CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................4
2 LTE MIMO TRANSMITTER........................................................................................5
2.1 CODEWORD TO LAYER MAPPING.................................................................................5
2.2 FEEDBACK PARAMETERS.............................................................................................6
2.3 PRECODING..................................................................................................................6
2.3.1 Codebook-based precoding.....................................................................................7
2.3.2 Precoder Codebook used in LTE.............................................................................7
2.4 CYCLIC DELAY DIVERSITY (CDD)..............................................................................8
3 MIMO TECHNOLOGIES.............................................................................................10
3.1 TRANSMIT DIVERSITY................................................................................................10
3.1.1 Importance of Transmit diversity in LTE...............................................................10
3.1.2 Transmit Diversity in LTE Downlink.....................................................................10
3.1.3 Transmit Diversity in LTE Uplink.........................................................................12
3.2 DOWNLINK SINGLE USER-MIMO (SU- MIMO).......................................................12
3.2.1 Closed-loop spatial multiplexing...........................................................................13
3.2.2 Open-loop spatial multiplexing.............................................................................14
3.3 MULTI USER-MIMO (MU- MIMO) IN LTE..........................................................14
3.3.1 Downlink MU-MIMO............................................................................................15
3.3.2 Uplink MU-MIMO.................................................................................................15
4 LTE MIMO RECEIVER PROCESSING....................................................................17
4.1 CHANNEL ESTIMATION..............................................................................................18
4.2 EQUALIZATION...........................................................................................................19
5 MIMO SCHEMES IN LTE-ADVANCED...................................................................20
6 CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................21
7 REFERENCES.................................................................................................................22

FIGURES
Figure 1. Simplified block diagram of downlink MIMO closed loop transmitter.....................5
Figure 2. Fixed set of codeword to layer mappings...................................................................6
Figure 3. Large delay CDD combined with spatial multiplexing and channel dependent
precoding(Source [8])........................................................................................................9
Figure 4. Modified SFBC + FSTD for PHICH with four transmit antennas on
downlink(Source [5]).......................................................................................................12
Figure 5. Closed-loop spatial multiplexing with L layers and Nt transmit antennas...............13
Figure 6. Open-loop spatial multiplexing with L layers and Nt transmit antennas..................14
Figure 7. MMSE receiver for UL MU-MIMO (Source [8])....................................................17
Figure 8. MIMO-LTE Receiver (Downlink)............................................................................18
Figure 9. Sequential transmission of reference signals from transmit antennas(Source [6])...18
Figure 10. LTE downlink SU-MIMO performance(Source [5] )............................................21

TABLES

Table 1. Codeword to layer mapping for spatial multiplexing(Source [5])...............................6

Table 2. Precoding codebook for transmission on two antennas (Source [5])...........................8
Table 3. Precoding codebook for transmission on four antennas (Source [5])..........................8

VOCABULARY
 3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project
CDD Cyclic Delay Diversity
CQI Channel Quality Indication
DFT Discrete Fourier Transform
DL Downlink
eNodeB Enhanced NodeB
FSTD Frequency Switched Transmit Diversity
HARQ Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request
HSPA High Speed Packet Access
LLR Log-Likelihood Ratio
LTE Long Term Evolution
MAC Media Access Control
MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output
ML Maximum Likelihood
MMSE Minimum Mean Square Error
MU-MIMO Multi-User MIMO
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel
PCFICH Physical Control Format Indicator Channel
PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel
PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel
PHICH Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel
PMI Precoding Matrix Indication
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation1
QAM
QPSK Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
RB Resource Block
RF Radio Frequency
RI Rank Indication
SFBC Space-Frequency Block Coding
SIC Successive Interference Cancellation
SINR Signal to Interference Ratio
SU-MIMO Single-User MIMO
TPMI Transmit Precoding Information Field.
UE User Equipment
UL Uplink
UTRAN UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network
WIMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

1
1 INTRODUCTION
Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) has been treated as an emerging technology to meet
the growing demand of high data rate transmission. In reference to the cellular
communications, its importance to meet the demand for higher data rate and better cell
coverage (without increasing average transmit power or frequency bandwidth) has been
suitably acknowledged. This has led to MIMO being standardized in current cellular
technologies like WiMAX as well as in 3GPP Rel-6 and Rel-7 of the UTRAN (HSPA)
specifications. Further, Rel-8 of the E-UTRAN (LTE) 3GPP specifications (March 2009),
included the most advanced forms of MIMO in any standard in the industry.

