MANIPAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

(A constituent Institute of MANIPAL UNIVERSITY)

MANIPAL - 576 104, KARNATAKA, INDIA

Mid-Semester Report

Development of LTE Network

SUBMITTED
BY

ANKUR KHANNA
ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION
070907496

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF:

Dr. Brejesh Lall
Associate Professor
Electrical Department
IIT Delhi
 CERTIFICATE OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

10th March 2011

To whomsoever it may concern,

I acknowledge that Ankur Khanna has been working on a project under my

guidance on the ‘Development of LTE network’ at IIT Delhi. I understand that the
following is a report of the work he has done so far and an estimate of what he will
do in the coming weeks. The following study has been done individually by him
and this report is an accurate account of it.

Dr. Brejesh Lall

Associate Professor
Electrical Department
IIT Delhi
 Contents

1 Acknowledgement
2 Introduction
2.1 The LTE Standard
2.2 Need for the Project
2.3 Objective
3 An Introduction to LTE
3.1 Network Architecture
3.2 Layer 2 Structure
3.3 Downlink Channels
3.4 Physical Layer Protocols
4 PHY Layer Architecture
4.1 Encoder
4.2 Spatial Multiplexing
4.3 Transmit Diversity
4.4 OFDM
4.5 RF
4.6 Miscellaneous

5 Overview
6 References
 Acknowledgement

This project has been an individual effort of mine. However, it would not have been possible
without the kind support and help of many individuals and organizations. I would like to extend
my sincere thanks to all of them.

I am highly indebted to Dr. Brejesh Lall, Associate Professor, Electrical Department, IIT Delhi, for
his guidance and constant supervision as well as for providing necessary information regarding
the project.

I would like to express my special gratitude and thanks to my guide Mr. Shashi Kumar G. S. for
giving me such attention and time.

I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents for their kind co-operation and
encouragement which helped me to work diligently on the project.

My thanks and appreciations also go to my college in developing the project and people who
have willingly helped me out with their abilities.
 Introduction

2.1 The LTE Standard

3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the latest standard in the mobile network technology tree
that produced the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies. It is a project of the 3rd
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), operating under a name trademarked by one of the
associations within the partnership, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

The LTE specification provides downlink peak rates of at least 100 Mbps, an uplink of at least
50 Mbps and RAN round-trip times of less than 10 ms. LTE supports scalable carrier
bandwidths, from 1.4 MHz to 20 MHz and supports both frequency division duplexing (FDD)
and time division duplexing (TDD).

The main advantages with LTE are high throughput, low latency, plug and play, FDD and TDD
in the same platform, an improved end-user experience and a simple architecture resulting in low
operating costs. The next step for LTE evolution is LTE Advanced, a 4G Technology, and is
currently being standardized in 3GPP Release 10.

2.2 Need for the Project

Modern day advancements have created an environment where the flow of information has
become a necessity not just for a specific field but for all facets of the civilization. The need for
better performance and reliability has resulted in the development of better modes of
communication and the process has not stopped.

Higher data rates demand the implementation of better techniques and standards in the hierarchy
of wireless communication. Currently the most popular standard is the 3rd Generation of Mobile
Communication. LTE is the advancement from 3G to 4G and will introduce a new era of high
speed data transfer.

2.3 Objective
The idea of my project is to design an LTE network that meets the 3GPP specifications for the
LTE Standard. In particular the PHYSICAL Layer of the devices (the Base Station or the eNode-
B or the User Equipment) has to be studied and designed with the necessary channel coding and
modulation techniques required as per the LTE Standard. Other important aspects of this layer
are transmit diversity and MIMO configuration for transmitters and receivers. Moreover,
collaboration with higher layers of the OSI model or the IP model as followed by the devices in
the network is desired.
This requires an initial study of the standards proposed by 3GPP and IMT and then developing a
design for the basic elements of the network. The project is considered from the point of view of
the Base Station.

An Introduction to LTE

3.1 Network Architecture

All the network interfaces are based on IP protocols. The eNBs are interconnected by means of
an X2 interface and to the MME/GW entity by means of an S1 interface as shown in Figure 3.1.
The S1 interface supports a many-to-many relationship between MME/GW and eNBs.

