Mobile Computing

Cellular Technology

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V i j a y K u m a r C o m p u t e r S c i e n c e U n i v e r s i t y o f M i s s o u r i - K a n s a s C i t y K a n s a s C i t y , M O 6 4 1 1 0 , U S A . k u m a r @ c s t p . u m k c . e d u

References
1. Wireless Communications; Principles and Practice by Theodore S. Rappaport. Prentice Hall, 1996. 2. Internerwork Mobility. The CDPD approach, by Mark S. Taylor, William Waung, and Moshen Banan. Prentice Hall, PTR, 1997. 3. Mobile Telecommunications Networking by Michael Gallagher and Randall Snyder. McGraw-Hill, 1997. 4. Wireless and Mobile Network Architectures, by Yi-Bing Lin and Imrich Chlamtac. John Wiley, 2001.

Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

Cellular Technology
We first briefly describe how wireless communication systems (cordless telephone and cellular systems) work. Figure 1 illustrates the setup of a cordless telephone system. The cordless handset communicates through wireless channels with a fixed port, which is connected to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) wireless link Fixed Port BS (Base Station) Cordless phone

Figure 1. Cordless telephone system. Figure 2 shows a basic cellular system. A cellular system accommodates a large number of users over a large geographical area, within a limited frequency spectrum. High capacity is achieved by limiting the coverage of each base station transmitter to a small geographical area called a cell so that the same radio channels may be reused by another base station (BS) located some distance away. A sophisticated switching technique called a handoff enables a call to proceed uninterrupted when the user moves from one cell to another. A basic cellular system (Figure 2) consists of mobile stations (MS or Mobile Unit MU), base stations, and a mobile switching center (MSC). The MSC is a telephone exchange configured specifically for mobile applications and it is sometimes called a Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO), since it is responsible for connecting all mobile stations to the PSTN in a cellular system. A mobile unit communicates via wireless channel with its own BS and may be handed off to other base stations throughout the duration of a call.

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Figure 2. An illustration of a cellular system. Initially the mobile services were similar to the approach taken by radio and television stations. The operators set up huge transmitters at the highest point in a town. Then they sent high-power transmissions resulting in a large coverage area. This resulted in (a) there was a capacity problem and (b) the mobile stations consumed a large amount of power and they were very bulky. For example, consider the capacity problem. Suppose there are 25 channels available for voice transmission in the metropolitan area of Kansas City. This allowed only 25 calls to be made simultaneously on the system, which could fail to provide satisfactory service if the number of subscribers increased. Thus, it became necessary to restructure the entire system 3 Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

to achieve high capacity with limited radio spectrum, while at the same time covering larger areas. The solution to this problem was to decrease the transmission power by reducing the coverage area of the BS. This gave rise to the concept of a cell, which is a geographical area covered by a particular BS. To provide communication facilities within and outside a cell each cell thus has its own antenna, a set of frequencies, and a low power BS. Figure 3 illustrates the cellular structure of the metropolitan area. There are many cellular systems and main differences among them are in their use of the frequency spectrum and the spacing between the channels.
A metropolitan area A metropolitan area
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Figure 3. One big area is divided into three cells. The cellular concept was a major breakthrough in solving the problem of spectral congestion and user capacity. It offered very high capacity in a limited spectrum allocation without any major technological changes. The cellular concept is a system level idea which calls for replacing a single, high power transmitter (large cell) with many low power transmitters (small cells), each providing coverage to only a small portion of the service area. Each BS is allocated a portion of the total number of channels available to the entire system, and nearby BSs are assigned different groups of channels so that all the available channels are assigned to a relatively small number of neighboring BSs. Neighboring BSs are assigned different groups of channels so that the interference between BSs (and the mobile users under their control) is minimized. By systematically spacing BSs and channel groups throughout a market, the available channels are distributed throughout the geographic region and may be reused as many times as necessary, so long as the interference between co-channel stations is kept below acceptable level. The BS antennas are designed to achieve the desired coverage within the particular cell. By limiting the coverage area to within the boundaries of a cell, the same group of channels may be used to cover different cells that are separated from one another by distance enough to keep interference level (co-channel interference) within tolerable limits. The process of selecting and allocating channel groups for all of the cellular base stations within a system is called frequency reuse or frequency planning.

