EESM 539 – Broadband

Wireless Communications
Part I - Theory
Vincent Lau
Dept of ECE, HKUST

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 Introduction:
• Generic Cellular Architecture
– mobile station (MS), base station (BTS) and
the mobile switching center (MSC).
– The conversation path between the mobile
station and the PSTN involves several
transmission sections, namely the air interface
and the fixed-line transmission facilities.
– Usually, the air interface is the bottleneck of
the transmission path. (Why?)

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 Introduction

Radio tower

A
C
Switch
Radio tower

B
Radio tower

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Basic Communication
Theory
(Point-to-Point)

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 Representation of Signals
• Geometric Domain (Signal Space)
– Signal could be represented by a point in a
space.
– Step 1: Given a set of M signals, {s1 (t ), s2 (t ),..., sM (t )}
define a D-dim signal space with basis
{f1 (t ),f2 (t ),..,f D (t )} .
– Step 2: Find out the coordinates of each
!
signals by: si (t ) ® si = ( si ,1 , si ,2 ,.., si ,D )
s T

sij = ò si (t )f j (t )dt
0

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Representation of Signals

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Representation of Signals

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 Basics of Digital Communications
• Three components,
– Transmitter (or digital modulator),
– Receiver (or demodulator)
– Channel.
• Quality Measure
– Bit Error Rate (BER), Bit Rate.
• Resource
– (Bandwidth, Power).
• Channel Example y (t ) = x(t ) + n(t )
– AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise).
– Channel just introduce noise without further distortion.

x(t) y(t)
n(t)
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 Digital Modulator
• Modulation symbols
– signal pulses of finite
duration Ts.
– For example, binary
modulator takes in 1 bit {0,1}
and output one modulation
symbol from the set {s0 (t ), s1 (t )}
1
• Baud Rate (Symbol Rate)
Ts
æ1 ö æ bits ö
• Bit Rate (bps) = ç ÷´ç ÷
è Ts ø è symbol ø

• Transmission BW W = æç 1 ö÷ (1 + a )
è Ts ø

• M-ary Modulator
– One out of M symbols {s1 (t ), s2 (t ),..., sM (t )}
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 Digital Modulator

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 Modulator
– Constellation
• The set of M modulation
signals could be represented
geometrically as points in
the signal space.
• Hence, M-ary modulator
could be represented by M- f3(t)
points in a D-dim signal
space. This is called the
constellation of the s4
modulator. s1
– Average Energy out of M
s3 f1(t)
1 !
modulator E = å | si |2
M i =1
(equivalent to average
distance-square of all the s2
constellation points from
origin) f2(t)
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 Demodulation
– Received signal after AWGN channel is given by:
transmitted random
signal noise
! !
y (t ) = x(t ) + n(t )

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 Demodulation
– Received signal after AWGN channel is given by:
transmitted random
signal noise
! !
y (t ) = x(t ) + n(t )
! ! !
– Expressing in vector form, we have: y = x+n

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 Demodulation
• Minimum Distance Decoder

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Demodulation

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Demodulation

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Tradeoff between Power, BW, Bit rate

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Comparison between
modulation schemes

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Mobile Wireless
Communications

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 Wireless Fading Channel
• Rayleigh fading model à Multipath & time
variation:

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 Wireless Fading Channel
Large fluctuations in the received signal strength 30dB.
• The received signal strength can be factored into:
– path loss (p(t)):
• variation of signal strength vs distance
– shadowing (m(t))
• variation of signal strength due to terrain configuration.
– microscopic fading (c(t)).
• Variation of signal strength due to aggregation of multipath.

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Three Levels of Channel Fading

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 Microscopic-Fading (I)
Delay Spread ( s t ):
spread of delays in echo.

1
Coherence Bandwidth ( Bc »
s t ):
min separation of frequency for
uncorrelated fading.

Typical values
Indoor: Bc ~ 1MHz
Outdoor: Bc ~ 100 kHz.

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 Microscopic Fading (II)
v
• Doppler Spread ( fd =
l ):
– spread of frequency due to
mobility

1
• Coherence Time ( Tc » ):
fd
– min separation of time for
uncorrelated fading.
• Typical Values
– Pedestrian (~ 5 km / hr) à fd
~ 14 Hz (at 2.4 GHz)
– Vehicular (~ 100 km/hr) à fd
~ 300 Hz (at 2.4 GHz)
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Classifications of Fading

(Easiest) (More Difficult)

(More Difficult)
(Most Difficult)

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 Flat Fading Channels
Narrowband Transmission”
coherence bandwidth of channel > signal
BW.
“Single path” channel model:
y (t )
! = a1 x(t - t1 ) + !
z (t )
"#$# %
received _ signal info_signal channel
noise