Figure 3.1: LTE Network Architecture

The P-GW interfaces with external packet data networks (PDNs) such as the Internet and the
IMS. The P-GW also performs several IP functions such as address allocation, policy
enforcement, packet filtering and routing.

The MME is a signaling only entity and hence user IP packets do not go through MME. An
advantage of a separate network entity for signaling is that the network capacity for signaling
and traffic can grow independently. The main functions of MME are idle-mode UE reachability
including the control and execution of paging retransmission, tracking area list management,
roaming, authentication, authorization, P-GW/S-GW selection, bearer management including
dedicated bearer establishment, security negotiations and NAS signaling, etc.
Evolved Node-B implements Node-B functions as well as protocols traditionally implemented in
RNC. The main functions of eNB are header compression, ciphering and reliable delivery of
packets. On the control side, eNB incorporates functions such as admission control and radio
resource management. Some of the benefits of a single node in the access network are reduced
latency and the distribution of RNC processing load into multiple eNBs.
3.2 Layer 2 Structure

The layer 2 of LTE consists of three sublayers namely Medium Access Control (MAC), Radio
Link Control (RLC) and Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP). The Service Access Point
(SAP) between the physical (PHY) layer and the MAC sublayer provides the transport channels
while the SAP between the MAC and RLC sublayers provides the logical channels. The MAC
sublayer performs multiplexing of logical channels on to the transport channels.

The downlink and uplink layer 2 structures are given in Figures 3.2. The difference between
downlink and uplink structures is that in the downlink, the MAC sublayer also handles the
priority among UEs in addition to priority handling among the logical channels of a single UE.
The other functions performed by the MAC sublayers in both downlink and uplink include
mapping between the logical and the transport channels, multiplexing of RLC packet data units
(PDU), padding, transport format selection and hybrid ARQ (HARQ).

Figure 3.2: LTE Layer 2 Structure

The main services and functions of the RLC sublayers include segmentation, ARQ in-sequence
delivery and duplicate detection, etc. The in-sequence delivery of upper layer PDUs is not
guaranteed at handover. The reliability of RLC can be configured to either acknowledge mode
(AM) or un-acknowledge mode (UM) transfers. The UM mode can be used for radio bearers that
can tolerate some loss. In AM mode, ARQ functionality of RLC retransmits transport blocks that
fail recovery by HARQ. The recovery at HARQ may fail due to hybrid ARQ NACK to ACK
error or because the maximum number of retransmission attempts is reached. In this case, the
relevant transmitting ARQ entities are notified and potential retransmissions and re-segmentation
can be initiated.

The PDCP layer performs functions such as header compression and decompression, ciphering
and in-sequence delivery and duplicate detection at handover for RLCAM, etc. The header
compression and decompression is performed using the robust header compression (ROHC)
protocol.

3.3 Downlink Channels

The relationship between downlink logical, transport and physical channels is shown in Figure
3.3. A logical channel is defined by the type of information it carries. The logical channels are
further divided into control channels and traffic channels. The control channels carry control-
plane information, while traffic channels carry user-plane information.

Figure 3.3: Downlink Channels

In the downlink, five control channels and two traffic channels are defined. The downlink control
channel used for paging information transfer is referred to as the Paging Control Channel
(PCCH). This channel is used when the network has no knowledge about the location cell of the
UE. The channel that carries system control information is referred to as the Broadcast Control
Channel (BCCH). Two channels namely the Common Control Channel (CCCH) and the
Dedicated Control Channel (DCCH) can carry information between the network and the UE. The
CCCH is used for UEs that have no RRC connection while DCCH is used for UEs that have an
RRC connection. The control channel used for the transmission of MBMS control information is
referred to as the Multicast Control Channel (MCCH). The MCCH is used by only those UEs
receiving MBMS.