The latest release of 3GPP-LTE projects a peak data rate of 100 Mbps (2Ch, 20 MHz) on
downlink and 50 Mbps (1Ch, 20 MHz) uplink. The allowed antenna configuration are: 4x2,
2x2, 1x2 , 1x1 on the downlink and 1x2, 1x1on the uplink.

In Long Term Evolution (LTE), MIMO technologies find its worth in many areas like:
increasing downlink peak rate, cell coverage and average cell throughput. MIMO provides
large data rates by successfully constructing multiple spatial layers/ data streams which are
delivered on a given frequency-time resource and eventually increases the channel capacity
linearly. Various MIMO schemes are standardized in 3GPP specifications including transmit
diversity, single user (SU)-MIMO, multiuser (MU)-MIMO, closed-loop rank-1 precoding and
dedicated beam forming.

In a recently proposed, study in 3GPP: “LTE-Advanced”, the configuration of SU-MIMO

technologies are extended to support upto 8 transmit antenna in the downlink and up to four
transmit antennas in the uplink.

The report in arranged as follows. Section 2 describes the basic blocks of the MIMO LTE
transmitter and explains codeword to layer mapping, precoding and large delay cyclic
diversity, functionalities incorporated to make MIMO work. Section 3 describes the MIMO
technologies adopted in LTE like Transmit diversity, SU/MU-MIMO, dedicated
beamforming. LTE MIMO receiver processing is discussed in Section 4 with brief
explanation of the channel estimation and MIMO equalization techniques that are employed.
The changes being proposed with LTE-Advanced and the advantages it promises are
discussed in Section 5, finishing with a figure comparing the LTE downlink SU-MIMO
performance for various antenna configurations and different receiver processing.
2 LTE MIMO TRANSMITTER

Figure 1 shows a transmitter block diagram for a double codeword configuration in the
downlink for LTE with MIMO capabilities and uplink feedback (closed loop MIMO).

Figure 1. Simplified block diagram of downlink MIMO closed loop transmitter.

In case of multi-antenna transmission, there can be up to two transport blocks of dynamic size
for each transmit time interval (TTI), where each transport block corresponds to a separate
codeword. In LTE downlink, HARQ is operated on each codeword. Each HARQ process
requires an ACK/NACK feedback signalling on the uplink. To reduce the uplink signalling
overhead, only two codewords are transmitted even though LTE supports downlink spatial
multiplexing with up to four transmit antennas. This implies we need a rule to map
codewords on to the layers. This function is performed by codeword to layer mapping block.
The precoding matrix maps layers on to the transmit antennas based on feedback received
from UE (closed loop). The resource element mapper maps symbols to be transmitted from
each antenna to the time-frequency resource elements of the set of resource blocks assigned
by the MAC scheduler for the transmission of the transport blocks. This is followed by the
OFDM symbol generation block for each antenna and subsequent RF transmission.

2.1 Codeword to Layer Mapping

 Figure 2. Fixed set of codeword to layer mappings.

As can be seen from Table 1, the modulation symbols of a codeword are equally split into
layers when a codeword is mapped to two layers.

Table 1. Codeword to layer mapping for spatial multiplexing(Source [5])

2.2 Feedback Parameters

The parameters fed back in the uplink to the eNodeB are RI, PMI and CQI. RI indicates the
number of spatial layers that the current channel experienced by the UE can support. eNodeB
uses RI as well as factors like traffic pattern, transmission power to decide on the
transmission rank, L. CQI is used for Adaptive modulation and coding and tells eNodeB the
modulation scheme and coding rate that it should use so that the block error probability
experienced by the UE does not exceed 10%. PMI tells eNodeB which precoding matrix to
use to transmit the signal to a particular user.

