Technical Aspects of LTE

Part I: OFDM

By
Mohammad Movahhedian, Ph.D., MIET, MIEEE
m.movahhedian@ieee.org

9-11 Dec. 2013

Tehran, Iran
Outline

Motivation for LTE

LTE Network architecture & LTE RAN elements

LTE air-interface

A review on the legacy networks air-interfaces (GSM & UMTS)

Motivators for LTE air-interface
What is OFDM?
OFDM architecture
Pros & cons of OFDM
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenarios (OFDMA, SC-FDMA)
Symbols, slots, radio blocks & frame structure in OFDMA

© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13,

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Tehran, Iran
 Motivation for LTE

Despite evolving continuously, UMTS1 has faced a number of limitations in terms of design

Therefore the 3GPP2 decided to make a redesign on the CN3 as well as RN4

The main redesign factors towards UMTS improvement:

Reducing the multipath effect of communication channels via OFDM5 air-interface

Increasing the bandwidth and hence increasing the TX speed

Making use of MIMO6 transmission

Making use of both FDD7 and TDD8

Making use of all-IP9 approach

1Universal mobile telecommunications system Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

5 9 Internet protocol
2 3rd
generation partnership project Multiple-input multiple-output
6
3 Core network 7 Frequency-division duplexing
4 Radio network 8 Time-division duplexing

© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13,

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Tehran, Iran
Progress Map

Motivation for LTE

LTE Network architecture & LTE RAN elements

LTE air-interface

A review on the legacy networks air-interfaces (GSM & UMTS)

Motivators for LTE air-interface
What is OFDM?
OFDM architecture
Pros & cons of OFDM
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenarios (OFDMA, SC-FDMA)
Symbols, slots, radio blocks & frame structure in OFDMA

© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13,

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Tehran, Iran
LTE Network Architecture

PDN-GW
Internet
CP S5 UP

S6 S11 Serving
HSS MME GW

CP S1 UP

eNode-B X2 eNode-B

Mobile device
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LTE Network Architecture
Radio Access Network

LTE UE1 categories

Category 1 2 3 4 5

Max. downlink data-rate in 20 MHz BW 10 50 100 150 300

(Mbps)

Max. uplink data-rate (Mbps) 5 25 50 50 75

No. of receive antennas 2 2 2 2 4

No. of MIMO downlink streams (Mbps) 1 2 2 2 4

Support for 64 QAM in UL direction No No No No Yes

1 User equipment
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LTE Network Architecture
Radio Access Network

eNode-B
The most complicated part of the LTE is the base-station that is referred to as
e(evolved)Node-B

eNode-B consists of three major parts:

1. The antennas

2. Radio modules, that modulate/demodulate the signals transmitted/received on the

air-interface
3. Digital modules, as the processors of all signals on the air-interface and as an interface to the
core network through high-speed backhaul connection

Some of the other functionalities of eNode-B includes:

User management in general and scheduling air-interface resources

Ensuring QoS, e.g., latency, minimum bandwidth requirements for real-time bearers, maximum
throughput

For load balancing between the different simultaneous radio bearers to different users

Mobility management (MM)

Interference management, i.e. to reduce the impact of DL transmissions on neighboring base-
stations particularly in cell edge scenarios
© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13, 7
Tehran, Iran
Progress Map

Motivation for LTE

LTE Network architecture & LTE RAN elements

LTE air-interface

A review on the legacy networks air-interfaces (GSM & UMTS)

Motivators for LTE air-interface
What is OFDM?
OFDM architecture
Pros & cons of OFDM
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenarios (OFDMA, SC-FDMA)
Symbols, slots, radio blocks & frame structure in OFDMA

© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13,

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Tehran, Iran
 LTE air-interface and radio network
A review on GSM TX

GSM is based on narrow 200 kHz carriers that are split into 8 repeating timeslots for voice
calls
One timeslot carries the data of one voice call, thus limiting the number of simultaneous
voice calls on one carrier to a maximum of 8

BSs use several carriers to increase the number of simultaneous calls

Introduction of GPRS1 facilitated packet-data transmission

However the decision of 200KHz BW was still a limiting factor

1 General packet radio service

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Tehran, Iran
LTE air-interface and radio network
A review on UMTS TX

In UMTS the GSM BW limitation is overcome by introduction of carriers BW of 5MHz

Moreover, instead of having separated timeslots, UMTS makes use of uncorrelated codes
for different users

