Physical Layer Design for Packet Data over IS-136

Krishna R. Narayanan and Gordon L. Stiiber Mark D. Austin

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Bell South Cellular Corp.
Georgia Institute of Technology 1100 Peachtree st. N.E., suite 12D01
Atlanta, GA 30332-0250 Atlanta, GA 30309

ABSTRACT

Several Forward Error Correction (FEC) , interleaving and

--
6.67ms
40ms 2

Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) schemes are evaluated for

transmitting packet data over IS-136 TDMA. The objective is
to identify the combination of FEC, interleaving and ARQ that
provides maximum data throughput at reasonable computa-
tional complexity. The FEC schemes considered are rate-n/n+l

I I
punctured convolutional codes, long constraint length convolu-
tional codes and punctured Turbo codes. The ARQ schemes Data

+
considered are ARQ with majority voting, ARQ with metric
combining and ARQ with code combining (or Type I11 ARQ). Figure 1: Slot structure of IS-136
The performance of these techniques when used with one-slot
and two-slot interleaving is studied. Results show that highest Encixler Puncturer Interleaver
throughput is achieved when a rate-516 convolutional code is
used with one-slot interleaving and Type I11 ARQ scheme.
Channel

1. INTRODUCTION Deinterleaver )-IDifferential

Demodu,ator

Currently, a standardization effort for packet data over the

IS-136 air interface is underway within the Global TDMA Fo-
rum. In order to minimize the development effort, and to uti-
lize previous work, this standard intends to use the higher layer
protocols of the Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) standard
already developed for AMPS. The issues then open for stan-
dardization are confined to the physical and MAC layers. This
paper compares several different physical layer designs in terms
of their Frame Error Rate (FER), data throughput and com-
putational complexity. The physical layer design options are
limited to FECI interleaving, and ARQ protocols, so that the
frame size, time slot, and modulation are kept the same as in
IS-136.
The paper is organized as follows - Section I1 discusses the
system model. Sections 111, IV and V treat the different FEC
techniques, ARQ techniques and interleaving schemes respec-
tively. Section VI presents the results and compares the per-
formance of the FEC, ARQ and interleaving schemes. Finally,
Section VI1 summarizes the results.
2. SYSTEM MODEL
Data is assumed to be transmitted in the form of packets,
composed of 6.67 ms time slots (20 ms apart) as outlined in the
IS-136 standard and shown in Fig. 1. The system simulation
model is shown in Fig. 2. A 16-bit CRC checksum is appended
t o the data using the CRC polynomial z16 +z15 + z 2 + 1, to de-
tect errors and request retransmissions at the receiver. The data
Figure 2: System model
is then encoded using a convolutional encoder. The encoded bi-
nary output is 260 bits in length including trail bits. The 260
encoded output bits are interleaved using a 26 x 10 block inter-
leaver and then xI4-DQF’SK modulated into 130 symbols. Two
types of channels are considered, the Additive White Gaussian
Noise (AWGN) limited channel and the CoChannel Interference
(CCI) limited channel. In either case, the desired signal is as-
sumed to be affected by frequency non-selective (flat) Rayleigh
fading. i.e., the envelope of the desired received signal has the
probability density
p ( x ) := -exp{--}.
X 2a2
X2
U2
For the AWGN limited channel, AWGN of power spectral den-
sity No/2 is added to the received signal. For the CCI limited
channel, the interference is assumed to be from another user
whose signal is independently Rayleigh faded and with average
received carrier power P I . If Ps is the average received carrier
power of the desired signnf, then SNR and C/I are defined as
SNR = lolog-Ps
No
ps
C/I = lolog-. (2)
PI

0-7803-3659-3/97
$ 1 0.000 1 997 IEEE 1029
 length and decoding becomes impractical beyond a certain con-
straint length. However sequential decoding algorithms can be
used to decode long constraint length convolutional codes. Al-
though the performance of sequential decoding algorithms is
suboptimal, the decoding complexity is linear with the con-
symbols
straint length and, hence, is suitable for long constraint length
codes. The performance of a v = 31 rate-516 convolutional
code is studied when used with a soft-decision Fano sequential
decoder.

