Cellular concepts

Topics
• Cellular system fundamental, frequency reuse,
channel assignment, handoff
• Interference and system capacity, Improving
system capacity and cell coverage.
 Cellular System fundamentals
• Cellular technology aims at achieving high system
capacity with limited radio spectrum.

• Cellular design makes use of the fact that the power of

a transmitted signal falls off with distance.

• Two users at spatially-separate locations can operate

on the same frequency with minimal interference
between them.

• This allows very efficient use of cellular spectrum so

that a large number of users can be accommodated.
 Cellular System fundamentals

• Cellular concept is a system level idea which uses many

low power transmitters called base stations, each
providing coverage to only a small portion of the total
service area.

• Each base station is assigned a portion of the total

number of channels available to the entire system and
neighbouring base stations are assigned different
groups of channels.

• System capacity increases by reusing the frequency

within the region of service
 Cellular System fundamentals
• Cells use the same set of frequencies are
known as co-channel cells

• Reuse of frequency may give rise to

interference between signals of these cells,
called co-channel interference, if the power
levels of the transmitters as well reuse
distance are not properly designed.
• A regular cell shape is needed for systematic
system design
• When considering tessellating structures,
geometric shapes which cover entire region
without overlap and with equal area there
may be several choices
Different candidate geometric shapes
Cellular System
Cellular communication network

Typical radio coverage in a cell

The MSC acts as a central controller for the network.

It allocates channels within each cell, coordinate handoffs

between cells when a mobile traverses a cell boundary,
and route calls to and from mobile users.

The MSC can route voice calls through the public switched
telephone network (PSTN) and it can also provide Internet
access.
 Frequency Reuse

Let us consider a cellular system which has S

duplex channels

The N cells which collectively use this set of S

channels are said to form a cluster

Each cell is allocated k disjoint channel groups

k  S  such that S  kN .
To cover a given geographical region, a cluster
can be repeated M times giving an M -fold
capacity increase with same set of S channels

For hexagonal geometries N  i  ij  j

2 2

i and j are non-negative integers with i  j

Allowable cluster sizes N  1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12......

Coverage of a given region using 7-cell reuse pattern
 Nearest co-channel neighbour

Co-channel reuse distance D R

ratio of the distance of the centers of the nearest
co-channel cells D and radius R
D / R  3N
 Cell splitting and sectoring

Cell splitting and sectoring are the two cellular design techniques for increasing
system capacity and improving coverage

Cell splitting subdivides a congested cell into smaller cells, each with its own base
station and a corresponding reduction in antenna height and transmitter power.

In the sectoring approach, omni directional antennas at the base station are
replaced by directional antennas, each radiating in a specific sector

sectoring
Cell splitting
 Channel assignment

Channel assignment strategies deal with the efficient

utilization of radio spectrum through a frequency reuse
scheme whose objective is to increase capacity as well as
keep interference level as low as possible.

In fixed assignment, each cell is assigned a predetermined

set of voice channels.

In this assignment scheme, if all the channels in the cell are

occupied, a newly generated call is blocked and the
subscriber does not receive the service until a channel
becomes free.
In another approach, a cell is allowed to borrow channels
from a neighboring cell if all its own channels are already
occupied.

The mobile switching center (MSC) supervises such

borrowing and also ensures that services in the donor cell
are not disrupted due to borrowing.

In dynamic channel assignment, channels are not assigned

to the cells permanently. Instead, serving base station, on
receipt of a call request, asks for a channel in the MSC. MSC
based on certain considerations allocates channel
Dynamic channel assignment reduces the likelihood of
blocking. However in this scheme MSC is required to collect
real time data on channel occupancy and traffic distribution.
 Handoff

Handoff or hand over is generally used in the context of

transferring an ongoing call to a different channel or a cell.

The main purpose of handover is to maintain an ongoing call.

The handoff has to be transparent to the user and typically will
not result in a loss of service

The handoff decision may be made at the MS, BS, or mobile

switching center, MSC.
Larger  results in unnecessary handoffs, burdens MSC
Too small  may result in loss of calls
 MAHO
• In mobile assisted handoff (MAHO) every mobile
station measures the received signal from the
surrounding base stations and reports the
measurement results to the serving base station.
• A handover is initiated when received signal
power from the neighboring base station exceeds
the power received from the current base station
of attachment by a predefined amount and for a
certain period of time.
• Handoff time is reduced in case of MAHO.
• There are a number of parameters that need to be
known to determine whether a handover is required.
• It is required to the signal strength of the base station
with which communication is being made, along with
the signal strengths of the surrounding stations.
• Additionally the availability of channels also needs to
be known.
• The mobile is obviously best suited to monitor the
strength of the base stations.
• But only the cellular network knows the status of
channel availability and the network makes the
decision about when the handover is to take place and
to which channel of which cell.
• In the context of GSM system, there are four
different types of handovers, which involve
transferring a call between:
– Channels in the same cell
– Cells under the control of the same Base Station
Controller (BSC),
– Cells under the control of different BSCs, but
belonging to the same Mobile services Switching
Center (MSC), and
– Cells under the control of different MSCs.
• The first two types of handover, called internal
handovers, involve only one Base Station
Controller (BSC).
• To save signaling bandwidth, they are
managed by the BSC without involving the
Mobile services Switching Center (MSC),
except to notify it at the completion of the
handover.
• The last two types of handover, called external
handovers, are handled by the MSCs involved.
Unlike wireless communication system that assigns
different radio channel during handoff, also called hard
handoff, for systems like CDMA where a mobile uses the
same channel in every cell, Handoff is not a physical
change but assigning a new BS to handle control
functions for the mobile.

For a given user, MSC can use received signal strength

from multiple neighbouring BSs to determine the best
version of the signal at any moment.

This ability to selecting among instantaneous received

signals from multiple base stations is called soft handoff.
 Interference: Co-channel and adjacent channel interference

• Interference is a major performance-limiting

factor for cellular radio system.
• Interference often limits the system capacity.
• There are two major types of interference:
adjacent channel and co-channel.
• Adjacent channel interference (ACI) results due to interference of
signals, which are adjacent in frequency to the desired channel.

• Adjacent channel interference results when the receiver filters are

imperfect.

• Adjacent channel interference becomes particularly serious when

an adjacent channel user is transmitting in very close range to a
subscriber’s receiver while the subscriber attempts to receive a
base station on the desired channel.

• Such situations are referred to as near far effect.

• ACI can be minimized through proper filtering and channel

assignment.
• Co-channel interference refers to the
interference that results from those cells,
which use same frequency.
• As several cells use the same frequency, there
will be several tiers of such interfering cells;
the cells at particular reuse distance
constitute a particular tier of interfering cells.
• CCI can be reduced by repeating frequency at
larger distances, i.e. is using larger clusters
that increase reuse distance.
• But increasing reuse distance reduces the system
capacity.

• Thus, we have contradictory requirements, high

capacity demands smaller cluster size while
maintaining proper signal to interference power ratio
demands larger reuse distance.

• CCI should be properly taken into account while

designing cellular systems.

• As the power of the interfering signals decrease rapidly

with distance, the most significant portion of the
interfering power comes from the first tier of
interfering cells.
 Co-channel Interference

N  i 2  ij  j 2

 D R
n n
S R
First tier of interfering cells  NI
I NI
 iD n

i D / R  3N