2.3 Precoding
In precoding, the multiple streams of the signals are emitted from the transmit antennas with
independent and appropriate weighting per each antenna such that the link throughput is
maximized at the receiver output.

The precoding matrices can either be dependent or independent of the channel; which one to
use depends on the availability of sufficiently accurate channel information on the transmit
side.

2.3.1 Codebook-based precoding

When matrix elements are chosen from a fixed and countable set of ‘precoder matrices’, it is
known as codebook-based precoding. It is one of the primary transmission modes in LTE and
can be viewed as way of channel quantization which in turn facilitates low-rate feedback of
channel information from the receiver (UE). The precoding codebook has following
properties:
 Constant modulus: This property ensures that, in order to maximize the power
amplifier utilization efficiency, all the antennas transmit same power regardless which
precoding matrix is used.
 Nested property: Each precoding matrix in a lower rank codebook is a submatrix of
atleast one of the higher rank precoding matrix. This is helpful in tackling the
condition when the eNodeB overrides the RI report and decides on a transmission
rank that is lower than the channel rank reported in the RI. This property also helps
reduce the CQI calculation complexity.
 Constrained Alphabet:
Two Tx Antenna: In case of two transmit antennas, constructing the precoding
matrices by only using QPSK alphabet {±1, ±j} (except the scaling factor) avoids the
need for matrix multiplication in applying the precoder to the channel matrix without
significant loss in precoding performance.
Four Tx Antenna: Considering that the QPSK alphabet constraint imposes a limiting
factor in achieving additional spectral efficiency gain from additional antennas, 8-
PSK alphabet {±1, ±j, ±(1+ j)/√2, ±(−1+ j)/√2} is used as a tradeoff between the
computational complexity and the achievable performance of the codebook designed
(for four transmit antenna).

2.3.2 Precoder Codebook used in LTE

For transmission on two antennas, the precoding matrix is selected from the following table:
 Table 2. Precoding codebook for transmission on two antennas (Source [5])

Simililarly for a four antenna transmission, the precoding matrix W is W is selected from
Table --, where Wi{c1...cm} denotes the matrix defined by the columns c1, ... , cm of the matrix
Wi =I4×4 −2uiuHi /uH i ui . Design of the precoding for four transmit antennas is based on the
Householder transformation to reduce the computational complexity at the UE as well as the
design complexity for finding out suitable precoding matrices due to its structure.

Table 3. Precoding codebook for transmission on four antennas (Source [5])

2.4 Cyclic Delay Diversity (CDD)

CDD essentially introduces deliberate delays between the antennas to create artificial
multipath and is tailored for OFDM based transmissions in the sense that the delays are made
cyclic.

It should be noted that cyclic delay of ∆ samples in the time domain corresponds to a linearly
increasing phase shift in the subcarrier domain of exp( j2π∆m / N ), where m is the
subcarrier index in the DFT of size N. The highest possible value is ∆= N/ N T , which is a
reasonable choice that introduces maximum SINR variations over a given bandwidth and
hence would guarantee sufficient variations over even a single RB (Resource Block). As a
consequence, each symbol is precoded by a NTx1 weight vector:

LTE uses large delay CDD in open loop spatial multiplexing. The CDD operation is is
combined with channel-dependent purely-spatial precoding. Figure --- shows the setup.

Figure 3. Large delay CDD combined with spatial multiplexing and channel dependent precoding(Source [8])

The symbol vector undergoes a large-delay CDD operation which mixes all the r layers
together and distributes them in equal proportion on what is here referred to as r virtual
antennas. The benefit of mixing helps in all layers seeing the same channel quality. Such an
averaging is beneficial and it helps to minimize the signalling overhead by avoiding the need
to adapt various parameters depending on the quality of a particular layer.
3 MIMO TECHNOLOGIES

3.1 Transmit Diversity

A distinguishing feature with transmit diversity in LTE is that, it can be applied to all the
physical channels such as PDSCH, Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH), Physical Control
Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH), Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), and
Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH) whereas all the other MIMO schemes are
only applicable to PDSCH.

