2012 7th International ICST Conference on Communications and Networking in China (CHINACOM)

A Method of PRACH Detection Threshold Setting in

LTE TDD Femtocell System
Yanchao Hu#*+^1, Juan Han#+^2, Shan Tang#+^3, Huajie Gao#+^4, Yongtao Su#+^5, Jinglin Shi#+^6
#
Wireless Communication Technology Research Center, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
*
Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
+
Beijing Key Laboratory of Mobile Computing and Pervasive Device
^
Beijing Sylincom Technologies Co., Ltd.
Beijing, China, 100190
Emails: {1huyanchao, 2hanjuan, 3tangshan, 4gaohuajie, 5ysu, 6sjl}@ict.ac.cn

Abstract—Detection threshold is a crucial parameter in Physical
Random Access Channel (PRACH) receiver and determines the
detection performance and efficiency. A method of PRACH
detection threshold setting in Long Term Evolution (LTE) Time
Division Duplex (TDD) femtocell system is proposed in this paper
based on theoretical analysis. This method uses the frequency
domain correlation calculation results, and benefits from
multiple antennas diversity combing to adjust the relative
detection threshold, which is the ratio of absolute detection
threshold and time varying noise level. Cumulative Distribution
Function (CDF) of the relative threshold is modified to obtain the
absolute threshold. Simulation results show that the proposed
method fulfills the requirements of the system and gets a
promotion in performance under certain false alarm probability
and channel conditions.
Keywords-LTE; random access; femtocell; PRACH; detection
threshold
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless communications have been developing rapidly in
recent years [1-11]. Long Term Evolution (LTE) system and its
evolutionary techniques are the mainstreams of the mobile
communication systems. As the modern mobile
communications mainly happen indoors and the LTE carrier
frequency is too high to penetrate the walls, femtocell
techniques are brought forth to solve these problems. A
fundamental but crucial function of the system mentioned
above is that the User Equipment (UE) can access to the
service system and network [12]. Under certain circumstances,
an LTE UE can be scheduled for uplink transmission only if
uplink transmission timing is synchronized. LTE Random
Access Channel (RACH) therefore plays a key role as an
interface between non-synchronized UEs and the orthogonal
transmission scheme of LTE uplink radio access. LTE random
access procedure comes in two forms, allowing access to be
either contention-based (implying an inherent risk of collision)
or contention-free. Here the contention-based random access
procedure will be discussed as Fig.1 presents.
As the first step of random access, Physical Random
Access Channel (PRACH) [13] is critical to the performance of
the whole random access procedure, this article concentrates on
PRACH detection in LTE femtocell system. As the cell radius
of femtocell is quite small compared to a macro cell, the format
4 preamble which is the shortest of the four, is adopted in the
particular scenario discussed here.
Figure 1. Random Access Process
Many key issues in random access have been discussed
accompanied with the rapid development of LTE system. For
PRACH transmitter, two theoretical schemes processed in
either time domain or frequency domain, are described in [14],
and an efficient implementation method for LTE PRACH
generator is proposed in [15]. While these literatures concern
the transmitter solutions in PRACH implementation, the
PRACH receiver scheme is an even more important part of the
whole PRACH process. The PRACH detection algorithm
illustrated in [16] mainly concerns about increasing the energy
efficiency by decreasing the number of antennas and reducing
the size of FFT/IFFT operation. A strategy for PRACH
receiver is also proposed in [14], which suggests the detection
metric should be adjusted according to the ratio of tentatively
detected peaks and noise level. In [17], a feasible detection
algorithm is proposed, which illustrates how to apply two
separate thresholds named threshold A and B to the detection
windows. In all the articles listed above, novel PRACH
detection methods are discussed for various optimization
purposes, but few of them describes explicitly the methods for
threshold setting, which is crucial to the detection performance.
There are also some theoretical analyses of threshold setting. In
[18], it explores the relation between the absolute threshold and
the noise level. While the method in [18] operates multiple
antennas diversity combing and detection threshold setting
simultaneously, it is not feasible for practical implementation
because of the calculation complexity. Relative threshold
setting and multi-user performance are discussed in [19], but

