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Slow frequency hopping solutions for GSM networks of small bandwidth

Conference Paper · June 1998

DOI: 10.1109/VETEC.1998.686454 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 1
SLOW FREQUENCY
HOPPINGSOLUTIONS FOR GSM NETWORKS
OF SMALL BANDWIDTH
Thomas Toftegard Nielsen, Jeroen Wigard, Per Henrik Michaelsen and Preben Mogensen
Center for PersonKommunikation (CPK), Aalborg University
Fredrik Bajers Vej 7A, DK-9220 Aalborg @st,Denmark
E-mail: ttn@cpk.auc.dk.
-
Abstract Slow frequency hopping is a quality and capacity
enhancement feature for the GSM system. However, in
order to achieve a significant gain from frequency
hopping, it has been shown that at least 3 to 4 frequencies
are required in the hopping sequence. In band limited
networks that many frequencies per cell are not always
available. Two network features, MAIO-management and
using a lower reuse with admission load control,
compensate for the lack of spectrum even with very
narrow bandwidths. The performance of these two
features have been investigated and compared to a non-
hopping network. A network with a bandwidth of 21
frequencies has been analysed. Simulation results show
that MAIO-management gives the best quality. The
comparison is based on individually reported frame
erasure rates of each mobile station.
I. INTRODUCTION
The enormous growth in digital cellular phones sets very high
capacity demands for the GSM operators. Partly due to these
demands extensive studies of how to exploit slow frequency
hopping (FH) to enhance network quality as well as capacity
have been performed over the last couple of years [2,3,6]. The
potential gain from FH is two fold. A frequency diversity gain
is achieved by spreading the bursts over a wide bandwidth and
hence avoiding Rayleigh fading. Furthermore an interference
diversity or interference averaging is achieved due the fact
that we only collide with each interferer during random bursts
instead of continuously [3]. It has been shown that by hopping
over as little as 3 to 4 frequencies a large part of the frequency
diversity gain is achieved, whereas hopping over only 2
frequencies can result in even a degradation when compared to
the non-hopping case. However, in some situations it can be
difficult to apply FH successfully, since 3 to 4 frequencies per
cell may not always be available.
For example at country borders each network operator has to
co-ordinate the frequency allocation with every influencing
operator in the region, in order to avoid network quality
degradation due to adjacent and co-channel interference. This
includes national as well as international operators. Therefore
the spectrum available to each operator is divided into
subgroups. One group of frequencies not to be used in the
0-7803-4320-4/98/$5.00 0 1998 IEEE
border areas and another with frequencies that can be used.
These latter frequencies are denoted preferred frequencies.
Depending on the amount of country neighbours, the number
of preferred frequencies is limited to a fraction of the total
spectrum of the operator. In several Nordic countries the
number of preferred frequencies is limited to 18 or even less.
With only 18 frequencies it can be difficult to apply FH
successfully.
Another situation in which it can difficult to exploit the gain
from FH, is in traffic dense urban areas where it is necessary to
exploit both micro and macro cells. In order to accommodate
the required traffic density (Erlang/km2)micro cells are used
and a splitting of the available frequencies into two groups is
necessary. Such a splitting of the spectrum is shown in Figure
1, using a spectrum handwidth corresponding to a typical
GSM 900 operator of 7.5 MHz (equivalent to 37 frequencies).
'Qpical Total Spectrum of a
European GSM Operator:
16 firequencies 21 frequencies
MICRO cellular MACRO cellular
Splitting between MACRO
and MICRO cellular layer :
Figure 1. The available xpectrum afer having divided the total
spectrum into ,a micro and a macro cellular layer.
In the case of a two layer network, typically a minimum of 16
channels has to be used for the micro cellular layer
(corresponds to having 2 TRX's per microcell-base station),
leaving 21 frequencies for the macro cellular layer. With as
little as 21 frequencies it is hard to achieve a satisfactorily gain
from FH, i.e. to hop over a minimum of 3 frequencies.
This paper investigates two methods, MAIO-management' and
using a lower reuse with load admission control,* which can
exploit the gain from FH in situations like the two described
above, i.e. in narrow band limited network situations.
MA10 is an abbreviation of the Mobile Allocation Index Offset
from GSM.
This method will be calljed sof capacity throughout the article.