1.0
0.7

t=0 t=0.01ms

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 Effect of Flat Fading Channels

Flattening of BER
Curves
At BER = 10^(-3), the
SNR penalty = 15dB!!
Solution à Diversity

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 Frequency Selective Fading Channels
• Wideband Transmission:
– Coherent BW < Signal BW.
• “multipath” channel model.
a1 x(t - t1 ) + a 2 x(t - t 2 ) + ...
y (t ) =
! +!z (t )
+a L x(t - t L )
received _ signal "#### #$##### % channel
noise
info_signal

1.0 0.9
0.7
0.1

t=0 t=0.01ms

• “equivalently”
– uncorrelated fading across the signal bandwidth

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 Effect of Frequency Selective Fading

• Multipath à Inter-symbol interference (ISI)

• In addition to flattening of BER curves, we
have irreducible error floor.
• Solution
– Diversity à take care of the flattening
– Equalization à take care of error floor.

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 Multi-user
Communications

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 Principle of Multiple Access -
Orthogonal Resource Partitioning:
• Signal Model ( N u mobiles to base station)
Nu
y (t ) = åa k sk (t ) + n(t )
k =1

• Base Station à separates signals from K users

from observing y(t) only.
• Needs some kinds of coordination among the K
users for easy signal separations.
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 Orthogonal Multiple Access
• Three popular schemes
– FDMA àPartition of resource in frequency domain.
– TDMA àPartition of resource in time domain.
– Deterministic CDMA à Partition of resource in
code domain.

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 FDMA:
• The allocated spectrum (W) is divided into
N frequency slots.
• Each channel has a bandwidth of W/N.
• Different mobiles are assigned to transmit
at different frequency slots.
• No interference of signals between different
users à Orthogonal channels

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 TDMA:
• All users use the same allocated spectrum
W.
• Each user takes turn to use the BW.
• Channels == Time Slots.
• No interference of signals between different
users à Orthogonal channels.

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 Comparison of FDMA / TDMA
• FDMA à partition resource in frequency
dimension.
• TDMA à partition resource in time dimension.
• Q: Which way is more effective?

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 Comparison of FDMA / TDMA
• FDMA
– Requires N transceivers in the base station à Bulky.
– Physical transmission rate per user is low à no need for
equalizer
• TDMA
– Requires single transceiver in the base station à smaller
size
– Physical transmission peak rate is very high à may need
equalizer at the receiver.
• Hybrid Design
– FDMA/TDMA
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 Single Cell Capacity Comparisons.
• Example 3.1 - TDMA & FDMA
– Suppose a spectrum of 15MHz is allocated to a mobile
operator. Let the modulation throughput be 1 (bit per
symbol), the data rate of individual user be 25kbps. Find out
if FDMA or TDMA is better for the operator.
• Example 3.2 - Hybrid TDMA/FDMA
– Suppose the channel coherence bandwidth is 200kHz.
Using the same requirement and parameters as in Example
3.1, design a resource partitioning scheme which minimize
the number of RF units in the base station at the constraint
that no equalizer is used in the receiver.

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 CDMA:

Spread-Spectrum:
Signals from individual users are
“spread” by a unique PN code.

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CDMA Spreading

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CDMA – Spreading

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CDMA Despreading

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CDMA Spreading / Despreading

¨Function of Spread Spectrum

¨Interference Suppression
¨Low Probability of Interception
¨Has no effect on channel noise

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CDMA – Spreading / Despreading

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 CDMA
Cross-correlation between
Two codes (assigned to two
Different users)

We have two types of CDMAs

(i) Deterministic CDMA:
PN codes have zero cross-correlation.
(ii) Random CDMA:
PN codes have small cross-correlation.

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 Deterministic CDMA
• Capacity = # of PN codes in the set.
à Code limited.
• Define “spreading factor” as the number of
chips per modulation symbol.
• Cardinality of orthogonal PN code set =
“spreading factor”.
• Necessary condition
– synchronization between codes.
– only feasible in the forward link direction.