3.3 Punctured Turbo Codes

Turbo codes are known to provide large coding gains over

Figure 3: Differentially coherent detector for nI4-DQPSK
At the receiver, the received signal is demodulated using a differ-
entially coherent detector (shown in Fig. 3), deinterleaved, and
decoded using a soft-decision decoder [l].The decoded packet is
then checked for errors using the CRC check. If the CRC check-
sum is zero, the packet is accepted, otherwise a packet error is
declared and a retransmission is requested. The performance
criteria considered are the frame error rate and data through-
put. The computational complexity and storage requirements
at the receiver are also compared. The performance of the dif-
ferent schemes are compared both at low Mobile Station (MS)
velocities (8 km/hr) and high MS velocities (100 km/hr).
3. FEC schemes
3.1 Rate-n/n + 1 convolutional codes
It is well known that rate-n/n +1 convolutional codes pro-
vide good performance and can be efficiently decoded using a
soft-decision Viterbi decoder. We consider rate-112, 2/3, 415
and 5/6 codes of constraint length U = 5. The rate-213, 415
and 516 codes are obtained by puncturing a rate-1/2 code.
The use of punctured codes permits the use of a soft-decision
Viterbi decoder corresponding to the original rate-112 code with
2 branches from each state, instead of 2" branches for a generic
+
non-punctured rate-n/n 1 code. The codes are chosen from
the tables in [2]. A soft-decision Viterbi decoder is used with
14-bit metric quantization. Since differential demodulation is
used, an estimate of the channel state information is not re-
quired. Therefore, the branch metric used in the Viterbi de-
coder is the Euclidean distance K l l r k - Z k 1 I 2 , where T k is the
received signal and x k is the encoder output corresponding to
the branch transition. When the code is punctured, the branch
metric corresponding to the punctured bits need not be com-
+
puted. For the most part, rate-nln 1 convolutional codes of
constraint length U = 5 (32 states) are considered. However,
the performance of the best known rate-l0/11 code, obtained
by puncturing a rate-1/2 code of constraint length 8 (64 states),
is also considered.
3.2 Long Constraint length Codes
The performance of convolutional codes can be improved by
using longer constraint length codes. However, the complexity
of the Viterbi decoder increases exponentially with constraint
AWGN and flat Rayleigh fading channels [3]. Motivated by the
tremendous coding gain, the performance of a rate-5/6 Turbo
code obtained by puncturing rate-l/2 component encoders is
also studied. Since the complexity of a Turbo decoder is much
higher than that of a Viterbi decoder for the same constraint
length, the constraint length of the component codes in the
Turbo code was chosen to be 4 (16 state code). The block length
was chosen to be 260, corresponding to two IS-136 packets.
4. A R Q schemes
This section discusses three different types of ARQ schemes.
When the receiver decodes a packet and deems it erroneous,
the receiver requests retransmission of the packet. The trans-
mitter then transmits a copy of the packet, or other versions
of the packet, as discussed below. A stop-and-wait protocol
is assumed, i.e., the transmitter waits until an acknowledgment
(ACK) is received from the receiver before transmitting the next
packet. The ARQ protocol has to be slightly modified when
two-slot interleaving is used.
4.1 A R Q w i t h M a j o r i t y Voting
When a decoded packet is deemed erroneous at the receiver,
the bit decisions of the Viterbi decoder are stored and a re-
transmission is requested. If the ith transmission of a packet -.is
detected in error, the corresponding bit decisions &, G,....,d b
are stored, where ij E [0,1], corresponds to the decision on
the jth bit during the ith transmission and N is the length of
the data packet including the CRC bits. When the packet is
detected in error during the third or subsequent transmissions
(i 2 3), a bit-by-bit majority voting is performed using the rule
1, if 2: 22
d3 = 0 otherwise. (3)
Then the new decisions &,d^l , ...., (i, are checked for errors us-
ing the CRC check. If the packet is still deemed to be in error,
a retransmission is requested. When a packet is retransmitted
for the 5th time, majority voting is performed on all the 5 de-
cisions, and the condition x : - , d j > 2 in (3) is now changed
to ~ ~ - 2 , 3.
d ~ If the packet is not decoded correctly after
5 attempts, a decoding failure is declared and the transmitter
proceeds with the next packet.
This technique is very simple to implement and imposes only
small storage requirements on the receiver. A maximum of 5 N
binary numbers (decisions of the decoder) have to be stored.