1321 VTC '98
The study is carried out using a GSM-900 type of network, but
the achieved results are reliable for the GSM-1800 and 1900
cases as well. In section I1 the related information of the GSM
system is given, followed by a description of MAIO-
management in section 111. In section IV the 2 methods,
MAIO-management and soft capacity, are compared. Section
V briefly introduces the simulation tool used for the
evaluation. The paper ends with a description of the results
achieved and a conclusion on the performance of the features
in section VI and VI1 respectively.
11. THEGSM SYSTEM
Each radio frequency channel in GSM is time divided into
TDMA frames of 4.615 ms, where each frame is subdivided
into 8 full slots. Each of these slots can be given a full rate
traffic channel, two half rate traffic channels or a control
channel. Besides the full rate traffic channel, this paper only
considers the broadcast control channel (BCCH) [8]. The
BCCH is for several reasons of vital importance in GSM. It is
a unidirectional downlink channel e.g. used by each mobile to
identify where it is located in the network. Even in idle mode,
a fair amount of information is exchanged for the network to
work efficiently. Correspondingly, every mobile station (MS)
always has to be able to decode the BCCH channel. This also
means that no downlink power control can be used on the
BCCH channel. Furthermore, no hopping can take place in
timeslot 0 on the BCCH frequency, since the BCCH located in
this timeslot is not allowed to hop. This is shown in Figure 2,
illustrated using a site with 2 TRXs and baseband FH.
1 TDMA Frame
Timeslot: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
TRX 1:
(BCCH)
TRX 2:
Figure 2. An example of the allocation of the BCCH channel in
timeslot 0 on the BCCH frequency on a site with 2
TRXs using baseband FH.
In a non hopping GSM network, the macro cell frequencies
typically have to be planned with a reuse pattern in the order
of at least 4/12 (3-sector sites), while the frequency reuse
pattern for FH channels using downlink discontinuous
transmission (DTX) and power control can be reduced to 3/9
[3]. In reality this means that the BCCH frequency has to be
planned with at least a frequency reuse pattern of at least 4/12,
while if using DTX and power control the remaining traffic
(TCH) frequencies only requires a minimum frequency reuse
pattern of 319.
For a set of n frequencies, GSM allows 64*n different hopping
sequences to be built. They are described by two parameters.
Firstly, the MA10 (Mobile Allocation Index Offset) which
may take as many values as the number of frequencies in the
0-7803-4320-4/98/$5.000 1993’IEEE
set. Secondly, the HSN (Hopping Sequence Number) which
may take 64 different values [8]. Two channels bearing the
same HSN but different MAIO’s never use the same frequency
on the same burst, while two channels using the same
frequency list, but bearing different MAIO’s only interfere
with each other ( l / r ~ ) ‘of~ the time. Usually, channels in the
same cell use the same HSN, but have different MAIO’s: that
way interference between channels in the same cell is
impossible.
111. THEMA10 - MANAGEMENT
CONCEPT
In the following, a network with 21 frequencies is used for
illustration. Only the macro cellular layer is considered. With a
total of 21 frequencies, if considering baseband FH, no more
than 2 TRXs can be allocated per cell in the macro cellular
layer,3 see Figure 3. Hence, only 2 frequencies can be used in
the FH hopping sequence.
The MACRO
Cellular Spectrum :
9 TCH
Seguencies 12 BCCH fiquenciea
Splitting between
WoppinglBCCH Frequencies :
Figure 3. The micro/macro cellular splitting of the spectrum
Some GSM network field trials have indicated that baseband
FH using only 2 frequencies may not be a lucrative network
feature. It has to be ensured that both of the two frequencies
always have a good quality, due to the fact that the frequency
and interference diversity gain from FH is relatively small.
Furthermore, from a practical point of view, there is an
information loss from not being able to re-allocate channels
based on uplink measurements, since the measurements are
averaged. Therefore, instead of using baseband FH over two
frequencies, two alternative approaches both applying
synthesised FH, can be taken. They are:
1) Besides the required BCCH frequency (with a reuse of
4/12) allocate the remaining hopping frequencies using
a tight frequency reuse pattern, as e.g. 1/3 and limit the
co-channel interference in the network using a load
limiting technique.
2) Along with the required BCCH frequency, use the one
TCH frequency channel (using a 3/9 reuse pattern)
allocated to each of the three sectors orthogonal in all
three cells. This could quite easily be implemented by
giving channels in the different sectors of a site the
One frequency has to be used as BCCH (reuse 4/12) and since nine
channels remains and the minimum frequency reuse of the TCH
channels is 3/9, only one more frequency can be allocated per cell.