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 Random CDMA.
Channels are not orthogonal!!!
Yet, the effective interference of the other user
is reduced by a factor called “processing gain”.
Tb
Pr oce sin g _ Gain =
Tc
• The capacity is not limited by the size of PN
code set
• Interference limited.
• Used in the reverse link.
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 Random CDMA

• Random CDMA suffers from the near-far

problem.
– a user transmitting a very large power (or very near
to the base station) will cause unacceptable
interference level to the other users (because of the
non-orthogonality property).
– Power control scheme is needed to carefully control
the transmitted power of each user.
– The optimal situation is when the received signal
powers from all users are equal.
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 Principle of RAKE Receiver
• The total number of resolvable multipath is L = êêëW B úúû c

• The received signal is composed of the

superposition of two multipath components at
different delays.
• To recover the original information bit, we
despread the received signal with two delay-
synchronized PN sequences. Each PN sequence
is synchronized with respect to the corresponding
path delay.
• Each “finger” will produce one observation on the
received information bit.
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 Example of RAKE Receiver Processing

r (t ) = s (t - d1 )c(t - d1 ) + s (t - d 2 )c(t - d 2 ) + !
z (t )
%""$""# %""$""#
path 1 path 2 noise

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 Principle of RAKE Receiver

• If we have L fingers to capture observations

from the L resolvable multipath, we have a L-
order diversity system
Searcher

RAKE Finger

Diversity
Combining

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Single Cell Capacity Comparisons
• Example 3.3 - Deterministic CDMA
– Using the same parameters as in Example 3.1,
find out the capacity of deterministic CDMA.
• Example 3.4 - Hybrid CDMA/FDMA
– Suppose the maximum possible chip rate is
5Mcps. Design a resource partitioning scheme
which minimize the number of RF units at the
base station using the same parameters as in
Example 3.1.

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Single Cell Capacity Comparisons
• Random CDMA:
Reverse link of CDMA.
Difficulty in maintaining time synchronization between
different users
Capacity determined by the random CDMA.
Interference Limited rather than code limited.
Capacity of Random CDMA
Suffers from Near-Far problem
Optimal case:
received power of all users equal = S.

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 Single-Cell Capacity Comparisons
• Capacity of Random CDMA (Soft Capacity)
• Assume we have K users, the total interference at the
Base Station: I sc = ( K - 1) µ S ,µ is voice activity factor.
• Total noise power is: N 0 = hW
• Effective Eb/No (SIR after despreading) is given by:
Eb STb
= ³ g req
I 0 ( K - 1) µ S / W + h
• For moderate loading, interference power >> noise power,
we have: PG
K»
µg req
• PG = Processing gain = Tb/Tc; W = 1/Tc = transmission
BW.
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 Single Cell Capacity Comparisons

• Capacity of Random CDMA:

– The BER requirement is translated into capacity
through g req

– For example, BER = 10^(-2) --> g req = 7 dB and

µ Î [0.3, 0.5] for IS95. Hence, the reverse link single cell
capacity is PG/2.5.
– This is less than FDMA / TDMA capacity!!!

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Multi-cell Systems

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 Multi-Cell Capacity Comparisons.
• Frequency Re-use
– Total number of channels is fixed
in the system.
– Resource has to be re-used
between cells.
– In scenario I (complete reuse)
• Assume we need B cells to cover
a city.
• all the N channels are allocated
to all the B cells.
• total capacity = BxN channels -->
good system capacity.
• 2 users in adjacent cells could
transmit at the same freq,
causing interference.--> poor
quality.

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 Multi-cell Capacity Comparisons

• Frequency Reuse
– Scenario II (no reuse)
• All the N channels are divided into B distinct sets.
• Each set is allocated to a cell.
• total capacity = (N/B) x B = N --> poor system capacity.
• No 2 users could interfere --> good quality.
– General Resource Reuse
• need a flexible resource reuse scheme
• allow a graceful tradeoff between signal quality and capacity.
• The key is that signal will attenuate (path loss) as it transverse certain
distance.
• Interference could be controlled if we make sure co-channel cells are
far apart.
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Multi-cell Capacity Comparisons

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 Multi-cell Capacity Comparisons.
3 2
• SIR is given by: SIR = K
2 N
• System Capacity is given by:C = B
K
• For AMPS (FDMA),
– The required SIR = 18dB è K=7 has to be used. The
resulting capacity is N AMPS B .
7

• For D-AMPS (TDMA/FDMA),

– The required SIR = 13dB à K=4 could be used. The
N DAMPS B
resulting capacity is .
4
– For a given bandwidth,N DAMPS > N AMPS because of the digitized
speech (compression). This also contributes to the capacity
improvement of D-AMPS.
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 Multi-cell Capacity Comparisons
• Random CDMA Capacity:
– Effective Intra-cell interference: I sc = ( K - 1) µ S
– Assuming uniform loading across cells, the inter-cell
interference is given by I oc = I sc (1 + b )
– b Î [0.4,0.7] is a factor to take into account of
inter-cell interference.

– Following similar analysis, we have the capacity per

PG
cell given by: K cell »
µ (1 + b ) g req

B ´ PG
– Total system capacity: Sys _ Cap »
µ (1 + b ) g req 91
Multicell Capacity Comparisons

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