Inter-Frequency Re-Selection for CSG Cell Interference Avoidance in LTE Network

Janne Kurjenniemi, Olli Alanen

Magister Solutions Ltd. Rautpohjankatu 8, 40700 Jyv skyl , Finland a a Email: {Janne.Kurjenniemi, Olli.Alanen}@magister.

Tero Henttonen, Jorma Kaikkonen

Nokia P.O.Box 407, 00045 Nokia Group, Finland Email: {Tero.Henttonen, Jorma.Kaikkonen}@nokia.com

AbstractIn 3GPP Rel8 access to a Home eNodeB may be restricted to only UEs belonging to a Closed Subscriber Group (CSG). These cells are called CSG cells and a UE with CSG subscription would have an Allowed CSG List containing CSG Identities associated with the CSG cells on which the UE is allowed access. This however, can be problematic for the users located near the CSG cells, but who are not allowed to access them. The interference caused by the CSG cell can be devastating if the UE is connected to a macro cell using the same frequency. Some solutions for these interference problems have been proposed in 3GPP standardization and in this study we have evaluated the performance of different options for handling the interference issues related to mixed carrier CSG deployments. The proposals utilize different details of the LTE re-selection algorithm and suggestion on the best solution is also given.

connected mode Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) and Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) can be used for handover purposes. However, in Rel8 idle mode cell selection and re-selection are based on RSRP, so there is not any interference avoidance mechanisms or quality based cell selection / re-selection algorithms. Cell selection and reselection algorithms in presence of CSG cell interference have been under discussion recently in 3GPP e.g. [4], [5], [6]. This study presents evaluation of two idle mode re-selection algorithms to enhance Rel8 algorithm performance in varying interference conditions. II. C ELL SELECTION AND RE - SELECTION Current 3GPP Rel8 specications include RSRP based cell selection and re-selection algorithms. In this paper we are evaluating possible enhancements to normal Rel8 algorithms for interference avoidance. The rst candidate algorithm takes advantage of usage of RSRQ measurement and the second one included barring rule to try to avoid usage of frequency layer that is under strong interference. Studied algorithms are presented below in detail. A. Measurements UE related measurements for the cell selection and reselection are dened in 3GPP specications in [7] and it currently includes only Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP). RSRP is measured for a considered cell as the linear average over the power contributions of the resource elements that carry cell-specic reference signals within the considered measurement frequency bandwidth. The cell-specic reference signals according to [8] can be used for RSRP determination. To be able to take into account quality in cell selection and re-selection process also Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ) is used in these studies. RSRQ is dened as the ratio N RSRP/RSSI, where N is the number of Resource Blocks (RB) of the E-UTRA Carrier Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurement bandwidth. The measurements in the numerator and denominator shall be made over the same set of resource blocks. RSSI that is used in RSRQ determination is the total received wideband power observed by the UE from all sources, including co-channel serving and non-serving cells, adjacent channel interference, thermal noise, etc.

I. I NTRODUCTION Within 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specications are currently being nalized for the UTRAN Long Term Evolution (LTE) i.e. Evolved UTRAN (E-UTRAN) which provides signicant spectral efciency gain in the order of 2-4 compared to e.g. 3GPP Rel6 High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). For the LTE downlink Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is considered to be the best access technology for providing high system bandwidth scalability from 1.4 MHz up to 20 MHz and to facilitate advanced frequency-domain scheduling methods ([1], [2]). Furthermore, to achieve the objectives set for LTE, advanced Radio Resource Management (RRM) functions have been dened including e.g. Hybrid ARQ (HARQ), Link Adaptation (LA), Channel Quality Indication (CQI), Packet Scheduling (PS) and Handover Control (HC). According to 3GPP Rel8 specications [3], a Home eNodeB may provide restricted access to only UEs belonging to a Closed Subscriber Group (CSG). These cells, known as CSG cells, are identied by a unique numeric identier called CSG Identity. A UE with CSG subscription would have an Allowed CSG List, which contains one or more CSG Identities associated with the CSG cells on which the UE is allowed access. The UE uses the Allowed CSG List along with the CSG Identity broadcast by the CSG Cells in CSG cell selection and re-selection. When CSG cells and macro cells operate on shared frequency carrier, CSG cells create interference towards macro cell users who are not allowed to connect to CSG cell. In

978-1-4244-2519-8/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

B. Studied algorithms 1) RSRP: RSRP based cell selections and re-selections are done according to following criteria (the normal Rel8 reselection criteria):

If the UE is camped on the highest priority layer, and the cell with the strongest RSRP is a non-allowed CSG cell, then move to the lower priority layer and bar the highest priority layer for Tbarred = 300 s. III. S IMULATION SCENARIO

If UE is camped to a lower priority layer cell and there is another cell that is better than absolute threshold (SnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,high ) on highest priority layer, UE performs a cell re-selection to that cell. If another cell is Qhysts better than serving cell on the current frequency layer, perform re-selection. If UE is camped to a higher priority layer cell and serving cell is worse than absolute threshold (SServingCell < T hreshserving,low ) and another cell is better than another absolute threshold (SnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,low ) on a lower priority layer cell, perform re-selection to lower priority layer cell.