1030
4.2 ARQ w i t h P a c k e t Combining
When a decoded packet is deemed erroneous at the receiver,
all the branch metrics from the Viterbi decoder are stored and
a retransmission is requested. The transmitter then transmits
an identical copy of its previous transmission. The receiver now
combines these transmissions using a packet combining rule to
decode the input bit sequence dk given multiple observations
r p ) ,.., r f ' of the same encoded output sequence X k , where r f )
is the received signal during the jth transmission and k is the
time index. To understand this better, consider the branch
metric corresponding to a transition from state SL.-l to state
S k . During the first transmission, the Viterbi decoder operates
with the branch metric y(l)(S', S, k) computed as
During the jth transmission, the branch metrics are computed
using the recursion
j-1
1=1
The advantages of this technique are that the transmitter is
simple, and the receiver structure is also reasonably simple. The
disadvantage is the huge storage requirements. For a 2n-state
binary code, 2"' 14-bit metrics have to be stored after each
transmission. Also more additions are needed to compute the
branch metrics.
4.3 ARQ w i t h Code Combining ( T y p e I11 ARQ)
This technique belongs to the class of incremental redun-
dancy ARQ schemes [4] or ARQ schemes with complementary
punctured convolutional (CPC) codes [5]. To understand this
technique consider the best known rate-5/6 convolutional code,
derived by puncturing a rate-1/2 code with generator poly-
nomials (53,75)~. The rate-5/6 code is derived by punctur-
ing the outputs of the encoder using the puncturing pattern
A = [
1 1 1 1 1 1
, where a 1 represents a trans-
mitted bit and 0 represents a punctured bit. The punctured
output is then modulated and transmitted over the channel.
When a packet is received and deemed erroneous, the receiver
stores all the branch metrics and requests a retransmission. The
transmitter however, does not transmit an identical copy of
the packet. The transmitter now transmits the bits that were
punctured during the first transmission. In otherwords, the en-
coded outputs are now punctured using a puncturing pattern
. The two transmissions together
1 0 0 0 0
now correspond to a rate-5/12 code, which embeds in itself the
original rate-1/2 mother code. Recall that in the previous cases,
the effective rate of the code after two transmissions was 5/12
also. The important difference is that, in the previous cases
after 2 transmissions the effective code is the concatenation of
a rate-5/6 code with a 2 symbol repetition code. The distance
properties of the concatenated rate-5/12 repetition code are in-
ferior to that of the rate-5/12 code which contains the original
1031
rate-1/2 code. With this technique after 2 transmissions, the
FER performance of the system is guaranteed to be at least as
good as the original rate-'1/2 code.
The multiple transmissions can be effectively combined by
using a technique similar 160 that used for the ARQ with packet
combining. Consider combining the first and second transmis-
sions, or equivalently, determining the branch metrics after the
second transmission of the packet. Recall, that when decod-
ing punctured convolutional codes, the branch metrics corre-
sponding to the punctured symbols are not calculated. When
computing the branch metrics during the second transmissions,
y(')(S', S,k ) can then be computed using
where xf) denotes the punctured output of the encoder using
the puncturing pattern Pz.This can be seen to be equivalent to
decoding a rate-5/12 code comprising the rate-1/2 code. Thus,
the performance of this A.RQ technique is expected to be bet-
ter than ARQ with metric combining. An interesting feature of