3.4 PHY Layer Protocols

The protocols involved in the development of the Physical Layer for an LTE standard network
for downlink transmission are:
 OFDMA is the modulation scheme defined to meet the specifications.
 Channel Coding is done using Turbo Coding, Convolution Coding as well as Block
Coding.
 LTE Standard supports MIMO spatial multiplexing.
 The transmit diversity to support and implement MIMO transmission is basically SFBC-
FSTD(Space Frequency Block Code – Frequency Shift Transmit Diversity) along with
Cyclic Delay Diversity(CDD) when required.
 Frame Structures follow both FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time
Division Duplex).
 Synchronization signals are generated using Zadoff−Chu (ZC) sequences.
 Hybrid ARQ with Incremental Redundancy (and Chase Combining if required) is
employed.
 Precoding is included in Transmit Diversity for increased spectral efficiency.
 Dedicated channel for Multicast signals.
 PHY Layer Architecture

Figure 4.1: PHY Layer Architecture

The Physical Layer Architecture that I am designing consists of various modules that represent
functions or libraries that will be implemented either physically of logically.
The Architecture can be basically divided into a 5 modules apart from the CPU as shown in
Figure 4.1.
These modules can be further broken down into smaller functions that are explained later.
The architecture is designed keeping in mind that data will primarily be identified by the
Transport Channel that it is associated with. These transport channels are defined in the MAC
Layer and the data from different transport channels will be processed according to the
corresponding physical channel that is connected to each transport channel.

4.1 Encoder

This module directly receives data from the MAC Layer and the basic function of this module is
to encode the data. In other words it is responsible for channel coding. A basic block diagram of
this module is shown in Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.2: Encoder

The internal blocks of this module will be described now.

4.1.1 Code Generator

This is basically a code generator that generates different codes that are necessary to transfer as
control signals. These codes are as follows:
 DCI- Downlink Control Information is a set of bits that is transferred over the Physical
Downlink control Channel.
  CFI- Control Format Indicator indicates the number of OFDM symbols (i.e. normally 1, 2
or 3) used for transmission of control channel information in each subframe. It is
transmitted over the Physical Control Format Indicator Channel.
 Synchronization Signals- The Primary Synchronization Signal is generated using Zadoff-
Chu sequences and the Secondary Synchronization Signal is based on the maximal length
sequences. These signals are transmitted over the Physical Broadcast Channel.
 Reference Signals- These are generated using PN sequences and are use for various
downlink measurements.
 HARQ Indicator- This is transmitted over the Physical HARQ Channel and includes
information regarding the ARQ response.

4.1.2 CRC Attachment

This block is calculates the CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) of a block of bits as a method for
error correction in compliance with the Hybrid ARQ scheme.
The Transport Blocks that are passed from the MAC Layer contain a large number of bits and so
they are broken down into Codeblocks and CRC is attached to each of these Codeblocks for
better efficiency. This is illustrated by Figure 4.3.
Out of the 3 schemes, Scheme C is chosen to attach CRC to the TBs and CBs.
CRC calculation can either be done logically or it can be implemented using Linear Feedback
Shift Registers. A primitive (irreducible) polynomial is used based on the size of the CRC that is
to be added and the incoming set of bits is divided by this polynomial. The remainder is attached
as the CRC to the input set of bits.

Figure 4.3: CRC Attachment for efficiency

The different schemes are shown in Figure 4.4.

 Figure 4.4: CRC Attachment Schemes
4.1.3 Code Block Segmentation

As mentioned earlier, the Transport Blocks are broken down into smaller units called Code
Blocks. The sizes of these Codeblocks are predefined for convenience and if the necessary
padding bits are added to meet the requirements. Even here there are a few issues concerning the
optimum sizes of the codeblocks. If the sizes of the codeblocks vary drastically then after
encoding there will be a correspondingly huge difference in the rates. This is why an algorithm is
followed to keep the sizes of the codeblocks close to each other. Figure 4.5 illustrates the
difference in the sizes.
 Figure 4.5: CodeBlock Segmentation

Even though the number of filler bits being added in the second case is more than that in first, yet
the second case is a better option because the sizes of the codeblocks in the second case are much
closer.

4.1.4 Channel Coding

To meet the specifications laid down for the LTE standard, channel coding of data is done either
by Turbo Coding, Convolutional Coding or Block Coding. Figure 4.6 shows the channels and
their corresponding coding schemes.
 Figure 4.6: Channels and their coding schemes

Turbo Coding
The bits that have to be encoded are given as input and for each input bit there are 3 output bits.
That is, there are 3 streams on the output side. The first stream is comprises of the same bits that
were sent as the input. This stream is called systematic bits. The other two streams (called Parity
1 and 2 bits) are the output of the encoders. Refer to Figure 4.7. There are a few issues
concerning this scheme such as filler bits removal and trellis termination.