3.1.1 Importance of Transmit diversity in LTE

A UE can be configured to any of the transmission scheme such as transmit diversity, SU-
MIMO, MU-MIMO, closed-looprank-1 precoding, and dedicated beamforming when the
eNodeB employs multiple transmit antennas. Now if, eNodeB wants to change the current
transmission scheme it will need to convey this to the UE through some control message.
However such a transmission using configured scheme may not be possible, since the channel
condition is not favourable any longer to the configured transmission scheme. For reliable
change of the transmission scheme, the transmit diversity can always be used for delivering
the required control message to the UE. Thus, the UE shall always try to receive such control
message sent using the transmit diversity, regardless which transmission scheme is
configured for the UE.

3.1.2 Transmit Diversity in LTE Downlink

Before any specific transmit diversity scheme can be applied to a physical downlink channels,
it is necessary for the UE to determine the number of antennas at eNodeB. It does so by
blindly decoding PBCH, since there is no explicit signalling for it. Once it is done, one of the
following Transmit Diversity schemes defined for LTE downlinks can be utilized.

3.1.2.1 Transmit Diversity for two antenna port

In this case, the output of the precoder is given by the following matrix:
where, the rows corresponds to the antenna ports and the columns to consecutive data
resource elements in the same OFDM symbol. Alamouti in the frequency domain is the
result, more commonly referred to as space-frequency block coding (SFBC) in 3GPP.

3.1.2.2 Transmit Diversity for four antenna port

The scheme is in 3GPP known as SFBC plus frequency switched transmit diversity
(SFBC+FSTD).
The output of the precoder is given by the following matrix

Salient features of this scheme are:

 The code is essentially seen as combination of two SFBC codes, transmitted on the
antenna ports 0, 2 and 1, 3 respectively.
 Such a structure provides robustness against the correlation between channels from
different transmit antennas and for easier UE receiver implementation.
 The reason for interlacing a single SFBC code on every other antenna port instead of
consecutive antenna ports can be traced back to the fact that the first two cell-specific
antenna ports have a higher reference signal density than the two last, and hence
provide better channel estimates. Interlacing ensures a more balanced decoding
performance of the two SFBC codes which has been shown to be overall (slightly)
beneficial.
 FSTD: The rapid switching of which pair of antenna ports to use, from one pair of
data subcarriers to the next, serves to gain additional spatial diversity when used
together with the outer coding on the bit level.
3.1.2.3 Transmit diversity scheme for PHICH

Figure 4. Modified SFBC + FSTD for PHICH with four transmit antennas on downlink(Source [5])

Salient features of this scheme are:

 Used to transmit four different ACK/NAK bits which are multiplexed using
orthogonal code.
 Spreading factor of four over a group of four subcarriers is used and the resulting
group is repeated three times in the frequency domain to achieve frequency diversity
gain.
 Antenna switching is not applied within each repetition to maintain the orthogonailty.
However, the set of antennas changes across different repetitions.

3.1.3 Transmit Diversity in LTE Uplink

Transmit antenna selection diversity is defined for UE with two antennas separately for open
and closed loop cases.
Closed Loop: The eNodeB selects the antenna to be used for uplink transmission and
communicate this selection to the UE using the downlink control message
Open Loop: The UE autonomously selects the transmit antenna to be used for transmission
without eNodeB’s intervention.

It should be noted that SFBC-type transmit diversity scheme is not employed in the LTE
uplink. This is to avoid additional cost required to implement two power amplifiers at the UE.

3.2 Downlink Single User-MIMO (SU- MIMO)

The SU-MIMO scheme is specified in the downlink with two to four transmit antennas,
which supports transmission of upto four spatial layers to a given UE. The scheme is applied
to the Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH). The peak rates achieved with SU-
MIMO spatial multiplexing are upto 150Mbps for two transmit antennas and 300 Mbps for
four transmit antennas. Two operating modes are supported in SU-MIMO spatial
multiplexing mode: Closed-loop spatial multiplexing and Open-loop spatial multiplexing.