Size and shape of Cells

The size of a cell is usually irregular (roughly circular). Figure 4 illustrates a coverage area in terms of cells and a typical topology for a cellular radio system. The hexagonal cell shape shown in the figure 4 is conceptual and is a simplistic model of the radio coverage for each base station, but it has been universally adopted since the hexagon permits easy and manageable analysis of a cellular system. The actual radio coverage of a cell is known as the footprint and is determined from field measurements. Although the real footprint is amorphous in nature, a regular cell shape is needed for systematic system design and adaptation for future growth. While it might seem natural to choose a circle to represent a coverage area of a BS, adjacent circles cannot be overlaid upon a map without leaving gaps or creating overlapping regions. Thus, when considering geometric shapes, which cover an entire region without overlap and with 4 Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

equal area, there are three sensible choices: (a) a square, (b) an equilateral triangle, and (c) a hexagon. A cell must be designed to serve the weakest mobiles within the footprint, and these are typically located at the edge of the cell. For a given distance between the center of a polygon and its farthest perimeter points, the hexagon has the largest area of the three. Thus, by using hexagon geometry, the fewest number of cells can cover a geographic region, and the hexagon closely approximates a circular radiation pattern, which could occur for an omni-directional BS antenna and free space propagation. Of course, the actual cellular footprint is determined by the contour in which a given transmitter serves the mobile successfully. When using hexagons to model coverage areas, BS are depicted as either being in the center of the cell (center-excited cells) or on three of the six cell vertices (edge-excited cells). Normally, omni-directional antennas are used in center-excited cells and sectored directional antennas are used in corner-excited cells. Practical considerations usually do not allow BSs to be placed exactly as they appear in the hexagonal layout. Most system designs permit a BS to be positioned up to one-fourth the cell radius away from the ideal location.
2 7 1 6 5 4 3

Figure 4. Representation of a coverage area in terms of cells.

Frequency Reuse
To understand the frequency reuse concept, consider a cellular system with: S duplex channels for use. N number of cells. S channels are divided among N cells where each cell gets a distinct set of k number of channels.

The total number of radio channels then can be expressed as: S = kN. We define the following terms. Cluster: The set of N cells, which collectively use the complete set of available frequencies (S). If a cluster is replicated M times within the system, then the total number of duplex channels (C) can be used as a measure of capacity of the system and can be expressed as: C = MkN = MS. This equation shows that the capacity of a cellular system is directly proportional to the number of times a cluster is replicated in a fixed service area. The factor N is called the cluster size and is typically equal to 4, 7, or 12. If N is reduced and the cell size is unchanged, then more number of clusters will be required to cover an area. This will increase the capacity of the cellular system. A larger cluster size indicates that the ratio between the cell radius and the distance between co-channel cells is large. Conversely, a small cluster size indicates that the co-channel cells are located much closer together. The value of N is a function of how much interference a mobile or BS can tolerate while maintaining a sufficient quality of communications. From a design viewpoint, the smallest possible value of N is desirable in order to maximize capacity over a 5 Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

given coverage area. The frequency reuse factor of a cellular system is given by 1/N, since each cell within a cluster is only assigned 1/N of the total available channels in the system. In hexagonal geometry, there are six neighbors of each cell and the line joining the centers of any cell and each of its neighbors are separated by 60 degrees. This restricts the number of usable cluster sizes and their layouts. In order to tessellate-to connect cells without gap-the number of cells per cluster, N, can only have values, which satisfy the following equation: N = i 2 + ij + j 2 where i and j are non-negative integers. To find the nearest co-channel neighbors of a particular cell, one must do the following: 1. Move i cells along any chain of hexagons. 2. Turn 60 degrees counter-clockwise and move j cells. Figure 5 illustrates this process with i = 3, j = 2, and N = 19.
A A

