHz spectrum
allocation.
– 300 Mbps DL and 75 Mbps UL with 4x4 DL MIMO requirement for UE Class 5, not
supported in Release 8

• Control-plane latency: 100 ms from camped to active state

• User-plane latency: less than 5 ms

• User throughput and spectrum efficiency: (bit/sec/Hz) 3-4 x HSDPA, 2-3 x

HSUPA

• Coverage: optimized for up to 5 km cells, support for cells up to 100 km

• Spectrum flexibility: different allocations ranging from 1.25 MHz to 20 MHz

• Co-existence and Inter-working with other 3GPP Radio Access Technology (RAT) and
selected non-3GPP RATs (e.g. IEEE 802.16, 802.11)
• Architecture and migration: single, simple E-UTRAN architecture, packet based, support
for E2E QoS; minimal “single points of failure”.
• Radio Resource Management: enhanced E2E QoS, load sharing/balancing, inter-RAT
policy management
• Complexity : minimum number of options, no redundant features
Presented at RF Technology day,
26 November 2008
LTE Radio Access Network – Logical Elements
• Evolved Packet Core (EPC)
– Mobility Management
Entity (MME) MME/P-GW
– Serving Gateway (S-GW)
ƒ The Packet Data Network
Gateway (P-GW)
MME/S-GW MME/S-GW MME/S-GW MME/S-GW

S2b S2b

S1 S1 S1 S1

S1 S1 S1 S1
X2 X2

eNB eNB eNB eNB

E-UTRAN
ƒ eNodeB (eNB) X2 X2 X2 X2

eNB eNB

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE Radio Access Network – Physical Elements

E-UTRAN Architecture
ƒ Evolved NodeB (eNB) now has most of the Node B and RNC functionality in
a single entity.
ƒ MME & GateWay (xGW) has most of the SGSN and GGSN functionality.
eNB
User Plane Protocol
Inter Cell RRM
Control Plane Protocol
RB Control

Interface
Connection Mobility Cntrl.
MME

Air
Radio Admission Cntrl.
NAS Security
eNB Measurement
Config. and Provision Idle State Mobility
UE Handling
Dynamic Resource
NAS Allocation (Scheduler) EPS Bearer Control
RRC RRC

PDCP PDCP S-GW P-GW

RLC RLC Mobility UE IP address
Anchoring allocation
MAC MAC
S1 Packet Filtering
PHY PHY

E-UTRAN Evolved Packet Core (EPC)

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE basic technologies

• MIMO
• OFDMA, SC-FDMA
• Fourier Transform, DTF,
FFT, IFFT

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 MIMO Concept
• MIMO offers a higher transmission rate for the same bandwidth
using spatial multiplexing with parallel data streams.
• Transmitter sends data streams in parallel on same frequency
from multiple antennas.
• Receiver detects signals to separate spatial streams.

Example: 2 spatial streams

R bps

Serial Parallel
Data to to 2 u R bps
Parallel Serial
R bps

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Key Terminology
Multi-Element Transmitter Multi-Element Receiver

h11

MIMO Sub-ch Mapping

h12
MIMO Encoder

MIMO Decoder
IFFT h21

FFT
h22

IFFT

Y = Hs + n

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Spatial Multiplexing

• Enables transmission of independent sub-channels through space.

• The data stream to be transmitted is converted into two (or more,
depending on the number of Tx antennas) parallel streams.
• Predistortion may be applied. The predistortion circuit inversely models the
output amplifier's gain and phase characteristics and, when combined with
the amplifier, produces an overall system that is more linear and reduces
the amplifier's distortion.
• Equalisation is an inverse process to predistortion and restores signal
characteristics.
• Data throughput can be increased almost linearly with min(number Tx,
number Rx).