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the method doesn’t mention the absolute threshold, which is
practicable in implementation.
While the receiver scheme is settled, the detection threshold
is a crucial parameter to the whole receiver and the detection
performance. The algorithms mentioned above can not form a
practical threshold setting method which brings the detection
with outstanding performance. This paper proposes a threshold
setting method which separates the diversity combing from the
threshold setting process by modifying the Cumulative
Distribution Function (CDF) [18] of the relative threshold, which
can be implemented easily. This method also takes the absolute
threshold setting into consideration and the simulation results
of the method proposed in this paper is shown and compared to
[20] and [21].
In section 2 the system model of the whole PRACH process
system is introduced, including the preamble sequence and the
frequency domain correlation calculation. A new simplified
and modified threshold setting method will be introduced in
section 3, followed by simulation results in section 4 and
finally the conclusion.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
The PRACH adopts Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) [13] technique which has lower
Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) characteristics compared
to an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
(OFDMA) signal in practical implementation. Based on the
characteristics of SC-FDMA, this section will introduce the
PRACH preamble sequence and the frequency domain
correlation calculation used in PRACH receiver.
A. PRACH preamble Sequence
The preamble sequence x (n ) is built from a cyclically-
shifted Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequence of prime length N ZC as ZC
sequences are non-binary unit-amplitude sequences [13].
πun(n + 1)
x(n) = exp(− j ), 0 ≤ n ≤ N ZC − 1 ,
N ZC
where u is the ZC sequence index. From the u th root ZC
sequence, random access preambles with zero correlation zones
of length N CS − 1 are defined by cyclic shifts according to [13]
x u , v (n ) = x u (( n + C v ) mod N ZC ) ,
where C v is the cyclic shift, and N CS is the cyclic shift
offset.
This paper adopts preamble format 4 in the TDD LTE
femtocell system, which generates from a 139 point ZC
sequence and is only used in TDD LTE system with special
subframe configurations [13].
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B. Frequency Domain Correlation Calculation
At the PRACH receiver of the Evolved Node Base-station
(eNB) side, after Cyclic Prefix (CP) removal and FFT, the
frequency domain PRACH sequences are de-mapped from the
corresponding time frequency resource blocks. The subsequent
process is the frequency domain correlation calculation.
The frequency domain correlation calculation is a
significant part of the receiver before the preamble detection
being done. The basic frequency domain correlation calculation
process is depicted as follows.
⊗
2
zu (n)
Figure 2. Frequency Domain Correlation Calculation Process
Considering that commonly each LTE cell has 64 available
preamble sequences but a single ZC root sequence cannot
produce sufficient preambles based on cyclic shifts, multiple
root sequences should be used to generate enough preamble
sequences. And since multiple users may use the same or
different time frequency resources to transmit their own
preambles, each root sequence should correspond to a single
preamble detection process chain as Fig.2 shows.
As in the frequency domain correlation calculation process,
firstly the received frequency domain PRACH sequence will be
de-mapped from the time-frequency resource grids. Then the
periodic convolution is required as the approach below.
The local ZC root sequence will be transformed to
frequency domain by the DFT module to avoid computing the
periodic convolution and the conjugate operation is performed
on the corresponding frequency sequence. Then the frequency
domain correlation between the local ZC root sequence and the
received preamble sequence is calculated as follows [18].
(1)
Z u (k ) = Y(k )X *u (k ) , (3)
where the X u (k ) , Y (k ) and Z(k ) are the DFT results of the
sequences x u (k ) , y(k ) and z(k ) .
Next purpose is to acquire the power delay profile of the
(2) periodic correlation. The power delay profile is defined as [18]
z p (l) = z u (l) . (4)
2
To achieve the above result, frequency domain periodic
correlation results should be transformed to the time domain.
Before the IFFT operation, the sequence will be padded zeros
to extend the length of the sequence to a power of two to
simplify the computation by using IFFT.
409
 After the computation of the power delay profile, all the
results from different antennas should be combined together to
acquire the diversity gain. As the performance of equal gain
combining [22] is only slightly decreased compared to the
maximum ratio combining [22] while the computation
complexity is much less than others, equal-gain combing will
be adopted as the diversity combing scheme in this paper.