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Figure 5. Method of locating co-channel cells for frequency reuse [Oet83]. Example Let a total of 33MHz of bandwidth be allocated to a particular FDD cellular telephone system, which uses two 25kHz simplex channels to provide full duplex voice and control channels. Compute the number of channels available per cell if the system uses (a) 4-cell reuse, (b) 7-cell reuse, and (c) 12-cell reuse. If 1 MHz of the allocated spectrum is dedicated to control channels, determine an equitable distribution of control channels and voice channels in each cell for each of the three systems. Solution Given: Total bandwidth = 33 MHz. Channel bandwidth = 25 kHz simplex channels. 25x2 = 50 kHz duplex channels. Total available channels = 33,000/50 = 660 channels. (a) for N = 4, total number of channels available per cell = 660/4 165 channels. (b) for N = 7, total number of channels available per cell = 660/7 95 channels. (c) for N = 12, total number of channels available per cell = 660/12 55 channels. A 1 MHz spectrum for control channels implies that there are 1000/50 = 20 control channels out of the 660 channels available. To evenly distribute the control and voice channels, simply allocate the same number of channels in each cell wherever possible. Here, the 660

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channels must be evenly distributed to each cell within the cluster. In practice, only the 640 voice channels would be allocated, since the control channels are allocated separately as 1 per cell. (a) For N = 4, we can have 5 control channels and 160 voice channels per cell. In practice, however, each cell only needs a single control channel (the control channels have a greater reuse distance than the voice channels). Thus, one control channel and 160 voice channels would be assigned to each cell. (b) For N = 7, 4 cells with 3 control channels and 92 voice channels, 2 cells with 3 control channels and 90 voice channels, and 1 cell with 2 control channels and 92 voice channels could be allocated. In practice, however, each cell would have one control channel, four cells would have 91 voice channels, and three cells would have 92 voice channels. (c) For N = 12, we can have 8 cells with 2 control channels and 53 voice channels, and four cells with 1 control channel and 54 voice channels each. In an actual system, each cell would have 1 control channel, 8 cells would have 53 voice channels, and 4 cells would have 54 voice channels. Frequency reuse depends on the following factors: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. The power of the transmitted signal. The frequencies used. The type of antenna. The height of the antenna. Weather. The terrain over which the signal is sent.

Figure 6 illustrates the condition of frequency reuse. There are two sets of 7 cells. The set of frequencies used by cell 1 of one set is reused by the cell 1 of the second set. These cells must maintain a minimum geographical distance, which is referred to as frequency reuse distance. Frequency reuse distance is computed as: D = 3N R where D = the distance between cells using the same frequency (Figure 5), R is the cell radius, and N is the reuse pattern (the cluster size, which is 7 in figure 5). Thus, for a 7-cell group with cell radius R = 3 miles, the frequency reuse distance D is 13.74 miles. The equation indicates that an increase in D reduces the chance of co-channel interference from cells using the same frequencies. But this also means that the number of channels assigned to each cell becomes smaller, resulting in inefficiencies in managing the spectrum and the trunk.
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Figure 6. Frequency reuse distance.

Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA

Channel Assignment Strategy

Channel assignment can be either fixed or dynamic. Fixed: Each cell is allocated a predetermined set of voice channels. Any call attempt within the cell can only be served by the unused channels in that particular cell. If all the channels in that cell are occupied, then the call is blocked and subscriber does not receive the service. Dynamic: Voice channels are not allocated to different cells permanently. Instead, each time a cell request is made, the serving BS requests a channel from the MSC (Mobile Switching Center). The switch then allocates a channel to the requested cell following an algorithm that takes into account the likelihood of future blocking within the cell, the frequency of use of the candidate channel, the reuse distance of the channel, and other cost functions.

Handoff
One of the goals of a cellular system is for a user to remain continuously connected with the other party even when they move from one cell to another. When a user moves from one coverage area (cell) to another cell, the system must provide the capability for that user to remain in touch, even while breaking the connection with one BS and establishing another connection with another BS. This operation is called a handoff. The handoff operation not only involves identifying a new BS, but also requires that the voice and control signals be allocated to channels associated with the new BS. There are two types of handoff: (a) Hard handoff and (b) Soft handoff. We deal with handoff in detail in the next lecture note.

Vijay Kumar, UMKC, USA