Another important aspect of the turbo coder is the interleaver used. For the sake of simplicity I
will not include the logic for the interleaver(which involves the use of Quadratic Permutation
Polynomials), but it will be considered during implementation.
 Figure 4.7: Turbo Coder
Convolutional Coding
Similar to Turbo Coding in the way that the rate is 1/3 i.e. for each input bit there are 3 output
bits.

Figure 4.8: Convolutional Coding

4.1.5 Scrambler

It consists of interleaver and interlacer logic. Apart from that, this module is also used as
interleaver in another block that we will see later. The function of the interlacer will become
clear from Figure 4.9.
 Figure 4.9: Coding
4.1.6 Rate Matching

It is not necessary that the buffer size of the UE receiver would be same as that of the transmitter.
It is generally smaller. The soft buffer size is directly proportional to the supported data rate and
is inversely proportional to the turbo coding rate. The idea with soft buffer limitation is that if
UE has a certain buffer size dimensioned for a given data rate and a given coding rate then it can
support either higher data rates with increasing coding rate (weaker code) or lower data rates
with a stronger code. Therefore, UE can support incremental redundancy in most cases while
falling back to Chase combining when it approaches peak data rates if its soft buffer is
dimensioned to support Chase combining only at the peak data rate. In other cases, when the soft
buffer is dimensioned to support the peak data rate with incremental redundancy in mind, full
redundant bits can always be transmitted providing performance advantage. Therefore, the soft
buffer approach provides a tool to balance the UE soft buffering complexity against incremental
redundancy gains.

This is done by using a buffer which is logically a circular buffer and resets to position ‘0’ after
its maximum value which is decided by the limiting value of the soft buffer.
To implement incremental redundancy, an algorithm is followed that produces values that are
used as Redundant Version (RV) values. This means that a few bits would be punctured starting
from these positions so that the data rate could be matched with the soft buffer size.

4.2 Spatial Multiplexing

This is a completely logical module. Data is transmitted in packets and these packets are in the
form of frames. The LTE Standard defines frames to be of 10ms time duration. The structure of a
frame depends on the mode of transmission adopted by the base station (eNodeB) which can
either be Time Division Duplexing (TDD) or Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD).
In TDD mode, the uplink and downlink channels function over the same bandwidth and with the
same centre frequency but are time-duplexed whereas in FDD mode, the uplink and downlink
channels function over different centre frequencies. Keeping in mind that the modulation scheme
followed is OFDM, each slot comprises of OFDM symbols that cover the total bandwidth
available and, based on the length of the Cyclic Prefix, there are 6 or 7 such columns of symbols
that make up a slot of 0.5ms. In fact each slot is further divided into Resource Blocks that are
0.5ms in duration and are 12 carriers wide.
Figure 4.10 gives a clear picture of the slot structure.

As specified earlier, data is always associated with its corresponding channel. So the UE needs to
know the channel which the received (encoded) data belongs to so that it could process it
accordingly. Hence LTE Standard specifies fixed positions for the data from different channels
onto the frame. To illustrate this a few examples are used. Refer to Figure 4.11.

So the function of this module is to assign frequency carrier tags to the data based on the tags
which represent the channel it belongs to. This is done so that data could be assigned the same
frequency during the modulation phase.
 Figure 4.10: Slot Structure

Figure 4.11 (a): Position of Synchronization Signals

 Figure 4.11 (b): Position of Physical Broadcast Channel

4.3 Transmit Diversity

This module is responsible for facilitating MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) scheme which
means that the transmitter and receiver can have multiple antennas for transmission and
reception. For downlink transmissions, UEs feedback downlink channel quality information back
to the eNode-B. Using a channel quality sensitive scheduler such as proportional fair scheduler,
eNode-B can serve a UE on time-frequency resources where it is experiencing the best
conditions. At high UE speeds, the channel quality feedback becomes unreliable due to feedback
delays. When reliable channel quality estimates are not available at eNode-B, channel-sensitive
scheduling becomes infeasible. Under these conditions, it is desired to average out the channel
variations by all possible means. Moreover, the channel sensitive scheduler has to wait for the
right (good) channel conditions when a UE can be scheduled. This introduces delays in packet
transmissions.