3.2.1 Closed-loop spatial multiplexing

In this mode, eNodeB applies the spatial domain precoding on the transmitted signal with the
knowledge of the precoding matrix indicator (PMI) reported by the UE so that the transmitted
signal matches the spatial channel encountered by the UE. Along with PMI, UE also feeds
back the rank indicator (RI) and Channel Quality indicator (CQI) in the uplink.

Fig.5 illustrates closed-loop spatial multiplexing with L layers and N t transmit antennas (
Nt  L ). The precoding operation can be represented as

y  Wx

where, y   y 0 yNt  , yn denotes symbol transmitted on nth antenna.

T
y1 ... ...
x   x0 x1 ... ... xL  , x denotes modulation symbol transmitted on lth layer.
T
l

W denoted the Nt x L precoding matrix. The precoding matrix for two and four transmit
antennas is selected from Table 1 and 2 respectively.

Figure 5. Closed-loop spatial multiplexing with L layers and Nt transmit antennas

Downlink reference signal, being common to all UE’s is not precoded by eNodeB. eNodeB
informs UE of the precoding matrix used as part of downlink control information through the
transmit precoding information field (TPMI). TPMI is a 3-bit information field for two
transmit antennas and 6 bits for four transmit antennas. UE demodulates the data based on the
precoding matrix information. To reduce the downlink signalling overhead when doing
frequency selective precoding, TPMI can also indicate that the PMI reported in the most
recent uplink feedback by the scheduled UE are used for their corresponding frequency
resources. In cases when the eNodeB cannot do spatial multiplexing because the current
channel does not support it, the eNodeB can instantaneously switch to transmit diversity
mode. The change is reported to UE through TPMI.

3.2.2 Open-loop spatial multiplexing

Open loop spatial multiplexing can be operated when the PMI feedback at the UE is not
reliable. This situation may arise when the UE is moving at high speeds or the high uplink
feedback overhead is not tolerable. The uplink feedback in this case consists of the RI and
CQI (no PMI). The difference from closed-loop spatial multiplexing is that the enodeB only
determines the transmission rank, L and applies a fixed set of precoding matrices cyclically
across all scheduled subcarriers.

Fig.6. illustrates open-loop spatial multiplexing with L layers and N t transmit antennas(
Nt  L ). The precoding operation can be represented as

y (i )  W (i ) D (i )Ux(i )

where y (i )   y 0(i ) y1(i ) ... ... yNT  1 (i )  , yn (i ) denotes the ith symbol transmitted on nth
T

antenna. x(i )   x 0(i ) x1(i) ... ... xL  1 (i )  , xl (i ) denotes the ith modulation symbol
T

transmitted on the lth layer. W(i) is the precoding matrix of size Nt x L, DFT precoding
matrix U of dimensions L x L and matrix D(i) of size L x L to support large delay cyclic
diversity. Large delay cyclic diversity makes each codeword experience all transmitted layers
as explained in. This is different from the closed loop spatial multiplexing case where each
codeword only sees a maximum of 2 layers.

Figure 6. Open-loop spatial multiplexing with L layers and N t transmit antennas

If due to channel variations eNodeB can’t support spatial multiplexing i.e. transmission rank
is set to 1, then transmit diversity is employed.

3.3 MULTI USER-MIMO (MU- MIMO) in LTE

MU-MIMO is supported in both uplink and downlink in the LTE standards.
3.3.1 Downlink MU-MIMO
The principle of sharing high SINR by spatial multiplexing can be employed for transmission
to multiple UE’s simultaneously, which is referred to as multi-user MIMO. Several UE’s
located in physically well-separated directions are co-scheduled by the eNodeB in the same
time-frequency resource and the transmission is focussed in a narrow beam towards each user
due to which the interference from other co-scheduled UE’s can be kept low. Since, the
channel is highly correlated; only rank 1 transmission is scheduled to each UE. The rank-1
precoding matrices for two and four transmit antennas are selected from Tables 2 and 3. Each
UE receives only the information about its own precoding matrix. The scheduled UE decodes
its data based on the cell-specific common reference signal and the precoding information
obtained in downlink control signalling. The UE generates the PMI/CQI feedback without
taking into consideration the interference from simultaneously scheduled UE’s. Hence, the
CQI reported by the UE might not represent the channel conditions perfectly.

