Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

LTE Physical Layer

The physical layer of LTE conveys data and control information between
EUTRAN Node B (e Node B) and user equipment (UE) in an efficient way. It
employs advanced technologies such as OFDM and MIMO for data transmission. In
addition, LTE uses OFDMA and SC-FDMA for downlink and uplink data
transmissions. The use of SC-FDMA in the uplink reduces Peak-To-Average Power
Ratio (PAPR).

3.1 Generic Frame Structure

The generic frame of LTE has a length of 10ms and is subdivided into ten
sub-frames of 1ms length. Each sub-frame is further divided into two slots of 0.5ms
having six or seven OFDM symbols depending upon the length of CP. Each slot
uses 7 OFDM symbols in case of normal CP whereas 6 OFDM symbols in case of
extended CP. Sub-frames can be assigned for either uplink or downlink. The
generic frame structure of LTE downlink and uplink is shown in Figure 3.1

Radio Frame of 10ms

Figure (3.1) Generic Frame Structure for Downlink and Uplink of LTE

24
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

3.2 FDD and TDD Frame Structure

FDD (frequency division duplex) used Paired channels where TDD (time
division duplex) used Single frequency channel for uplink and downlink. It is more
flexible than FDD in its proportioning of uplink vs. downlink bandwidth utilization
and can ease spectrum allocation issues.
FDD

TDD

Figure (3.2) show the difference between FDD and TDD

In case of FDD, all sub frames are used either for downlink or for uplink data
transmissions. For TDD, sub frame 1 and 6 are used for downlink transmission
whereas the rest of the frames are used either for uplink or downlink. Sub frames 1
and 6 contain synchronization signals which are transmitted on the downlink of
each cell and are intended to be used for initial cell search. Figure 3.3 shows
downlink and uplink sub frame assignments for FDD.

Figure (3.3) Downlink and Uplink Sub frame Assignment for FDD

Uplink transmission Downlink transmission

25
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

Figure (3.4) Downlink Sub frame Assignment for TDD

Sub frame 1 and 6 assigned for downlink transmission

Figure (3.5) Uplink Sub frame Assignment for TDD

Uplink transmission Downlink transmission

Figure 3.4 and Figure 3.5 show the uplink sub frame assignments for TDD.

3.3 Downlink Physical Resource

The downlink physical resource consists of Physical Resource Blocks
(PRBs) where a PRB consists of 12 consecutive subcarriers for one slot (1 slot =
0.5msec). The bandwidth of PRB is 180 kHz Where the OFDM subcarrier spacing
has been chosen to ∆f =15 kHz. A resource element corresponds to one subcarrier
for the duration of one OFDM symbol. Thus depending on the cyclic prefix length,
a PRB comprises 84 OFDM symbols in case of normal CP and 72 OFDM symbol
in case of extended CP is shown in figure 3.6

26
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

Figure (3.6) LTE Downlink Physical Resource

The number of resource blocks depends upon the transmission bandwidth of

LTE i.e. 1.25 MHz to 20 MHz
Available Downlink Bandwidth is divided into Physical Resource Blocks

Table (3.1) shows the number of PRBs for various transmission bandwidths

The frequency domain the downlink subcarriers are grouped into resource
blocks, where each resource block consists of 12 consecutive subcarriers, so the
resource-block bandwidth of 180 kHz. There is an unused DC-subcarrier in the
center of the downlink spectrum.
The reason why the DC-subcarrier is not used for any transmission is that it
may coincide with the local-oscillator frequency at the base-station transmitter

27
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

and/or mobile-terminal receiver. As a consequence, it may be subject to un-

proportionally high interference, for example, due to local-oscillator leakage

Figure (3.7) LTE downlink Frequency-Domain Structure.

3.4 Cyclic Prefix

Figure (3.8) Cyclic Prefix

The composite symbol is extended by repeating the end of the symbol in the
beginning. This extension is called the Cyclic Prefix (CP) where CP is a guard
interval that allows multipath reflections from the previous symbol to settle prior to
receiving the current symbol. CP has to be greater than the delay spread in the
channel and CP eliminates Inter symbol Interference (ISI) and makes the symbol
easier to recover.