2) RSRP and RSRQ: RSRP and RSRQ based cell selections and re-selections are done according to following criteria (based on criteria proposed in [9]): If UE is camped to a lower priority layer cell and there is another cell that is better than absolute threshold (SnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,high AND RSRQnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,high,RSRQ ) on highest priority layer, UE performs a cell re-selection to that cell. If another cell is Qhysts better than serving cell on the current frequency layer, perform re-selection. If UE is camped to a higher priority layer cell and serving cell is worse than absolute threshold (SServingCell < T hreshserving,low ) and another cell is better than another absolute threshold (SnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,low ) on a lower priority layer cell OR serving cell is worse than absolute threshold (RSRQServingCell < T hreshserving,low,RSRQ ) and another cell is better than another > absolute threshold (RSRQnonServingCell,x T hreshx,low,RSRQ ) on a lower priority layer cell perform re-selection to lower prioritylayer cell. 3) RSRP with barring: RSRP with barring based cell selections and re-selections are done according to the following criteria (same as Rel8 but added barring criterion):

This study has been performed using a fully dynamic time driven system simulator which simulates UL and DL directions simultaneously with a symbol resolution. We have used RSRP and RSRQ measurements for evaluating the best cell and for making the actual cell selection and cell re-selection decisions. In the simulations the UE makes RSRP and RSRQ measurements with predened period (measurement interval). The collected measurement results are then non-coherently averaged over a predened sliding window (measurement period). It is also assumed that cells are automatically detected by UE, thus no cell search procedure is modeled. These studies have been done in a combined macro-CSG scenario with two frequency layers shown in Fig. 1. Antenna directions of macro eNodeBs are presented with the arrows and the small squares are houses with CSG cells. Both frequency layers have co-located macro cells and CSG cells operate only on the higher priority layer. High priority network is similar as used in [10], [11] for macro-femto studies in HSDPA network. All users are located inside an active macro area, which is situated in the middle of three sites with total of 6 macro cells (area border indicated with dotted line in Fig. 1). Users are able to connect only to the gray cells indicated in the gure. The surrounding white macro cells are interferers, i.e. they only create same kind of interference as middle 6 cells and a UE cannot do cell selection or re-selection to them. Inside the active macro area there are 37 buildings having uniform separation to their neighboring buildings. UEs created

If UE is camped to a lower priority layer cell and there is another cell that is better than absolute threshold (SnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,high ) on highest priority layer, UE performs a cell re-selection to that cell. If another cell is Qhysts better than serving cell on the current frequency layer, perform re-selection. If UE is camped to a higher priority layer cell and serving cell is worse than absolute threshold (SServingCell < T hreshserving,low ) and another cell is better than another absolute threshold (SnonServingCell,x > T hreshx,low ) on a lower priority layer cell, perform re-selection to lower priority layer cell.

Fig. 1.

Simulation scenario.

Fig. 2.

Layout of a building.

to the surrounding macro area can enter to the buildings and exit from them. Building walls do not restrict users mobility but they do affect the signal propagation. The layout of each building is depicted in Fig. 2. A CSG cell with isotropic antenna is created in the middle of each building. Users are not able to connect to CSG cells as we are looking non-allowed CSG cell interference towards macro cell users. CSG cells do not have any users connected to them, but those create variable interference with 50 % activity as shown in Fig. 3. The macro and CSG parameters are presented in Table I.
TABLE I S IMULATION PARAMETERS . Simulation Scenario High priority network Low priority network BS Tx Power Macro cell inter site distance Antenna pattern Path loss (outdoor) Path loss (indoor) Shadowing standard deviation Shadowing correlation (cells) Shadowing correlation (sectors) Operation bandwidth (BW) Duplexing Number of sub-carriers Sub-carrier spacing Resource block bandwidth Sub-frame length Reuse factor No. of symbols per TTI No. of data symbols per TTI No. of control symbols per TTI Multipath delay prole UE Speed Treselection Qhysts Receiver Measurement BW Measurement Interval Measurement Period Combined macro-CSG scenario with two frequency layers 55 cells (18 macro cells and 37 CSG cells) 18 macro cells Macro: 46 dBm CSG: 8 dBm 500 m Macro: 70-degree sectored beam CSG: Omni directional antennas 15 m ant: 128.1 + 37.6 log 10(r) 2 m ant: 143.9 + 39.7 log 10(r) 38.4 + 20 log 10(r) + Nw Lw 8 dB 0.5 1.0 10 MHz FDD 600 15 kHz 180 kHz 1 ms 1 14 10 4 Typical Urban (TU) 3 km/h 0 ms 3 dB 2RX MRC 6 PRBs 1.28 s 2 samples

Fig. 3.

