Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT)

ETCT 06204

Digital Cellular Network

Ally, J

jumannea@gmail.com

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The Cellular Concept-System Design
Fundamentals

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 Introduction
 The design objective of early mobile radio systems was to achieve a
large coverage area by using a single, high powered transmitter with an
antenna mounted on a tall power.
 Large coverage Area/Larger size radios with large batteries.
 Limited no. of channels.
 Poor Quality of Service [Bell Mobile NY City, in 1970s 12 Ch/1000 Sqr
Miles].
 Still in use for some Public/Private organizations.

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 History of Cellular Networks
Why cellular networks?

 Greater capacity

 Efficient use of frequency

 To increase coverage of non cellular system

 Replaces a large transmitter (large cell) with smaller or low power transmitters
(small cells), each providing coverage to only a small portion of the service area.

 Each base station is assigned a portion of the total channels available in the entire
system

 Neighboring base station are assigned different groups of channels so that the
interference between base station (and the mobile users under their control) is

minimized

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Single Cell ‘Network’

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Replacement of huge single cell by a
number of small cells

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 Types of Mobile Communication Cells
The size of a cell is dictated by capacity demand

 Macro-cell: provides Radio coverage served by a power cellular

base station (tower) providing coverage larger than micro cell.

 Micro-cell: served by a low power cellular base station covering

limited area such as a mall, a hotel or transportation hub.

 Pico-cell: covering a small area such as in building offices,

shopping malls, train stations or more recently in air craft.

 Mega-cell: covering a large area more than macro-cell always its

coverage provided by the satellite.

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 Frequency Reuse/Planning
 Frequency Reuse: the design process of selecting and
allocating channels groups for all of the cellular base
stations with a system.
 Cellular radio systems rely on an intelligent allocation
and reuse of channels throughout a coverage region.
 Each cellular base station is allocated a group of radio
channels to be used within a small geographical area
called a cell.
 Base stations in adjacent cells are assigned channel
groups which contain completely different channels than
neighboring cells.
 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 large enough to keep interference
levels within tolerable limits.
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 The Cellular Concept

Figure 2.1 Illustration of the cellular frequency reuse concept. Cells with the
same letter use the same set of frequencies. In this example, the cluster size,
N=7, and the frequency reuse factor is 1/7 since each cells contains one-
seventh of the total number of available channels.

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 Why hexagon? Why not circle?
 While it might seem natural to choose a circle to present the
coverage area of a base station, adjacent circles cannot be
overlaid upon on a map without leaving gaps or create
overlapping regions.

 When considering geometric shapes which cover an entire

region without overlapping and with equal area, there are
three sensible choices: a square, an equilateral triangle, and
a hexagon.

 A cell must be designed to serve the weakest mobiles within

the footprint, and these are typical 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.

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 Cluster
 The N cells which collectively use the
complete set of available frequencies is
called Cluster.
 To understand the frequency reuse
concept, consider a cellular system
which has a total of S duplex channels
available for use.
 If each cell is allocated a group k
channels (K < S)
 If N is the frequency reuse factor
(Cluster size), then S=kN
 If a cluster is replicated M times within
the system, then system capacity as a
measure of total number of duplex
channels C, is given as C=MkN=MS

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 Frequency Reuse Factor
 The capacity of 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 the cluster size is reduced while the cell size is kept constant,
more clusters are required to cover a given area, hence more
capacity (a larger value of C) is achieved.
 Large N- weaker interference, but lower capacity
 Small N- higher capacity, more interference, need to maintain
certain S/I level
 Each cell within a cluster assigned 1/N of the total available
channels.
 The frequency reuse factor is given by 1/N.
 CDMA system frequency reuse factor is 1/1.

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 System Design Example-01
A total of 33 MHz bandwidth is allocated to a particular FDD Cellular Phone System. If the
Simplex Voice/Control Channel bandwidth is 25 KHz, Find the total # of Channels available
per Cell if the System uses (a) 4-Cell Frequency Reuse (b) 7-Cell Frequency-Reuse Plan. If
1 MHz out of the total allocated bandwidth is used for Control Channels, determine an
equitable distribution of the Control and Voice Channels in each Cell in case of each
Frequency-Reuse Plan.
SOLUTION:
 Total allocated bandwidth = 33 MHz,
 Duplex Channel bandwidth = 25x2=50 KHz
 Total # of Available Channels = 33,000/50 = 660 Channels.
 (a) N= 4, so total # of Channels/Cell = 660/4 = 165 Channels
 (b) N=7, so total # of Channels/Cell = 660/7 = 95 Channels
 In Case of 1 MHz bandwidth allocated for Control Channels, total # of Control Channels = 1000/50=20
Channels per Systems.
 Out of 660 Channels, 20 are used as Control and remaining 640 as Voice Channels.
 (a) N=4, Each Cell can have 20/4=5 Control Channels and 640/4=160 Voice Channels. But, each Cell
needs only one Control Channel, so, each cell will be assigned one Control Channel and 160 Voice
Channel.
 (b) N = 7, Each Cell can have 20/7 = 3 Control Channels and 640/7=91 Voice Channels [Plus 3
Extra], but it needs only 1 Control Channel, so, we can assign 4 Cells with 91 Voice Channels and
one Control Channels, and 3 Cells with 92 Voice Channels.