28
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

The cyclic prefix lengths in Samples and µs are summarized in Table 3.2

Table (3.2) show the cyclic prefix lengths in Samples and µs

The useful symbol time is Tu = 2048 ⋅ Ts ≈ 66.7 µs So the overall OFDM

symbol time is then the sum of the useful symbol time and the cyclic-prefix length
TCP. Note that. The CP duration is described in absolute terms (e.g. 16.67 µsec for
long CP) and in terms of standard time unit, Ts. Ts is used throughout the LTE
specification documents. It is defined as Ts = 1 / (15000 x 2048) seconds, which
Corresponds to the 30.72 MHz sample clock for the 2048 point FFT used with the
20 MHz system bandwidth. However, for smaller transmission bandwidths, a
smaller FFT size and a correspondingly lower sampling rate can very well be used.
As an example, for transmission bandwidths in the order of 5MHz an FFT size
NFFT=512 and corresponding sampling rate fs=7.68 MHz may be sufficient.

3.5 Downlink Reference Signals

To carry out downlink coherent demodulation, the mobile terminal needs
estimates of the downlink channel. A straightforward way to enable channel
estimation in case of OFDM transmission is to insert known reference symbols into
the OFDM time-frequency grid. In LTE, these reference symbols are jointly
referred to as the LTE downlink reference signals. Downlink reference symbols are
inserted within the first and the third last 4 OFDM symbols of each slot and with a
frequency-domain spacing of six subcarriers. There is a frequency-domain
staggering of three subcarriers between the first and second reference symbols.

29
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

Within each resource block, consisting of 12 subcarriers during one slot, there are
thus four reference symbols.

Figure (3.9) LTE downlink reference-signal structure assuming normal cyclic

prefix, i.e. seven OFDM symbols per slot.

3.6 Downlink Transport-Channel Processing

The physical layer interfaces to higher layers, more specifically to the MAC
layer. LTE has inherited the basic principle of WCDMA/HSPA that data is
delivered to the physical layer in the form of Transport Blocks of a certain size.
In terms of the more detailed transport-block structure, LTE has adopted a similar
approach as was adopted for HSPA:
In case of single-antenna transmission there can be at most one single
transport block of dynamic size for each Transmission Time Interval (TTI).
In case of multi-antenna transmission there can be up to two transport blocks
of dynamic size for each TTI, where each transport block corresponds to one
Downlink Physical Layer Processing.
Resources, coding and multiple antenna techniques are dynamically varied
by the LTE radio in response to time-variable channel conditions.
MAC medium access control Multiplexes data from logical channels to
transport blocks on the transport channels and Performs error correction through
PHY hybrid automatic repeat request HARQ and e N B MAC dynamically allocates

30
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

RBs among UEs and Channel Quality Indicators (CQI) reported form the UE to the
e N B are used for scheduling decisions.

Figure (3.10) Radio Block Diagram

3.7 Downlink Physical Layer Processing

The PHY interfaces with Layer 2 (the media access control [MAC] layer)
and Layer 3 (the radio resource control [RRC] layer) and offers data transport
services to higher layers. PHY handles channel coding, PHY hybrid automatic
repeat request (HARQ) processing, modulation, multi-antenna processing, and
mapping of the signal to the appropriate physical time-frequency resources.
LTE downlink PHY processing accepts data and control streams from the
MAC layer in the form of transport blocks and begins processing by calculating the
cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and attaching it to the transport block.

31
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

Figure (3.11) LTE Physical Layer Processing in Downlink

3.7.1 CRC Insertion:

A 24 bits CRC is inserted in the beginning of the transport blocks. CRC
detects residual errors at the receiver by decoding the transport blocks.

Figure (3.12) Downlink CRC insertion, calculating and appending a CRC to

each transport block

32
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

3.7.2 Channel Coding:

It uses turbo coding based on Quadratic Polynomial Permutation (QPP) inner
interleaving with trellis termination where Turbo encoding provides a high-
performance forward-error-correction scheme for reliable transmission;
Rate matching performs puncturing or repetition to match the rate of the
available physical channel resource

Figure (3.13) LTE Turbo encoder

3.7.3 Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) Processing:

The functionality of downlink hybrid ARQ is to extract the bits from the
blocks of code bits delivered by the channel encoder and to transmit the exact set of
bits within a given Transmission Time Interval (TTI). The number of extracted bits
depends on the modulation scheme, assigned resource size and spatial multiplexing
order.