this ARQ scheme is that, the second retransmission is decod-
able by itself independent of the first transmission. The second
transmission merely corresponds to a rate-5/6 code and can,
therefore, be decoded using the same Viterbi decoder.
The advantages of this technique include an excellent FER
performance and easy generation of the branch metrics. The
disadvantage is the necesciity to store the branch metrics as in
the ARQ with packet Combining and the transmitter is more
complicated. Note that the storage requirements for this tech-
nique are the same as that for ARQ with packet combining.
The concept of incremental redundancy ARQ can be ex-
tended further, by using a rate-5/6 code obtained by puncturing
a rate-1/3 or rate-1/4 code, and lowering the effective rate of
the code after every retransmission. However, in this study, we
restrict ourselves to punctured rate-l/2 codes.
5. Interleaving
Interleaving is essential when transmitting data over fading
channels especially at lour MS velocities, when the channel is
highly correlated. The iriterleaver permutes the code symbol
sequence, making the fades appear uncorrelated. The perfor-
mance of a system largely depends on the interleaving scheme.
In general, the larger the interleaver size or the time separa-
tion between the fades affecting the bits in the data stream, the
better the performance of the system will be.
5.1 One-slot interleaving
Recall that data is transmitted in the form of packets in
time slots specified by the IS-136 frame structure. Specifically
each user transmits over ab 6.67 ms time slot and then waits for
20 ms before the next slot. With one-slot interleaving, data
within one slot (260 bits) is interleaved using a 26 x 10 block
interleaver. The data is written row-wise and read column wise.
If X O ,X I ,....,2 2 5 9 is the iriput to the interleaver, the output is
2 0 ~ x 2 6 ...,
, ~ 2 5 9 .This ensures that the adjacent code symbols are
affected by fades which are separated by at least 26 symbols.
However, interleaving is restricted to within one time slot and,
hence, the performance cciuld be adversely affected.
5.2 Two-slot interleaving comparison of the achievable throughput in kbps when rate-
1/2, 5/6, and 10/11 codes of constraint length 5 are used with
The major problem with one-slot interleaving is that inter- an AWGN-limited channel at MS velocities of 8 km/hr and 100
leaving is restricted to one time frame and, hence, the fades km/hr and SNR of 14dB. It can be seen that the performance
cannot be effectively uncorrelated at low speeds. With two- of the rate 5/6 code is good both at low and high MS velocities.
slot interleaving, two adjacent packets are combined and inter- We now discuss the performance of ARQ schemes and in-
terleaving schemes, when used with a rate-5/6 code. A plot of
leaved. The receiver then deinterleaves two packets to ether
(8
and decodes them separately. Specifically, if x r ) , ....,x Z s 9 and FER vs SNR for mobile velocities of 8 km/hr (slow speed) and
x('+l) , ...., x (259
k + ' ) represent the encoded outputs corresponding
100 km/hr (high speed) is shown for the CCI limited channel in
to packets at time IC and k+l respectively, then two new packets Figs. 4 and 5 respectively. Note that the performance of Type
are formed using the rule, I11 ARQ is uniformly better than the other two schemes and
is significantly better than the ARQ scheme with majority vot-
ing, especially at low C/I. However, the storage requirement is
greater for Type I11 ARQ. Table 2, provides a sample compari-
son of FER performance, complexity and storage requirements
*.z(le+l) -
- { xi'),
x!'"),
if i mod 2 = 1
if i mod 2 = 0.
for the three ARQ schemes when used with one-slot interleaving
for C/I of 14 dB.