1322 VTC ‘98
 same HSN, but a different MA10 [8]. This technique
is denoted MAIO-management.4
In solution 1) a frequency reuse pattern of 1/3 is applied to
allow 3 frequencies to be included in each hopping sequence
in each cell (the BCCH is not included in the hopping
sequence). Network simulations have shown that for a 1/3
reused network configuration, the average load on each
frequency channel may not exceed 30-35% [4]. This load
limitation can be achieved using two different approaches:
a) Allocate 1 TRX hopping over 3 frequencies, i.e. a
hard limitation of 33 %.
b) Allocate 2 or 3 TRXs in every cell, and exploit a
software algorithm to decide whether a free channel
can be used or not. Such an algorithm is based on an
estimation of the quality and is often denoted as a
so@ capacity load limiting technique [7].5
Simulations have shown that the use of a soft capacity
limitation technique may improve trunking efficiency as it
better serves peak traffic in a cell. However in practice this
should be compared to implementing alternative existing GSM
features such as directed retry and traffic reason handover [9],
which even requires less TRX’s in the network.
Solution 2) has not previously been investigated.
If using synthesised FH and a common controller for all
sectors of a base station, there is no GSM system limitations
on allocating the same frequency group to TRX’s in different
sectors. The MAIO-management will prevent a frequency from
being used in more than one of the sectors at the same time. By
using MAIO-management, it is thus possible to hop over 3
times as many frequencies (for 3 sector sites). In case of only
one available frequency channel per cell (apart from the
BCCH frequency) the situation changes from not being able to
apply FH at all, to being able to hop over 3 frequencies in the
cell, with each frequency channel loaded no more than 33% in
each sector. From the basic functionality it is obvious that
MAIO-management can only be applied to sectorized sites.
To clarify the functionality, an example is shown in Figure 4,
where 6 frequencies are used on each site, i.e. each sector
having 2 TRX’s of which one is the BCCH frequency
(b4,b&). For each TDMA frame the frequency of the TRX
not carrying the BCCH channel is shifted in a cyclic (for
simplicity) manner. In practice random FH should be used. In
time instant t = 0, sector 1 uses the frequencies bl andf4. In the
next TDMA frame (t = 1) the frequencies have switched to bl
andf5, and to bl and f6 at t = 2.
The MAIO-management feature has originally been proposed by
Nokia Telecommunications.
The soji capacity technique is sometimes also referred to as
admission load control or fractional loading.
0-780343!2&4/98/$5.000 1998 IEEE
t =o t= 1 t=2
Figure 4. Example of the,frequency allocation when using the
MAIO-manage,mentfeature and sequential FH.
Despite now having 3 frequencies to hop across (f4,h,fs), and
thereby getting the desired frequency and interference
diversity gain, the frequency planning has hardly changed.
The penalty of applying MAIO-management shall be found in
the co-channel interference introduced, since the reuse has
become worse. By turning the frequencies over the 3 sectors of
a site, the reuse corresponds to the reuse of a omnidirectional
site. However since onty one frequency can be used at a time
in one of the three sectors, the maximum load is 33%.
Therefore, from an interference point of view, the 319 reuse
become a 313 reuse haded up to 33% by using MAIO-
management. When using a 90% area outage, the CA of a 319
reused network is 7.0 dl3 , while it is 2.3 dB for a 313 network
[9]. Limitation the max. load to 33% gives 4.8 dB gain and
compensates completely for the loss of having a worse reuse.
IV. MAIO-MANAGEMENT
VERSUSSOFTCAPACITY
In the following only thle hopping frequencies are considered,
i.e. the BCCH frequencies are left out. Assuming an ideal
cluster size, interference from only the six neighbouring cells
in the first tier and the path loss model in equation ( 1 ), the C/I
at the cell border when using 3-sector sites, are found to 5.4
dB for the 113 reuse (which is used for soft capacity) and 13.7
dB for the 3/9 reuse (which is used for MAIO) [9].
L(r)=k.r-Y (1)
In equation (1) r is equal to the distance between the MS and
the base station, y the path loss slope and k a constant
compensating for the effect of base station height, frequency,
coverage etc. If includirig Log-normal fading and using a 90%
area outage, the CA for the 1/3 reuse is -1.3 dB while 7.0 dB
for the 3/9 case [9]. That is, if assuming 100 % load in both
situations there is a 8.3 dB C/Z difference at the cell border
between the two. This means that the 1/3 reused network can
not be loaded as much as the 3/9 network, if the quality is
assumed to be the same.