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 Channel Assignment Strategies
 Objective: Maximize the System Capacity while Minimizing
the Interference

 Classification:
 Fixed channel assignment
 Dynamic channel assignment

 Choice has Impact on System Performance:

 Handoff
 Call Initialization
 MSC Processing Load

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 Handoff Strategies
 What is Handoff?
When a mobile moves into a different cell while a
conversation is in progress, the MSC automatically transfers
the call to a new channel belonging to the new base station
 Processing important task in any cellular radio
system
 Must be performed successfully, infrequently, and
imperceptible to users.
 Identify a new base station
 Channel allocation in new base station
 High priority than initiation request( block new calls
rather than drop existing calls)

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 Handoff Types
 Hard Handoff - (break before make)
 FDMA, TDMA (1G and 2G Systems)
 Mobile has radio link with only one BS at anytime
 Old BS connection is terminated before new BS
connection is made
 Soft Handoff (make before break)
 CDMA systems mobile has simultaneous radio link
with more than one BS at any time
 New BS connection is made before old BS
connection is broken
 Mobile unit remains in this state until one base
station clearly predominates

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 Interference and System Capacity
 What is Interference? Unwanted signal which affects the
speech quality and system capacity.
 Sources of interference: Several including another mobile in
the same cell, a call in progress in the neighboring Cell,
other base stations operating in vicinity using the same
frequency band, or some non-cellular device/system leaking
energy in the cellular frequency band.
 The two major types of system-generated cellular
interference are:
 Co-Channel Interference
 Adjacent Channel Interference
 In practice, the transmitters from competing cellular carriers
are often a significant source of out-of-band interference,
since competitors often locate their base station in close
proximity to one another in order to provide comparable
coverage to customers.
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 Co-channel Interference and Capacity
 Frequency reuse implies that that in a given
coverage area there are several cells that use the
same set of frequencies.
 These cells are called co-channels cells, and the
interference between signals from these cells is
called co-channel interference.
 Co-channel interference cannot be combated by
simply increasing the power of a transmitter,
because an increase in carrier transmit power
increases the interference to neighboring co-channel
cells.
 To reduce co-channel interference, co-channel cells
must be physically separated by a minimum distance
to provide sufficient isolation due to propagation.

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 Adjacent Channel Interference
 Adjacent channel interference (ACI): is
interference resulting from signals which
are adjacent in frequency to the desired
signal.
D
4,11,18,2
 ACI results from imperfect receiver F B
5
filters which allow nearby frequencies to 6,13,20,2 2,9,16,23
leak into passband. 7
A
1,8,15,22

 ACI can be minimized through careful C G

3,10,17,2 7,14,21,2
filter design and channel assignment 8
4
[by keeping the inter-channel frequency E
difference as large as possible]. 5,12,19,2
6

 Some channel assignment schemes

keeps this difference in a cell by at least
N channel Bandwidths, where N is the
cluster size.

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Power Control for Reducing Interference
 In practical cellular radio and personal
communication systems the power levels
transmitted by every subscriber unit are under
constant control by the serving base stations.
 This is done to ensure that each mobile transmits
the smallest power necessary to maintain a good
quality link on the reverse channel.
 Power control not only helps prolong battery life for
the subscriber unit, but also dramatically reduces
the reverse channel S/I in the system.
 Power control is important for CDMA spread
spectrum systems that allows every user in every
cell to share the same radio channel.

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 Trunking and Grade of Service
 Trunking Theory:
 Developed by a Danish Mathematician, A.K. Earlang in
the late 19th century
 It helps in establishing a trunked system which can

provide communication services to a large group of

users with limited number of available circuits / channels
in the system [based on a certain GOS]
 A Sharing Concept: Large number of users share a small
number of channels in a cell/system
 Based on a statistical behavior of users
 All PSTN/Cellular radio systems exploit trunking to cover a
large user community with their limited number of circuits /
frequency spectrum

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 Key Definitions for Trunked Theory
 Set-up Time: Time required to allocate a trunked radio
channel to a requesting user.
 Blocked/Lost Call: A call which can not be completed at
the time of the request, due to congestion.
 Holding Time: Average duration of a typical call,
denoted by H (in seconds)
 Request Rate: Average number of call requests/unit
time. Denoted by  (in seconds)
 Traffic Intensity: Average channel occupancy,
measured in Erlangs. Denoted by A.
One Erlang represents the amount of traffic intensity
carried by a channel that is completely occupied (i.e. 1
call-hour per hour or 1 call-minute per minute). For
example, a radio channel that is occupied for 30
minutes during an hour carries 0.5 Erlangs of traffic.

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 Key Definitions for Trunked Theory (2)
 Load: Traffic intensity across the entire trunked radio
system, measured in Erlangs.
 Grade of Service (GOS): A measure of congestion, in terms
of probability of call being blocked (for Erlang B) or call
being delayed (for Erlang C).
 Traffic Intensity Offered by a User: Au =  H (in Erlangs).
 Total offered traffic intensity by a users: A = UAu, where U
is the total number of system users.
 Traffic Intensity per Channel: Ac = UAu/C = A/C, where C is
the total number of channels in a system.
 Maximum System Traffic Capacity: Equal to the number of
available channels [in Erlangs].

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 Improving Capacity in Cellular System
 As the demand for wireless services increases,
the number of channels assigned to a cell
eventually becomes insufficient to support the
required number of users.

 At this point, cellular design techniques are

needed to provide more channels per unit
coverage area.

 Techniques such as cell splitting, sectoring, and

coverage zone approaches are used in practice
to expand the capacity of cellular system.

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