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Precoding
• Precoding is used in both spatial multiplexing and transmit diversity modes
• Precoding is applied in the downlink only. The signal is “pre-coded” at Node
B side before transmission to achieve best reception at the UE.
• Optimum precoding matrix is selected from predefined “codebook” known at
Node B and UE side
• The UE estimates the channel, selects the best precoding matrix at a given
moment and sends back its index in the codebook

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 MU-MIMO and SU-MIMO
• SU (Single User)-MIMO …
– To increase user data rate,
simultaneous transmission of
S2 Sn
different data streams to 1 user S1
– Efficient when the user
experiences good channel
conditions
…
MU (Multiple User)-MIMO
ƒ To increase sector capacity
ƒ Select users experiencing good
channel conditions
ƒ Efficient when a large number UE2
of users have an active data UE1 UEn
transmission simultaneously

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE Basic Technologies
- OFDM and OFDMA -

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 LTE Fundamentals - OFDMA
Single Carrier Transmission
(e.g., GSM, WCDMA, cdma2000)
In the downlink, Orthogonal Frequency

power
Division Multiplex Access (OFDMA) is

e
tim
selected as the air-interface for LTE.

OFDM communication systems do not rely

frequency
on increased symbol rates in order to Typical Bandwidth = 200kHz (GSM),
achieve higher data rates. 5 MHz (WCDMA)

Transmission by means of OFDM is a Multi-Carrier Transmission

particular form of multi-carrier modulation (e.g., LTE, WiMAX, Wi-Fi)
(MCM) i.e. a parallel transmission method

power

e
which divides an RF channel into several

tim
narrower bandwidth subcarriers.
...
frequency
Typical Bandwidth = 10.74 (WiMAX),
15 kHz (LTE)

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 LTE Fundamentals – OFDMA
Frequency Division
Multiplexing (FDM)
Multi-Carrier Modulation
Saved Bandwidth
Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing
(OFDM)
OFDM

• Remove the Guard Band to save spectrum.

• Make each subcarrier orthogonal to the others by using the exact same
modulation rate for all carriers and ensuring that the frequency separation
is exactly the inverse of the modulation rate.
• OFDM makes more efficient use of available spectrum.
– Sub-carrier spectrum ‘overlaps’ and orthogonality means that all sub-carriers
(except the wanted one) are zero at the decision point. Spectrum has been saved
with no loss in performance...

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE Fundamentals – Cyclic Prefix
eeee
dalae eeee Yoda
Yo alae eee la ee
la
Yo eeeeeeeeee
Yod alaee eee
Yod

• First rule of yodeling…

– Don’t start second yodel until echoes of first yodel have finished.
• Wait time = Guard Interval
• In an OFDM symbol the Cyclic Prefix is a repeat of the end of the
symbol at the beginning. The purpose is to allow multi-path to settle
before the main data arrives at the receiver. The receiver is normally
arranged to decode the signal after it has settled because this is when
the frequencies become orthogonal to one another. The length of the
cyclic prefix is often equal to the guard interval.

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE Fundamentals – Multipath

• Due to multipath effects

(reflections etc), multiple
images of the transmitted
signal can be received at the
User Equipment (UE).

• If the spread in delay of the

received signals is greater
than the duration of the guard
time, then bit errors will result.

Transmit Received Signals

• A Cyclic Prefix in LTE is used
to provide an adequate guard
time.
Delay time
Spread

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 OFDM – Intersymbol interference
ISI

Transmitted signal

Received time-shifted copies

of the same signal
(as a result of multipath)

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Cyclic prefix
• In an OFDM symbol the Cyclic Prefix is a repeat of
the end of the symbol at the beginning.
• The length of the cyclic prefix is equal to the guard
interval.
• The purpose is to allow multi-path to settle before the
main data arrives at the receiver. The receiver is
normally arranged to decode the signal after it has
settled because this is when the frequencies become
orthogonal to one another.
copy of last part of the symbol

Prefix Symbol

Guard interval

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Cyclic Delay Diversity
FFT-Output:
time
㱓i, 㱠i

Cyclic Delay:

Guard Interval:

Cyclic Delay Diversity (CCD) is achieved by applying a cyclic delay to

the effective part of an OFDM symbol.
For example, for 2 antenna ports the CCD matrix is:

with 㱐 depending on amount of delay and configuration.