At the receiving end each codes is known and hence the original data for each user can be
decoded

HSPA combines the use of aforementioned codes with a timeslot structure for fast
transporting of packet-switched data traffic

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 LTE air-interface and radio network
Motivators for
LTE air-interface

Today’s hardware capabilities allows higher data-rates subject to provision of wider BW

Due to non-ideality of CDMA for wider BW, UMTS air-interface is not capable of higher data-
rates
When increasing the transmission speed, which results in a decrease in the time of each
transmission step, the negative effect of the delayed signal paths increases

As a consequence, CDMA is not suitable for carrier bandwidths beyond 5MHz

Multicarrier operation has been defined for UMTS (i.e., MC-CDMA1) to mitigate the problem
to some degree at the expense of increased complexity

What about Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)?

1 Multi-carrier CDMA

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LTE air-interface and radio network

OFDM

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing is a digital multi-carrier modulation scheme

Instead of sending multiuser data with high data-rates on a single-carrier, as in CDMA,

OFDM splits the single high-rate stream to several parallel lower rate sub-streams

Each sub-stream is assigned a number of overlapping but orthogonal subcarriers for

simultaneous transmission

In this way the transmission steps can be chosen to be sufficiently long to avoid the effects
of multipath transmission for high transmission speeds

To save bandwidth, the subcarriers (i.e., Sinc functions) are placed close to each other but
with zero cross-correlation

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FDD air-interface and radio network
OFDM

Subcarriers’ Orthogonality

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LTE air-interface and radio network
OFDM Architecture

Transmitter side

OFDM has a particular architecture both at the transmitter and receiver

At the transmitter, first the source data-stream is serial-to-parallel converted where the
number of symbols in each batch is assumed to be equal to the number of subcarriers

In this case, each batch is called an OFDM block

Next, each block goes through an inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) unit, used for
modulating the data symbols over the allocated bandwidth

A number of time-domain samples, which is referred to as CP (cyclic prefix), is copied from

the tail of corresponding time-domain block and is added at the preamble of that block

The length of CP is assumed to be large enough to mitigate the timing offset and also the
channel image from one block to the adjacent one, i.e. ISI is fully mitigated

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LTE air-interface and radio network
OFDM Architecture

Receiver side

At the receiver, CP that carries channel image is first discarded

Then the received stream of symbols are passed through an FFT block with the purpose of
demodulation

Finally, channel equalization and symbols’ detection are performed on the received signal to
recover the initially transmitted symbols

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 LTE air-interface and radio network
OFDM Architecture
Schematic Representation

s i  Serial
IFFT 1
Parallel
 OFDM
Transmitter


to to Add CP2 Setup
parallel serial
ith data-stream
(digitally modulated) Channel
Medium
(additive &
multiplicative
CFO3
noise)

AWGN4


CP removal

CFO OFDM
Serial compensation,
Receiver
to
ŝ i 
Channel Data out Setup
parallel FFT5 equalization
An estimation
&
Detection of ith data-stream

1 Inverse fast Fourier transform 3 Carrier frequency offset 5 Fast Fourier transform
2 Cyclic prefix 4 Additive white Gaussian noise

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Tehran, Iran
LTE air-interface and radio network
Pros & Cons of OFDM

+ Robust against frequency-selective channels

+ Robust against inter-symbol interference (ISI)
+ Less sensitivity to timing-offsets
+ Ease of implementation in terms of architecture (i.e. FFT & IFFT blocks)

- High sensitivity to carrier frequency offsets

- High peak to average power ratio (PAPR)
- Lower data-rate efficiency due to CP overhead
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LTE air-interface and radio network
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenario

OFDMA

In multiuser scenarios, OFDM can be used with a number of multiple-access schemes

such as TDMA, FDMA, etc.