III. DECECTION ALGORITHM

In the eNB PRACH receiver, the detection threshold is a
crucial parameter to the whole receiver and the detection
performance. Since the diversity combing has an influence on
the computation of the threshold, the threshold distribution
function will be modified to adapt to the separation operation
of the diversity combing and the threshold setting. The
detection algorithm and the detection threshold setting method
will be illustrated below.
A. Preamble Detection
The detection is performed with the power delay profile
obtained above. Firstly the method of the signature detection
process is derived as follows. This article uses two thresholds
in the detection. The threshold A is the threshold of the arrival
signal which determines whether the search window needs to
proceed the peak detection. Threshold B is the peak detection
threshold which determines the existence of an access.
Figure 3. Detection Threshold A and B
B. Detection Threshold Setting
The value of the detection threshold B is determined by
the false alarm probability which is the total probability of
receiver falsely detecting a preamble access when the sender
does not send any preambles.
Considering in an AWGN channel of uncorrelated
Gaussian noise in the absence of preamble transmission, and
ignoring the non-coherent accumulation, the power delay
profile of the received signal is [18]
Na

∑z
2
• A ZC root sequence can generate several preamble z p (n ) = w (n )
sequences by cyclic shifts according to the parameters a =1 , (6)
set in [13]. By separating the length of the power delay
profile to several search windows, the search process where z w (n ) ~ N(0, δ 2w ) , N a is the number of antennas. The
and detection decision can be performed in every
antennas are uncorrelated with each other, thus z p (n ) follows a
window. The length of the search windows is
central χ 2 distribution with 2 N = 2 N a degrees of freedom,
W = N CS ⋅ N IFFT / N ZC . (5) with mean λ w = Nδ 2w .
The false alarm probability satisfies [19]
• Estimate the noise level, which can be computed
according to the power delay profile.
{
Pfa (Tthre ) = P max(z p (n ) > Tthre ) }
• Set up the threshold A, this is the threshold of the = 1 − CDF{z p ( n ), Tthre }
arrival signal. In the search window, if the power level , (7)
is below the threshold A, the receiver is aware of no
preamble’s arrival in this window. where CDF{z p (n ), Tthre } is the CDF value of z p (n ) at Tthre , and
• Threshold B is the final threshold to determine whether the threshold B is TB = Tthre .
there is a preamble access. If the peak power of the
window is above threshold B, then the receiver make a
decision of a preamble’s access in the current window. This method is difficult to implement in a real base station
because the threshold need to be recalculated and it is laborious
The detection threshold A and B are shown in Fig.3. to obtain the CDF of the solution. Instead of this complex
method, the relative threshold can be computed as [18]

Tr = TThre / λ w . (8)

Then the CDF of the Tr is [18]

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 N a −1
1 one that was sent, no preamble being detected or correct
Fr = 1 − exp(− N a ⋅ Tr ) ∑ k! ( N
k =0
a ⋅ Tr ) k
, (9) preamble detection but with the wrong timing estimation.
The PRACH detection performance of a LTE TDD
where N a is the number of antennas. However, considering Femtocell system implementation should fulfill the
the multiple antennas diversity combing, it should be separated performance specification in 3GPP TS36.104 (V8.4.0) [20]. The
with the threshold setting. After the process of equal-gain false alarm probability shall be less than or equal to 0.1% [9].
diversity combing, the threshold setting is equivalent to one The total detection probability should not be less than 99%,
single antenna. So (9) can be modified as which is equivalent to the missed detection probability should
not be more than 1% [20]. The requirements of the missed
detection are defined in Table I.
N a −1
1
Fr = 1 − exp(−Tr ) ∑ k! (T ) r
k
. (10)
k =0 TABLE I. MISSED DETECTION REQUIREMENTS FOR NORMAL MODE [9]
Number of Propagation Frequency SNR [dB]
Since the calculation of every antenna’s effect has been RX conditions offset
done, the accumulation is kept for (10). Simulation results in antennas (Annex B) Format 4
the next section will show that this modification is applicable to 2 AWGN 0 -7.2
meet the requirements of PRACH detection. ETU70 270 -0.1
4 AWGN 0 -9.8
This function mentioned above is irrelevant to the noise
ETU70 270 -5.1
level, so it can be pre-calculated and store as a table in
deployment and applications.
Considering that in LTE femtocell system, the
The threshold A is defined as the mean power of power performance of PRACH detection must fall in the gap between
delay profile of the whole sequence the performance in AWGN channel and that in Extended
Typical Urban model (ETU) channel, which is also the typical
N IFFT −1
scenarios in [20], simulations for the proposed method herein
1
∑ are also carried out under AWGN and ETU channels for the
2
ms = z s (n )
N IFFT n =0 . (11) performance analysis and comparation.
Table TABLE II shows the ETU multi-path delay profiles
To achieve better performance, an adjustment factor is that are used for the performance measurements in multi-path
applied to the threshold A as follows fading environment.