Various sources of diversity can be used in an OFDM system. This includes time-diversity,
frequency diversity, receive diversity and transmit diversity. The time diversity can, however, be
exploited in the LTE system by using hybrid ARQ where retransmissions are spaced
approximately 8ms apart at the expense of additional transmission delay. The frequency diversity
in the LTE system can be exploited by scheduling transmissions over distributed resources. In
the uplink slot-level (0.5 ms half subframe), hopping where the transmission is hopped at two
frequencies within a 1 ms subframe is used. The transmit diversity provides another additional
source of diversity for averaging out the channel variation either for operation at higher UE
speeds or for delay sensitive services at both low and high UE speeds.

Figure 4.12: Transmit Diversity

The step-by-step process that is employed before the modulation of data is shown in Figure 4.13.
 Figure 4.12: Downlink Transmission Chain
The data is first scrambled using the scrambler which we had come across in the Encoder
module. Then these scrambled bits are mapped to complex modulation symbols by the
modulation mapper.

Since MIMO scheme has to be implemented, there are generally 2 or 4 ports at the transmitter.
To distribute data among these ports, it is first mapped to different layers that correspond to these
antenna ports. This is better shown with the help of Figure 4.13

Figure 4.13: Layer Mapping

Precoding can be seen as a way to improve the spectral efficiency. The incoming bits are
multiplied with a two-dimensional matrix of complex values. The following illustration explains
the method.
(k)
Consider y (i) to be the output bit stream for the k th
antenna port with total number of antenna
ports to be P.

For the case of 2 antenna ports transmit diversity, the output of the precoding operation is :
RE Mapping is the next block to be executed after precoding. This is where data is assigned a
particular frequency carrier as per the decision taken during spatial multiplexing.

Figure 4.14: RE Mapping in the case of two antennas

Figures 4.15 and 4.16 show the outputs of the precoding and RE mapping for the case of four-
port antennas. This is the true implementation of transmit diversity of type Space Frequency
Block Coding Frequency Shift Time Diversity (SFBC-FSTD).
 Figure 4.15: Precoding for 4-port antenna

Figure 4.16: RE Mapping for 4-port antenna

4.4 OFDM

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is a modulation scheme and it is considered the

most robust signaling scheme. It is different from normal Frequency Division Multiplexing in the
way that the frequency carriers in normal FDM are spaced apart with guard carriers between
them where as in OFDM, the frequency carriers are placed very close to each other but these
carriers are orthogonal to each other, thus allowing minimum interference. The mathematical
representation of the output signal can be written as:
N −1
s(t )= ∑ X ( k ) x exp ( j 2 πk ∆ ft)
k=0

This equation is very similar to the equation for the calculation of Inverse Fast Fourier
Transform. Hence a convenient way has been devised for the modulation of data by OFDM
scheme. The data is first converted to parallel bit streams and then IFFT is calculated for every
set of parallel bits. Cyclic prefix is added to induce continuity. These three modules are
implemented under the OFDM module.
 Figure 4.17: OFDM module

Figure 4.18: OFDM modulation

4.5 RF

This module implements the final stage of the transmission cycle. The data from the OFDM
module is first converted from digital to analog low pass filter. It is then up converted and passed
to the power amplifier.

Figure 4.19: RF module

4.6 Miscellaneous

Apart from the above mentioned modules there are two more functions to be considered that are :
 Scheduling: This involves scheduling of data for different UEs and amongst different
channels to the same UE too. Although this is done in MAC Layer it is crucial to have a
record of the scheduling in the PHY Layer too.
 Closed loop feedback information: This is the data that is first received in uplink that
informs the base station about the channel conditions that the UE is experiencing and thus
determines the values to be used for precoding.

Architecture Overview
References
[1] LTE for 4G Mobile Broadband by Farooq Khan.
[2] LTE – The UMTS Long Term Evolution From Theory to Practice by Stefania Sesia.
[3] 3GPP Specification TS 36.201.
[4] 3GPP Specification TS 36.211
[5] 3GPP Specification TS 36.212
[6] 3GPP Specification TS 36.213
[7] 3GPP Specification TS 36.214
[8] 3GPP Specification TS 36.300
[9] 3GPP Specification TS 36.401