Example of CSG cell loading.

kind of conditions in the network. Although these simulations are used to evaluate idle mode performance, all UEs are receiving one packet per 10 seconds to have an estimate for the Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise-Ratio (SINR) UE would have in downlink when moving to connected mode i.e. starting a call. This SINR can also be considered to model the SINR of the paging channel. A. Propagation Macro propagation is based on 3GPP macro cell model [12] and is dened by L[dB] = 128.1 + 37.6 log10(R[km]), (1)

for 15 m antenna height, where R is the distance between the transmitter and the receiver in kilometers. For 2 m antenna height macro propagation is dened by L[dB] = 143.9 + 39.7 log10(R[km]). (2)

Indoor propagation is modeled with a modied COST 231 multi-wall model [13] without the effect of oor attenuation (since the buildings have only one oor) dened by L[dB] = 38.4 + 20 log10(R[m]) + Lw Nw , (3)

In the simulations both CSG and macro network loads are varied to see the performance of each algorithm in different

where 38.4 dB constant is the path loss at reference distance 1 m, R is the distance between the transmitter and the receiver in meters, nw is the number of indoor walls between them and Lw is the attenuation of an indoor wall. Used wall attenuation parameters along with other main simulation parameters are presented in Table I. In the mixed macro and indoor model there are different situations where the UE and the eNodeB can be located in relation to each other. The signal propagation must be calculated individually in each of them: eNodeB and UE both outdoors: Macro model (15 m antenna height) eNodeB outdoors and UE indoors: Macro model (15 m antenna height) + external wall loss

TABLE II S IMULATED THRESHOLDS (RSRQ / RSRP) FOR EACH RE - SELECTION SCHEME . Scenario Low Medium High T hreshx,high RSRQ RSRP -11 -9 -7 -109 -103 -97 T hreshx,low RSRQ RSRP -9 -7 -5 -107 -101 -95 T hreshserving,low RSRQ RSRP -13 -11 -9 -111 -105 -99

DLAllocation SINR CDF ( MacroLoad:Constant50 TxP:8dBm CSGLoad:Variable ) 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 CDF 0.5 0.4 Alg: RSRP Threshold:Low Alg: RSRP Threshold:Medium Alg: RSRP Threshold:High Alg: RSRP Barring Threshold:Low Alg: RSRP Barring Threshold:Medium Alg: RSRP Barring Threshold:High Alg:RSRP+RSRQ Threshold:Low Alg:RSRP+RSRQ Threshold:Medium Alg:RSRP+RSRQ Threshold:High

eNodeB indoors and UE outdoor: max ( Indoor model + external wall loss, Macro model (2 m antenna height) + external wall loss ) Both indoors and in the same building: Indoor model Both indoors but in different buildings: Macro model (2 m antenna height) + 2 external wall loss IV. S IMULATION RESULT ANALYSIS

0.3 0.2 0.1 0 30

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Fig. 4.

CDF of instantaneous SINRs for all users.

In this section, the two proposed re-selection algorithms for shared carrier scenario are evaluated. Since priority based inter frequency re-selection algorithms operate based on several absolute thresholds, we run the simulations with some chosen thresholds that seemed to provide the best results. Thresholds utilized in the simulations are presented in the Table II. The pros and cons of each algorithm are evaluated based on the instantaneous SINRs that UEs experience when moving from idle to connected mode. The negative impact on the other hand is depicted with number of re-selections that indicate whether some unnecessary re-selections are performed with some of the schemes. So in best case re-selection algorithm should ensure that UEs are connected to best cell while trying to minimize number of re-selections. The times camped in each network are also presented to give further insight for the performance of each scheme. A. Instantaneous SINR In Fig. 4 the SINRs of all of the users are shown, so there are both indoor and outdoor users. These SINR values basically show what kind of SINRs UEs are experiencing when starting a call. It shows how the RSRP with barring provides the best SINRs and combination of RSRQ and RSRP also provide improvement when compared to the regular scheme based only on RSRP. In Fig. 5 the SINRs of only the indoor users are shown. In this gure the differences between the schemes are even more visible so it can be said that the RSRP with barring succeeds better in overall than does the RSRP+RSRQ solution when considering the SINRs. Indoor users are experiencing strong interference from close by indoor eNodeB, while received signal strength from serving eNodeB is further reduced due to external wall loss. In these cases external wall loss is 15 dB. It should be also noted that houses are placed in different parts of the cell, so some of the houses are close to serving macro cell while other ones are on the cell border area giving good variation in terms of different radio channel conditions.