However, such an evaluation of MAIO-management versus the
soft capacity concept, based on simple C/I distributions
assuming ideal clusters may not be accurate. Using MAIO-
management or soft capacity in combination with DTX, the
max. load on each frequency in a sector will be approximately
16%. Such a low traffic load causes additional interference
diversity from FH due to the codinglinterleaving and soft
detection in GSM. This gain may be different for the two
solutions because of the difference in C/Z distribution.
1323 VTC ‘98
Therefore network simulations are carried out to get a more
reliable performance estimation. From a practical point of
view, a large advantage lies in the frequency planning
procedure when using soft capacity. It is quite simple, since
the frequencies are simply divided into 3 groups and then (all
of them) allocated to each site.
V. THESIMULATION
TOOL’CAPACITY’
The performance of MAIO-management, as well as the 113
reused synthesised FH configuration, will be evaluated using
the GSM network simulation tool CAPACITY, which has been
presented on several occasions [1,41.
CAPACITY is capable of simulating mobiles dynamically
moving around in a GSM network. Both shadow and short
term (Rayleigh) fading is included. FER and call drops (i.e. the
quality) can be evaluated taking the coding and interleaving
gain into account. The general network configuration
parameters used throughout all the evaluations are shown in
Table 1. In all cases the network consists of 48 3-sector sites,
i.e. 144 cells. In every simulation at least 6000 mobiles have
been simulated.
traffic load used in all simulations is equivalent to 30% of the
available traffic channels. This corresponds to loading a
network using DTX to 60% (the hard blocking limit for a
network with 2 TRX per cell). Furthermore, for simplicity, the
BCCH frequencies are not included. The results are presented
using the cumulative density function (CDF) of the frame
erasure rates (FER) of each MS reported once per multiframe
(0.48 sec. in GSM), see [SI.The FER has been chosen in order
to present a quality measure which is correlated as close as
possible to the actual experience of the user.
Two sets of simulations have been carried out. At first,
simulations with a mobile speed of 3 km/h, where the
frequency diversity gain from FH is expected to be relatively
large (compared to the non hopping case) are carried out.
These results are shown in Figure 5 . With both soft capacity
and MAIO-management 10% of the measurements show a
FER worse than 0.06, while for the non hopping case 10% of
the measurements are worse than 0.08. On the other hand if
comparing the three networks using a 1% FER outage MAIO-
management is superior to the others.

Available radio spectrum 4.2 MHz (21 frequencies)

Path loss model Lp= 35 log d
Shadow fading standard deviation 6dB
Shadow fading correlation distance I/e at 110 m
Call mean hold time 80 s (exponential distribution)
MS velocity 50 k d h and 3 km/h
Cell radius 3km
Handover algorithm Based on interference, quality,
level and power budget
Power control Both level and quality
Dropped call RX-QUAL threshold 5
Dropped call threshold 19

Table 1. The general simulation parameters used in CAPACITY.

Figure 5. Cumulative densityfunction (CDF) of the FER on trafSic
channels for a mobile speed of 3 k d h .
VI. RESULTS
Secondly simulations with a mobile speed of 50 km/h are
The two cases described in the introduction have been carried out. The results are shown in Figure 6. At the 10%
simulated for a MS speed of 3 km/h and 50 kmk.Therefore, FER outage it is difficult to se any difference between the
the potential capacity gain using an available spectrum of 4.2 three networks, The FER is around 0.04 in all cases. If, instead
MHz is considered for both of the two scenarios: looking at the 1% FER outage, non hopping is clearly
1. Synthesised FH with a frequency reuse pattern of 113 and performing the worst. With MAIO-management, 1% of the
33 % load limitation using a soft capacity load limitation FER measurements are worse than 0.17, while for the soft
technique, while hopping over 3 frequencies. The capacity network 1% of the measurements show a FER of 0.24
frequency reuse pattern on the BCCH frequency is kept at or worse. In the non-hopping case the FER is 0.36 or worse.
4/12.
2 . Synthesised FH using MAIO-management with a reuse
pattern of 319 on the hopping frequencies and a 4/12
frequency reuse pattern on the BCCH frequency.