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Fourier Transform
• The continuous Fourier transform is one of the specific forms of
Fourier analysis in mathematics.
• It transforms one function into another, which is called the
frequency domain representation of the original function
(where the original function is most often a function in the
time-domain).
• The common representation is (the independent variable t
represents time [s], the transform variable Ȟ represents ordinary
frequency [Hz]):

• If f is continuous, then it can be reconstructed from F by the

inverse Fourier transform:

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 FFT/DFT in OFDM/OFDMA
• FFT suits well to time discrete (sampled) OFDM signal, transmitted on
different subcarriers
• Computationally efficient FFT allows low complexity implementation of
OFDM modulator/demodulator structures.
• Frequency-Time Representation of an OFDM Signal

Cyclic
Power prefix

th OFDM
wid Symbol
nd
ba 15 kHz Time
subcarrier
spacing

FFT/IFFT Signal on each frequency is modulated,

i.e. has a given amplitude and phase shift
Frequency

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE Basic Technologies
- SC-FDMA -

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 SC-FDMA
• SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Duplex Multiple Access) is
the uplink multiple access scheme for Evolved UTRA.
• SC-FDMA can be seen as “precoded” OFDMA (DFT-S-OFDM,
Discrete Fourier Transform Spread OFDM)
• SC-FDMA signal has lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)
than OFDM so is better suited for generation in UEs (simpler
amplifier design, weaker requirements on linear and dynamic
characteristics)

OFDM

SC-FDMA

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 LTE Fundamentals - SC-FDMA
• SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access) is
the uplink multiple access scheme for Evolved UTRA.
• SC-FDMA can be seen as “precoded” OFDMA (DFT-S-OFDM,
Discrete Fourier Transform Spread OFDM).

e
tim
power
Bit to Constellation Mapping subcarrier

subcarrier

Add Cyclic Prefix

Serial to frequency
Incoming Parallel M-point Parallel
Bit Stream
OFDM
Converter IDFT to Serial single carrier
Converter

e
tim
power
subcarrier

subcarrier

N<M
SC-FDMA Processes added to frequency
OFDM Transmitter Structure SC-FDMA

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 LTE Fundamentals: SC-FDMA

• SC-FDMA signal has lower Peak-to-Average Power

Ratio (PAPR) than OFDM.
– Reduced UE power consumption
– Simpler amplifier design
• Transmission parameters (cyclic prefix, frame
length, “subcarrier spacing”, …), coding and
modulation for SC-FDMA are similar to the
downlink OFDM transmission.
• Flexible bandwidth (like in OFDM)
• Easy use of MIMO (like in OFDM; however, UEs
transmit in UL using only a single antenna)

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 LTE Physical Layer
Overview
• Physical layer resource blocks
• Framing and resource grids
• Antenna ports and transmission layers

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 One radio frame, Tf = 307200Ts = 10 ms

LTE Fundamentals – One slot, Tslot = 15360Ts = 0.5 ms

One subframe

Resource Block One slot

• The smallest time-frequency unit

for downlink transmission is
called a resource element.
Resource Block
• A group of contiguous sub- NDLSYMB x NRBBW Resource Elements

carriers and symbols form a

resource block (RB). Resource Element

NRBBW sub-carriers
NDLBW sub-carriers
• Data is allocated to each user
equipment (UE) in terms of RB.
• For a frame structure type 1
using normal cyclic prefix (CP),
a RB spans 12 consecutive
sub-carriers at a sub-carrier
spacing of 15 kHz, and 7
consecutive symbols over a slot
NDLSYMB OFDM Symbols
duration of 0.5 ms.
Downlink resource grid (Ref 3GPP TS 36.211 V1.1.0)

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Concept of Resource Blocks
• In LTE the radio bearer concept is replaced by Resource
Block (RB) set concept
–A set of RBs is a logical concept of a bearer over the radio interface.
–At a higher (NAS) level, the concept of an EPS bearer is used. The
EPS bearer has been defined to be an aggregate of one or more IP
flows related to one or more services.
–EPS bearers are dynamically mapped to sets of Resource Blocks.
• UE performs the binding of the uplink IP flows to the EPS
bearer while the PDN Gateway performs this function for
the downlink packets.
• Each resource block consists of consecutive subcarriers.
–Resource blocks are two dimensional (time-frequency) units with a
set of sub-carriers and time slots.