Alternatively if the total number of adjacent subcarriers are divided into a number of
groups and each group is assigned to one user, this would form up a new multiple-access
scheme called OFDMA

In other words, OFDMA is a multiple-access scheme that divides the total bandwidth
into a number of sub-channels and allocates them to a number of users for simultaneous
data transmission

LTE employs OFDMA In downlink (DL) direction

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LTE air-interface and radio network
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenario Source: M. Movahhedian, “Frequency synchronization for
OFDMA wireless cellular networks”, PhD thesis, University
OFDMA Architecture of Surrey, UK, Aug. 2010.
Schematic Representation

s 
(k )
Serial
Freq.
Parallel
to
mapping IFFT to Add CP
kth user parallel serial
data-stream

 CP removal

CFO
Serial
compensation,
Channel to Channel
parallel Freq.
FFT de-mapping
equalization
&
Detection
CFO

AWGN
Other users Data out

sˆ 
(k )

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LTE air-interface and radio network
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenario

Some physical parameters

of OFDMA

LTE uses a number of physical parameters related to the subcarriers

Subcarrier spacing is set to 15 KHz regardless of overall channel BW

OFDM symbol duration (length of each transmission step) is set to 66.667 microseconds

CP length is either set to 4.7 microseconds or 16.67 microseconds depending on

propagation channel conditions (i.e., the number of channel taps)

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 LTE air-interface and radio network
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenario

SC-FDMA1

For uplink transmissions, OFDMA is not ideal due to high PAPR2

A high PAPR is affordable at the BS do to power abundance; therefore OFDMA does not
cause PAPR problems in DL direction

However, for UL transmissions, due to limited power of battery-driven UEs, OFDMA is not
practical

3GPP has hence decided to use an alternative multiple-access scheme, i.e. SC-FDMA

SC-FDMA consists of one additional function, i.e. FFT/IFFT, for each TX and RX side to spread out the
information of each bit onto all subcarriers and hence reduce power differences

1 Single-carrier frequency-division multiple-access

2 peak to average power ratio

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LTE air-interface and radio network
Use of OFDM in multiuser scenario
SC-FDMA Architecture
Schematic Representation

s 
(k )
Serial Parallel
N-point Freq. M-point
to
FFT mapping IFFT
to Add CP
parallel serial

 CP removal

Serial CFO
Channel to Post-compensation,
parallel M-point Freq. N-point Channel
FFT de-mapping IFFT equalization
&
CFO Detection

AWGN

Other users Data out

© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13,
Tehran, Iran sˆ 
(k ) 22
LTE air-interface and radio network
Symbols, slots, radio blocks, frames’ structure in OFDMA

The smallest transmission unit on each subcarrier is a single transmission step (a.k.a. symbol
or RE1 ) with a length of 66.667 microseconds
To reduce the overhead of resource assignment, 7 consecutive symbols on 12 successive subcarriers are
grouped into an RB2. An RB occupies 1 slot of a duration of 0.5 milliseconds

A subframe consists of 2 RBs (i.e., 2 slots) and hence is of a duration of 1 millisecond

A subframe represents the LTE scheduling time which means at every 1 millisecond the
eNode-B decides which RBs are to be assigned to which user

Each frame has a duration of 10 milliseconds consisting of 10 subframes

There are two methods for the network to transmit a subframe:

LVRBs3 wherein the eNode-B requires a narrowband channel feedback from UE to schedule the
RBs on subcarriers that do not suffer from narrowband fading

DVRBs4 wherein the symbols that form a block are scattered over the whole carrier bandwidth. In
this case the EU either transmits no feedback or a wideband channel feedback for the whole BW
1 Resource element 3 Localized virtual RBs
2 Resource block 4 Distributed virtual RBs
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LTE air-interface and radio network
Symbols, slots,
radio blocks, frames in OFDMA
Previous frame Next frame
A schematic 1 Frame (10ms)=10 sub-frames (1ms)= 20 slots (0.5ms)
representation
time

180 KHz

=
1 symbol =
1 resource element
(66.667 micro-sec, 15 kHz)

1 sub-frame

freq.
1 resource block
= 1 slot (0.5 ms)
= 12 subcarriers x 7 symbols

© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13, 24

Tehran, Iran
Conclusion

OFDM is a digital multi-carrier modulation (multiplexing) scheme that splits the high-rate
stream into several parallel lower rate sub-streams to counteract time-dispersive channels

OFDMA is a multiple-access scheme that divides the total bandwidth into a number of sub-
channels and allocates them to a number of users for simultaneous data transmission

The 2-dimensional time-frequency structure of OFDMA allows for flexible assignment of

resources to different users depending on their channel condition

Due to non-ideality of OFDMA in uplink direction of an LTE network, SC-FDMA is used

wherein the symbols are first sent through a linear unitary precoder (i.e. Fourier) as a power
spreader

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 Thank you
for
your attention
© Mohammad Movahhedian, 9-11 Dec. 13,
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