To facilitate receiving higher order modulation schemes such as 16 QAM and 64 QAM
without increasing the UE complexity, the transmit power level per UE is configured on a
long-term basis. But in MU-MIMO, since the power amplifier at UE has to support
scheduling of multiple UE’s in the same time-frequency resource, so the preconfigured per
UE power level is difficult to maintain. Since, the UE is not mandated to do a blind
estimation of the power ratio for different modulations, so the fluctuations in power level
need to be signalled to the UE. Hence, a 1-bit signalling is introduced to inform the UE if
there is a 3dB reduction in power with respect to the pre-configured power level.

A fundamental issue with MU-MIMO is that the UE’s can only be scheduled in the same
time-frequency resource if their preferred beams are well separated i.e. the co-scheduled
UE’s are physically well-spaced apart. This implies that MU-MIMO is effective only when
we have many active UE’s requesting data in each subframe, so that the scheduler at eNodeB
can find sufficient number of UE’s which can be co-scheduled on beams which will lead to
limited intra-cell interference.

3.3.2 Uplink MU-MIMO

Currently in the LTE standards, UE supports only one transmit antenna and multiple receive
antennas. Hence, SU-MIMO can’t be supported in the uplink but MU-MIMO works well.
With LTE –Advanced, there is support for multiple transmit antennas and hence, uplink SU-
MIMO can be employed with LTE-Advanced. Uplink MU-MIMO works on the principle
that when the spatial channel from one UE to eNodeB is sufficiently different from the
channel between another UE and eNodeB, then both the UE’s can be scheduled to use the
same time-frequency resources.

In order for the eNodeB to correctly decode the signals from the different users, eNodeB
needs to assign orthogonal reference signals to the co-scheduled UE’s. The reference signal
for each user is a cyclically shifted version of the base Zadoff-Chu sequence. Each UE
scheduled for transmission is assigned a cyclic shift value by the eNodeB. The UE applies
this cyclic shift to the base Zadoff-Chu sequence to obtain a reference signal orthogonal to
other UE’s reference signal. The cyclic shift value is communicated to the UE in downlink
control signalling (by the eNodeB) needed to start the uplink transmission.
4 LTE MIMO RECEIVER PROCESSING
Fig 7 shows the uplink MU-MIMO MMSE receiver processing with 2 receive antennas.

Figure 7. MMSE receiver for UL MU-MIMO (Source [8])

The RF signal at each receive antenna is first downconverted to baseband. After doing the
frequency offset estimation and synchronization, the cyclic prefix from the received OFDM
symbol is removed, as it corresponds to the ISI terms. The OFDM symbols which correspond
to data symbols and reference signals of the 2 users are passed through a 1024 point FFT for
a 10 MHz system. Using the reference symbols, the channel coefficients encountered by the
received signal on each antenna for each subcarrier are estimated and also the interference
levels are estimated to build the pre-whitening matrices. The combining weights for each UE
are then derived based on MMSE criterion. The next step is to undo the DFT spread OFDM
step done in the uplink transmission. Finally, the LLR’s are computed from the gain and DFT
de-spread data symbols for each UE and given to the Turbo decoder.

Figure 8 shows the receiver structure at the UE (2 receive antennas, 2 Tx antennas at the
eNodeB) with closed loop spatial multiplexing. The figure clearly shows how the feedback
parameters RO, PMI and CQI are generated to be fed back to the eNodeB. Due to the
complexity in implementing Maximum likelihood decoding, it is avoided at the UE for 64
QAM.
 Figure 8. MIMO-LTE Receiver (Downlink)

4.1 Channel Estimation

Channel impulse response i.e. the channel seen by each of the transmitted streams on its way
to the receive antenna is determined by sequentially sending known reference symbols from
each transmit antenna. The reference symbols are sent on equally spaced subcarriers within
first and third from last OFDM symbol in each slot. Figure 9 shows the position of the
reference symbols in one subframe for the two antenna case. Transmit antenna 2 is idle when
transmit antenna 1 is sending a reference symbol on a particular time-frequency resource and
vice versa.