The two packets, Zr),...., and itr"),....,5gi1)are then

interleaved, modulated and transmitted over the channel. At Table 1: Throughput comparison for different rate codes
the receiver the inverse operation takes place.
Code v 8 km/hr 100 km/hr

6. Results and Discussion

rate FER I --
Throuahmt I FER I ThrouahDut --
1/2 5 8% 5.98 kbps 2% 6.37 kbps
5/6 5 29% 7.66 kbps 31% 7.45 kbps
The FEC schemes, ARQ schemes and interleaving schemes 10/11 5 31% 8.14 kbps 45% 6.49 kbps
were simulated and the performance studied. In terms of FER
performance, it was observed that the punctured Turbo codes
did not provide significant reduction in the FER compared to
rate-5/6 convolutional codes. This is because puncturing the
component encoders to produce high-rate Turbo codes dras- ARQ FER Storage Extra
tically reduces the effective free distance of the code (output 8 km/hr 100 km/hr Adds
distance corresponding to all input weight-2 sequences). To ob- Maj. Voting 13.0% 23.2% N bits
tain an overall rate-5/6 code, requires rate-l0/11 component Pkt. Comb 12.68% 16.2% 2"+lN 2"+'N
encoders. The free distance for the rate-l0/11 component code
obtained by puncturing a rate-1/2, constraint length 4 compo-
nent code is O! Therefore, the only improvement in performance
attainable is due to the interleaving gain, which is fairly low for Although it seems intuitive that two-slot interleaving is bet-
small block lengths. Since the Turbo decoder has significantly ter than one slot interleaving, the results in Figs. 4 and 5 indi-
higher latency and complexity than the Viterbi decoder, it is cate otherwise. This can be explained as follows. At low speeds,
not a good choice. It should be noted that the original rate- errors tend to occur in bursts. The performance of the Viterbi
1 / 2 Turbo code still offers a huge improvement in performance decoder depends largely on the distribution of errors within each
over the best known rate-1/2 convolutional code of comparable packet. Consider the situation when the channel exhibits a pro-
complexity. longed deep fade (equivalently low instantaneous C/I) during
Similar results were obtained when a constraint length 31 the transmission of a packet and no deep fades (equivalently
code was used with a soft-decision Fano sequential decoder. high instantaneous C/I) during the transmission of the next
The performance of the rate-5/6, constraint length 31 code packet. This situation is typical at slow speeds. With one-
when used with sequential decoder is not significantly better slot interleaving, the error bursts are confined to within one
than that of a rate-5/6, constraint length 5 convolutional code packet, while with two-slot interleaving errors are distributed
with Viterbi decoding. Thus, high-rate punctured convolutional across both the packets. Thus with one-slot interleaving only
codes do not provide good performance when used with sequen- one packet is in error, while with two-slot interleaving both
tial decoders. Similar results were obtained in [6]. Hence, the packets are likely to be in error. However, as the C/I increases,
best FER performance from the coding options studied here the performance of two-slot interleaving improves and will be-
is obtained from convolutional codes when used with a soft- come better than one-slot interleaving beyond a particular C/I.
decision Viterbi decoder. This is because, at high C/I, after distributing the errors across
It is well known that high-rate convolutional codes, obtained two packets, the errors in both packets can be corrected. At high
by puncturing a low-rate convolutional code, have inferior FER speeds the channel does not exhibit prolonged fades. Therefore,
performance. However, for the same block length, more data the performance of one-slot interleaving is better at low C/I, and
bits can be transmitted by using a high-rate convolutional code. at moderate-to-high C/I the performance of two-slot interleav-
Therefore, selection of the code rate involves a trade-off between ing is better than that of one-slot interleaving. It is interesting
the increased FER and the increased actual number of data,bits to note that the performance of a rate-1/2 code with two-slot
per packet, as result of puncturing. Table 1 shows a sample interleaving is better than that of one-slot interleaving even for

1032
moderate C/I. This is due to the fact that the error-correcting
capability (free distance) of the code is better and, hence, after
distributing the errors, the errors in both the packets can be
corrected. In conclusion, the performance curves for one-slot
and two-slot interleaving exhibit a crossover C/I that depends
not only on the speed but also on the error-correction capabil-
ity of the code used. In particular, the crossover C/I decreases
when the error-correcting capability (free distance) of the code
increases or MS velocity increases. In this case, one-slot inter-
leaving is better than two slot interleaving up to 20 dB C/I at
40.0
speed of 8 km/hr and up to 14 dB at speed of 100 km/hr.
Uncoded
7. Conclusions -fl 1 slot interleaving with majority voting
+e2 slot interleaving with majority voting
30.0 A 1 slot interleaving with packet combining
We have studied the performance of several FECI interleav- 4 2 slot interleaving with packet combining
ing and ARQ schemes for transmitting packet data using IS-136 t 1 slot interleaving with Type 111 ARQ
& + 2 slot interleaving with Type Ill ARQ
TDMA. Results show that short constraint length, punctured I
convolutional codes used with soft-decision Viterbi decoding 2
20,0
provide good performance at moderate complexity. The per- 6
formance of these codes can be improved by using a Type I11 E

-
ARQ scheme. Further, it was shown that one-slot interleaving
is better than two-slot interleaving for low-to-moderate C/I, es-
10.0
pecially at low MS velocities.

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E
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Figure 5: FER. comparison at 100 km/hr

1033