B. Number of re-selections Figs. 6 and 7 on their behalf present the overall numbers of intra frequency and inter frequency re-selections occurred in the simulations. When comparing the schemes based on the inter frequency re-selections, it is noted that RSRP+RSRQ does result with more of those. This is due to the fact that pingpong re-selections between the networks are done because of RSRQ reacting to the varying interference conditions. Still it is worth reminding that this solution did not result with any better SINRs but rather vice versa. RSRQ can react to interference changes but the reaction is still so slow that when the actual re-selection is performed, the interference conditions may have already changed to opposite. C. Time proportions in different frequency layers Finally in Fig. 8 the proportion of time spent in high priority network is presented. It is again visible that RSRP+RSRQ

DLAllocation SINR CDF ( MacroLoad:Constant50 TxP:8dBm CSGLoad:Variable ) 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 CDF 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 30 Alg: RSRP Threshold:Low Alg: RSRP Threshold:Medium Alg: RSRP Threshold:High Alg: RSRP Barring Threshold:Low Alg: RSRP Barring Threshold:Medium Alg: RSRP Barring Threshold:High Alg:RSRP+RSRQ Threshold:Low Alg:RSRP+RSRQ Threshold:Medium Alg:RSRP+RSRQ Threshold:High

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Fig. 5.

CDF of instantaneous SINR for indoor users.

Fig. 6.

Number of intra frequency handovers. Fig. 8. Proportion of time spent in each frequency layer.

keeps the UEs more often in high priority network. The negative impact of the barring is also depicted here well. Many UEs are moved to the low priority network since they can get better SINRs over there. If the operator would prefer to keep the users on high priority network, this might not be the behavior desired although as SINR results suggest too aggressive setting to move users to high priority network would not be that good in quality of service point of view. V. C ONCLUSIONS In this paper we have presented evaluation of the performance of different re-selection schemes to avoid possible interference from (non-allowed) CSG cells. The evaluation was done in combined macro-CSG scenario with two frequency layers. Both frequency layers had co-located macro cells and a number of indoor cells were introduced to the higher priority layer modeling the CSG cells. The performance of different schemes was evaluated in terms of number of re-selections

and observed SINR. Based on the results presented it can be seen that best performance in terms of both, SINR and number of reselections, can be obtained with barring based approach, where UE reselects to lower priority layer if the strongest cell at the given frequency layer is non-allowed CSG cell. RSRQ based approaches results increased number of re-selections between priority layers due to measurement related uncertainties, and is affected by the bursty nature of the trafc load, but does not provide as good SINR as the barring based approach. R EFERENCES
[1] Physical Layer Aspects for Evolved UTRA, 3GPP Technical Report 25.814, version 7.1.0, September 2006. [2] A. Toskala, H. Holma, K. Pajukoski, and E. Tiirola, UTRAN Long Term Evolution in 3GPP, in Proceedings of IEEE Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications Conference (PIMRC06), September 2006. [3] E-UTRA and E-UTRAN overall description, 3GPP Technical Specication 36.300, version 8.11.0, December 2009. [4] Impact of HeNB interference on paging channel performance, 3GPP TSG RAN WG4 contribution R4-092399, June 2009. [5] Further evaluation of methods to handle non-allowed CSG cells in LTE, 3GPP TSG RAN WG4 contribution R4-093169, August 2009. [6] Evaluation of methods to handle non-allowed CSG cells, 3GPP TSG RAN WG4 contribution R4-092450, June 2009. [7] Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical layer; Measurements, 3GPP Technical Specication 36.214, version 8.0.0, September 2007. [8] Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Physical channels and modulation, 3GPP Technical Specication 36.211, version 8.0.0, September 2007. [9] RSRQ measurement requirement in idle mode, 3GPP TSG RAN WG4 contribution R4-091895, May 2009. [10] T. Nihtila, Capacity improvement by employing femto cells in a macro cell HSDPA network, in IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC) 2008., July 2008. [11] , Increasing Femto Cell Throughput with HSDPA Using Higher Order Modulation, in IEEE International Networking and Communications Conference (INCC) 2008., May 2008. [12] Physical layer aspects for evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), 3GPP Technical Specication 25.814, version 7.1.0, September 2006. [13] E. Damosso and L. M. C. (editors), Digital mobile radio towards future generation systems, COST231 Final report, Tech. Rep., 1999.

Fig. 7.

Number of inter frequency handovers.