Figure 9. Sequential transmission of reference signals from transmit antennas(Source [6])

The channel at the reference signal positions can be estimated based on Least squares errors
estimation and then interpolation is used to obtain the channel on remaining subcarriers.
Once, the channel matrix is learnt at the receiver, all the antennas can transmit
simultaneously.
4.2 Equalization

Due to OFDM, equalization may appear as a straightforward task. But, besides this
simplification, the remaining challenge is the transmission of up to 4 spatial layers in a
MIMO system on a maximum of 1200 subcarriers. Moreover, different equalizer designs are
necessary to cover all transmission strategies and scenarios (Transmit diversity, Spatial
Multiplexing). A classic linear equalizer is used for Alamouti type orthogonal SFBC.

A linear MMSE equalizer with successive interference cancellation (SIC) is a good choice for
separating the spatial layers in the spatial multiplexing mode when the codeword to layer
mapping is transparent i.e. one codeword on one layer or 2 codewords on 2 layers. When this
mapping is not one to one i.e. when we transmit 2 codewords on 4 layers or 1 codeword on 2
layers, MMSE SIC is not effective. This is because we split the codeword across layers, and
for MMSE SIC, we need to decode the first codeword before cancelling its effect from the
second, which is not straightforward to implement in this case.

ML decoding achieves a better diversity order than linear equalization, but adds to the
receiver complexity. But, certain algorithms like sphere decoding reduce the complexity for
ML decoding and hence, can be used. In all equalizer modes, generation of LLR is necessary
to provide an input to the turbo channel decoder.
5 MIMO SCHEMES IN LTE-ADVANCED

In order to support downlink peak rate of 30 bps/Hz and uplink peak rate of 15 bps/Hz LTE-
Advanced requirement [],the use of spatial multiplexing with antenna configuration of 8 × 8
for downlink transmission and 4 × 4 for uplink transmission is currently being investigated.
Apart from increasing data rates, further improvement of the average cell throughput as well
as the cell edge performance also forms an important aspect of the LTE-advanced study.
Coordinated multipoint transmission/reception is one such candidate technology where
antennas of multiple cell sites are utilized in a way such that the transmit/receive antennas of
transmit/receive antennas of the serving cell as well as the neighboring cells can contribute in
improving quality of the received signal at the UE/eNodeB, as well as in reducing the co-
channel interferences from neighboring cells.

Some of the areas for further investigation in LTE-Advanced are as follows:

(i) Further enhancement of downlink MU-MIMO to improve the system throughout beyond
what was achieved in LTE.
(ii) Introduction of uplink transmit diversity utilizing up to four transmit antennas.
(iii) Extension of downlink transmit diversity to eight transmit antennas.
6 CONCLUSION
In this report we presented an overview of current and emerging MIMO technologies used in
LTE. These includes transmit diversity; downlink SU-MIMO and MU-MIMO. Along with
this processing done at receiver like channel estimation and equalization were also studied
briefly. Figure 10 shows the LTE downlink SU-MIMO performance in terms of average cell
throughput and cell-edge user throughput, where × L represents the configuration of N
eNodeB transmit antennas and L UE receive antennas.

Figure 10. LTE downlink SU-MIMO performance(Source [5] )

7 REFERENCES
[1] 3GPP, TS 36.201, “Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); LTE Physical Layer-
General Description (Release 8)”.

[2] 3GPP, TS 36.211, “Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical Channels
and Modulation (Release 8)”.

[3] 3GPP, TS 36.213, “Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical layer
procedures (Release 8)”.

[4] 3GPP, TR 36.913, “Requirements for Further Advancements for E-UTRA(LTE-Advanced)

(Release8)”.

[5] J. Lee, J.-K. Han et al., “MIMO Technologies in 3GPP LTE and LTE-Advanced,” EURASIP
Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, vol. 2009, 2009.

[6] Jim Zyren, “Overview of the 3GPP Long Term Evolution Physical Layer,” White Paper, Freescale
Semiconductors, 2007

[7] Erik Dahlman et al, “3G Evolution HSPA and LTE for Mobile Broadband”, 1 st Edition Elsevier,
2007.