33
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

If the number of coded bits from the channel encoder is larger than the
number of bits to be transmitted, the hybrid ARQ will extract the subsets of code
bits with an effective rate Reff > 1/3.
If the number of encoded bits from the channel is smaller than the number of
bits that have to be transmitted, the hybrid ARQ will repeat the subset of bits or
total bits with an effective rate of Reff < 1/3. Hybrid AQR transmits the various code
bits set in case of a retransmission.

Figure (3.14) Physical-layer hybrid-ARQ functionality extracting the set of

code bits to be transmitted for a given TTI.

3.7.4 Scrambling:
“Scrambling of coded data ensures that the receiver side decoding can utilize
the processing gain provided by the channel code”. In LTE, scrambling is applied
on the bits delivered from the HARQ by multiplying with the scrambling sequence.
In general, scrambling of the coded data helps to ensure that the receiver-side
decoding can fully utilize the processing gain provided by the channel code. The
downlink scrambling is shown in Figure.
M bits Scrambling Sequence

Figure (3.15) Downlink Scrambling

34
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

Without downlink scrambling, the channel decoder at the mobile terminal

could, at least in principle, be equally matched to an interfering signal as to the
target signal, thus not being able to properly suppress the interference. By applying
different scrambling sequences for neighbor cells, the interfering signal(s) after de-
scrambling are randomized, ensuring full utilization of the processing gain provided
by the channel code.

3.7.5 Modulation:
The LTE downlink supports 16-QAM, 64-QAM and QPSK as modulation
schemes. Modulation is performed on the scrambled bits and results in the M/L
modulation symbols where L = 2, 4, 6 for QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM
respectively. BCH uses QPSK as modulation scheme. The block diagram for
downlink modulation is shown in Figure 3.16

Figure (3.16) Downlink Modulation

3.7.6 Antenna Mapping:

Antenna mapping jointly processes the modulation symbols, corresponding
to two transport blocks in general and maps the output to various antenna ports. In
LTE, antenna mapping can be configured to support spatial multiplexing, transmit
diversity and multi-antenna schemes.

3.7.7 Resource Block Mapping:

It maps the symbols which are the outputs of the antenna port to the resource
elements of the resource blocks. The resource blocks are assigned by the MAC
scheduler for the transport block(s) transmission to terminal. Finally, the resource

35
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

elements of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols are

mapped to each antenna port for air transmission.

Figure (3.17) Downlink resource-block mapping. Note that, in the general

case, there will be one set of resources and a corresponding resource mapping for
each transmit antenna.

3.8 SC-FDMA and OFDMA Signal Chains Have a High Degree of

Functional Commonality

Figure (3.18) LTE physical layer

36
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

The block diagram shows a basic SC-FDMA transmitter / receiver

arrangement. Note that many of the functional blocks are common to both SC-
FDMA and OFDMA, thus there is a significant degree of functional commonality
between the uplink and downlink signal chains.

3.8.1 Constellation Mapper:

Converts incoming bit stream to single carrier symbols (BPSK, QPSK, or
16QAM depending on channel conditions)

3.8.2 Serial/parallel converter:

Formats time domain SC symbols into blocks for input to FFT engine

3.8.3 M-point DFT:

Converts time domain SC symbol block into M discrete tones

3.8.4 Subcarrier Mapping:

Maps DFT output tones to specified subcarriers for transmission. SC-FDMA
systems either use contiguous tones (localized) or uniformly spaced tones
(distributed). The current working assumption in LTE is that localized subcarrier
mapping will be used.

3.8.5 N-point IDFT:

Converts mapped subcarriers back into time domain for transmission

3.8.6 Cyclic Prefix and Pulse Shaping:

Cyclic prefix is pre-pended to the composite SC-FDMA symbol to provide
Multipath immunity in the same manner as described for OFDM. As in the case of
OFDM, pulse shaping is employed to prevent spectral re growth.

37
 Chapter 3 LTE Physical Layer [2011]

3.8.7 RFE:
Converts digital signal to analog and up convert to RF for transmission in the
receive side chain, the process is essentially reversed. As in the case of OFDM, SC-
FDMA transmissions can be thought of as linear summations of discrete
subcarriers.

38