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Tutorial 1 – Introduction

Question 1
Cellular networks are migrating from micro cells that cover a few kilometers to small cells that cover
only a few hundreds of meters to increase the network capacity. Name at least three design issues which
are complicated by this trend.
Solution
1) Frequent hand-off introduces heavy overhead to the network.
2) Inter-cell interference is very high and should be managed properly to achieve a appropriate SINR.
3) Infrastructure cost will increase for the increased number of base stations.

Question 2
A. Fiber optic cable typically exhibits a bit error probability of Pb = 10−12 . A form of wireless modulation,
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DPSK, has Pb = 2γ in some wireless channels, where γ is the average SNR. Find the average SNR required
to achieve the same Pb in the wireless channel as in the fiber optic cable.
B. Assume a received power of -113 dBm at a user equipment (e. g., cell phone) at the cell edge. Also
assume the noise temperature and the receiving bandwidth of the user equipment are T = 300K (Kelvin)
and B = 1 MHz, respectively. Calculate the received SNR of the user equipment. Note that the Boltzmann
constant K = 1.38064852 × 1023 Joule/Kelvin.
Solution
A: Given Pb = 10−12 , the required average SNR is calculated as
1 1012
= 10−12 ⇒ γ = = 5 × 1011 ≈ 117 dB.
2γ 2
This is an extremely high SNR requirement. Due to this extremely high required SNR, wireless channels
typically have Pb much larger than 10−12 .
B:
Psignal Psignal Psignal
SN R = = =
Pnoise N0 B KT B
−113−30
10 10
=
1.38064852 × 1023 × 300 × 106
= 1.21 = 0.83dB
Here, N0 = KT is the noise spectrum density.

Question 3
Find the round-trip delay of data sent between a satellite and the earth. We consider geostationary earth
orbit (GEO), medium earth orbit (MEO), and low earth orbit (LEO) satellites and assume the speed of
light is 3 × 108 m/s. The distances from the GEO satellite, the MEO satellite, and the LEO satellite to the
earth are 35,786 kms, 8,000 – 20,000 kms, and 500 – 2,000 kms, respectively. If the maximum acceptable
delay for a voice system is 30 milliseconds, which of these satellite systems would be acceptable for
two-way voice communication?
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Solution
The round-trip time t = 2dc
, where d is the one-way communication distance and c is the speed of light.
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For GEO satellite: tGEO = 2×35786×10
3×108
= 0.2385s.
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For MEO satellite, the minimum round-trip time is tM EO,min = 2×8000×10
3×108
= 0.0533s, the maximum
2×20000×103
round-trip time is tM EO,max = 3×108
= 0.1333s.
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For LEO satellite, the minimum round-trip time is tLEO,min = 2×500×10
3×108
= 0.0033s, the maximum round-
2×2000×103
trip time is tLEO,max = 3×108 = 0.0133s.
Given the maximum acceptable delay as 30 milliseconds, the only acceptable satellite system is LEO.
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Home Work
Requirements
1. Write down your full name, student number, and signature.
2. Detail the steps of your analysis/calculations/solutions. A single answer without derivations or expla-
nations is not acceptable.
3. Hand in a hard copy in the following class.

Question 1
The current and future cellular networks are migrating to smaller cells and incorporating an increasing
number of antennas at the transceivers to improve the quality of wireless transmission. Please name at
least three benefits and three challenges brought by these two trends.

Question 2 (A modified version of Question 1.6 in Goldsmith’s book)

Suppose you are a service provider with 180KHz of bandwidth which you must allocate between voice and
data users. The voice users require 20Khz of bandwidth, and the data users require 60KHz of bandwidth.
So, for example, you could allocate all of your bandwidth to voice users, resulting in 9 voice channels,
or you could divide the bandwidth to have 1 data channel and 6 voice channels, etc. Suppose further that
this is a time-division system, with timeslots of duration T . All voice and data call requests come in at
the beginning of a timeslot and both types of calls last T seconds. There are 9 independent voice users in
the system: each of these users requests a voice channel with probability 0.7 and pays $0.50 if his call is
processed. There are 3 independent data users in the system: each of these users requests a data channel
with probability 0.6 and pays $1.20 if his call is processed. How should you allocate your bandwidth to
maximize your expected revenue?

Question 3 (Question 1.10 in Goldsmith’s book)

Consider a square city that is 100 km2 . Suppose you design a cellular system for this city with square
cells, where every cell (regardless of cell size) has 100 channels so can support 100 active users (in
practice the number of users that can be supported per cell is mostly independent of cell size as long as
the propagation model and power scale appropriately).
(a) What is the total number of active users that your system can support for a cell size of 1 km2 ?
(b) What cell size would you use if you require that your system support 250,000 active users?

Now we consider some financial implications based on the fact that users do not talk continuously. Assume
that Friday from 5-6 pm is the busiest hour for cell phone users. During this time, the average user places
a single call, and this call lasts 2 minutes. Your system should be designed such that the subscribers
will tolerate no greater than a 2% blocking probability during this peak hour. Note that the blocking
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probability is computed using the Erlang B model: Pb = PAC Ak , where C is the number of channels
C! k=0 k!
and A = U µH for U the number of users, µ the average number of call requests per unit time, and H
the average duration of a call. (See any basic networking book or search this definition via Google for
more details).
(c) How many total subscribers can be supported in the macrocell system (1 km2 cells) and in the microcell
system (with cell size from part (b))?
(d) If a base station costs $500,000, what are the base station costs for each system?
(e) If users pay $50 a month in both systems, what will be the monthly revenue in each case. How long
will it take to recoup the infrastructure (base station) cost for each system?