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
LTE Physical Layer Framing -
Example

Control and data channels

Example only,
does not show
real allocations!

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Antenna ports

• From the specifiaction point of view 1, 2 or 4 physical antennas used

to simultaneously transmit the Downlink (DL) signal.
• From the implementation point of view there may be more antennas
used for beamforming (4, 8 or possibly more)
• Antenna ports are logical entities. They do not 1:1 map to physical
antennas. They are divided into 3 groups:
– Ports 0-3 are cell-specific (used for DL MIMO)
– Port 4 is MBSFN specific (used for MBSFN transmission)
– Port 5 is UE specific (used for beamforming to a single UE using all
antennas)
• The 4 physical antennas are dynamically assigned to ports in the
time domain, per slot.
• Cell specific ports and the UE specific port cannot be simultaneously
used (usage has to be time-multiplexed).

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Reference signals
• Types of downlink reference signals:
Cell-specific reference signals
• Cell-specific reference signals are transmitted in all downlink subframes in a
cell supporting non-MBSFN transmission.
MBSFN reference signals
• MBSFN reference signals are only transmitted in subframes allocated for
MBSFN transmissions. MBSFN reference signals are transmitted on antenna
port 4.
UE-specific reference signals
• UE-specific reference signals are supported for single-antenna-port
transmission of PDSCH and are transmitted on antenna port 5.
• The UE is informed by higher layers whether the UE-specific reference signal
is present and is a valid phase reference for PDSCH demodulation or not.
• If higher layer signalling informs the UE that the UE-specific reference signals
are present and is a valid phase reference for PDSCH demodulation, the UE
may ignore any transmission on antenna port 2 and 3.
• Frequency hopping can be applied to the downlink reference signals.
The frequency hopping pattern has a period of one frame (10 ms).

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 DL reference signal mappings
• Cell-specific reference signal (normal
R0 R0
CP)
One antenna port

R0 R0
– Transmitted in all downlink subframes
R0 R0 in a cell supporting non-MBSFN
R0 R0
transmission.
l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6
– In case the subframe is used for
Resource element (k,l)
transmission with MBSFN, only the first
R0 R0 R1 R1
two OFDM symbols in a subframe can
Two antenna ports

R0 R0 R1 R1
Not used for transmission on this antenna port be used for transmission of cell-
R0 R0 R1 R1
Reference symbols on this antenna port
specific reference symbols
R0 R0 R1 R1 – Transmitted on one or several of
l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6
antenna ports 0 to 3.

R0 R0 R1 R1 R2 R3
Four antenna ports

R0 R0 R1 R1 R2 R3

R0 R0 R1 R1 R2 R3

R0 R0 R1 R1 R2 R3
l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6 l 0 l 6

even-numbered slots odd-numbered slots even-numbered slots odd-numbered slots even-numbered slots odd-numbered slots even-numbered slots odd-numbered slots

Antenna port 0 Antenna port 1 Antenna port 2 Antenna port 3

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Downlink MIMO
• Multi-antenna transmission with 2 and 4 transmit antennas is
supported.
–The maximum number of codeword is two, irrespective to the number of
antennas, with fixed mapping between code words to layers.
• Both spatial division multiplexing (SDM) and transmit diversity are
supported.
• Both MU-MIMO and SU-MIMO are supported.

Transmission Valid Antenna

Description
Mode Configurations
1 Single-antenna port; port 0 1
2 Transmit diversity 2,4
3 Open-loop spatial multiplexing 2,4
4 Closed-loop spatial multiplexing 2,4
5 Multi-user MIMO 2,4
6 Closed-loop Rank=1 precoding 2,4
7 Single-antenna port; port 5 1,2,4
(beamforming)

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
 Summary
• LTE is a new technology for an air interface to support
future ‘mobile broadband’ requirements.
– High data rates, high spectral efficiency.

• Key technologies such as MIMO and OFDM will be

deployed to give highest performance.
– These are necessary to meet the requirements.

• Standards, specifications, and R&D are underway now to

implement LTE.
– First “commercial” network deployments expected in 2010.

Presented at RF Technology day,

26 November 2008
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Presented at RF Technology day,
26 November 2008