Furthermore, for comparison, the quality of a non-hopping
network is simulated in all cases as well. Discontinuous
transmission (DTX) is excluded in any of the simulations. The

0 1998 IEEE
0-78034320-4/98/$5.00 1324 VTC ‘98

0.1
k0
0,Ol
0.001
0 0.1 0.2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6
FER
Figure 6. Cumulative density function (CDF) of the FER on the
traflc channelsfor a mobile speed of 50 M.
Therefore, also with the mobile speed moving at a speed of 50
km/h, the MAIO-management seems to have a better quality
than soft capacity. When comparing the simulations of slow
and fast moving mobiles, the quality is degraded with
increased speed. This is due to the handover and power control
algorithms in GSM.
Soft capacity seems to perform about the same as non hopping
in the case of slow moving mobiles, while it seems to be worse
than non hopping when the mobile speed is relatively high.
However soft capacity has the advantage that it may be
capable, as mentioned before, of solving local trunking
problems.
VII. CONCLUSION
The network quality in terms of Frame Erasure Rate (FER) has
been evaluated for two frequency reuse concepts, which allow
utilisation of slow frequency hopping at very limited
bandwidths. In the evaluation the case of a three sectorized
base station configuration with 2 TRX’s per sector, where one
TRX carries the BCCH and only the second TRX is hopping,
is considered.
The concept of soft capacity by using a dense frequency reuse
of 1/3 is compared to the concept of MAIO-management
(Mobile Allocation Index Offset) using a nominal frequency
reuse of 3/9. Both concepts allow 3 frequencies to hop over.
The penalty of a 113 soft capacity concept is the very dense
frequency reuse, which potentially worsens the mean co-
channel interference level. A mean load factor of 33% has
been used to compensates for this problem.
The potential advantage is the gain from both frequency and
interference diversity by applying FH hopping.
From interference and frequency planning point of view the
MAIO-management changes the nominal frequency reuse of
3/9 for a sectorized cell configuration into an omni-directional
cell configuration of 3/3 with 33% relative load.
0-7803-4320-4/98/.$5.000 1998 IEEE
View publication stats
The simulation results show that the concept of 1/3 soft-
capacity with 33% relative load gives worse network quality
than a non-hopping network configuration using a reuse of 3/9.
However, the soft-capiicity feature may have the potential of
improved trunking efficiency if installing more TRX’s .
In contrast to the lr‘3 reuse the 319 MAIO-management
concept gives much improved performance over the non-
1- - - - I- - - - hopping 319 network configurations,
The MAIO-m feature seems to be an attractive solution for
achieving the benefits of frequency hopping at low
bandwidths, without the drawbacks of increased mean
interference level which is the case for soft capacity with a 1/3
reuse.
0.7 0,8 0.0 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank Nokia Telecommunications Finland
and Sonofon Denmark for co-sponsoring the project.
LITERATURE
Wigard J., T.T. Nielsen, P.H. Michaelsen and P. Mogensen,
Improved Intelligent Underlay-Overlay combined with
Frequency Hopping in GSM, In IEEE Proc. of PIMRC 1997,
Helsinki, pp. 376-380.
Zako B. et al., The GSM radio link per$ormance with space
diversity and slow frequency hopping, In IEEE Proc. of VTC,
1993, pp. 480-482.
Johansen J. and B. Vejlgaard Capacity analysis of a
frequency hoppint: GSM system. M.Sc.E.E. Thesis Report,
Aalborg University, June 1995.
Wigard J., P. Mogensen, J. Johansen and B. Vejlgaard,
Capacity of a GSM Network with Fractional Loading and
Random Frequency Hopping, In IEEE Proc. of PIMRC 1996,
Taipei, pp. 123-72’1.
Wigard J., T.T. Nielsen, P.H. Michaelsen and P. Mogensen,
BER and FER Prediction of Control and Trafsic Channelsfor a
GSM Type of Interjace, Accepted for IEEE Proc. of VTC 1998.
Carenheim C., S. Jonsson, M. Ljungberg, M. Madsfors and
J. Naslund, FH-GSM, Frequency Hopping GSM, In IEEE
Roc. of VTC 1994, Stockholm, pp. 1155-1159.
Beming P. and M. Frodigh, Admission Control in Frequency
Hopping GSM Systems, In IEEE Proc. of VTC 1997, Phoenix,
pp. 1282-1286.
GSM Recommendlations.
European Radialcommunications Office (ERO), Final
Document for the ER0 Workshop on Traffic Loading and
Efficient Spectrum Use, 1998.
1325 VTC ‘98