TA = A factor ⋅ m s . (12) TABLE II. TABLE EXTENDED TYPICAL URBAN MODEL (ETU) [19]
Excess tap delay Relative power
The noise level is acquired based on threshold A as below [ns] [dB]
0 -1.0
50 -1.0
N IFFT −1 120 -1.0
1
∑
2
λ w = ms = ( z s (n ) < TA ) 200 0.0
N sa n =0 , (13) 230 0.0
500 0.0
where N sa is the number of points accumulating in (13). 1600 -3.0
2300 -5.0
According to (8), threshold B is computed as: 5000 -7.0

TB = B factor ⋅ Tthre = B factor ⋅ λ w ⋅ Tr ,
where B factor is an adjustment factor of threshold B. At first the
factor of threshold A and B can be simply set to 1.
(14) As in the femtocell applications, the high-speed scenario
is not much a possible scenario, simulation parameters are
listed as Table III. The left part of the table is the simulation
parameters names, and the right part of the table is the
parameters’ values or options.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS TABLE III. SIMULATION PARAMETERS

The performance of the PRACH detection is measured by Duplex mode TDD
false alarm probability and detection probability [20]. Frame type frame type 2
Bandwidth 20 MHz
The probability of detection is the conditional probability
Subcarrier spacing 7.5 KHz
of correct detection of the preamble when the signal is present. Preamble format Format 4
The error cases include detecting different preamble than the Preamble Location UpPTS
Ncs[23] 10

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 Logical sequence index[23] 0
v[23] 0
Sample frequency 30.72 MHz
Basic Time unit Ts =1/30.72 s
Number of TX antennas 1
Number of RX antennas 2
Channel models[20] [23] AWGN, ETU70
UE numbers 1

According to (10), the theoretical results of the relative

threshold of the false alarm probability can be computed and
depicted in Fig.4. The results indicate that the relative threshold
increases while the false alarm probability decreases. This is
because the relative threshold is the ratio of the absolute
threshold and the noise level. When the ratio is higher, the
noise is rarer to exceeding the threshold to form a false alarm.

Figure 5. Missed Detection Probability in AWGN Channel

Fig.6 shows the simulation results of detection

performance under ETU70 channel model. The performance of
the method proposed in this article is 3dB better than the
algorithm in [21]. Because of the modification of the CDF of
the relative threshold and taking the diversity combing’ affects
into consideration, the performance increases especially in a
fading channel. Attributed to the gain increases more than the
effect of the noise and the channel fading and the separation of
the diversity and the threshold setting, the performance of the
method proposed in this paper increases as the ascending of the
SNR.

Figure 4. The Relative Threshold of the False Alarm Probability

The simulation results of detection performance under

AWGN channel model are indicated in Fig.5. The upper line is
the performance provided by [21] and the lower line is the
simulation results using the method proposed in this paper.
With the increase of the SNR, the performance of the proposed
method is 1.5dB better than the method in [21].The
performance improvement is contributed to the partitioning of
the diversity combing and the threshold setting. Therefore the
influence of the diversity combing can be taken from the
process of the threshold setting. And the approximate
processing with down sampling of the traditional methods can
be eliminated by the method proposed in this article. So the
performance is improved in contrast to the one in [21]. Figure 6. Missed Detection Probability in ETU70 Channel

V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposes a modified method of PRACH
detection threshold setting in LTE TDD Femtocell System.
This method separates the diversity combing and the threshold
setting process, so the effect of multiple antennas diversity
combing on the detection threshold setting is avoided. This
method is also more practical. Simulation results show that the
modified threshold setting method fulfills the requirements of
the 3GPP TS36.104 (840) and has a promoted detection

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performance compared to [21]. The subsequent technologies of
LTE are evolved and updated these days and the method
proposed in document will continue to be worked for the
evolved system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was funded by Beijing Science and
Technology Major Project (D111101001411001) and National
Science and Technology Major Project (2012ZX03001007-
004).
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