Pre-Compensation of Fading Channels for Uplink

Time Division Duplex MC-CDMA Systems

Ivan Cosovic1 , Michael Schnell1 , Andreas Springer2
1
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Communications and Navigation, D-82234 Wessling, Germany,
Phone: +49-8153-282853, Email: ivan.cosovic@dlr.de / michael.schnell@dlr.de
2
Institute for Communication and Information Engineering, University of Linz, A-4040 Linz, Austria,
Phone: +43-732-2468-9725, Email: a.springer@icie.jku.at

Abstract— Time division duplex multi-carrier code-division
multiple-access (TDD/MC-CDMA) exploits the strong correlation
between up- and downlink channel conditions of the slowly time-
varying channels. The TDD mode enables pre-compensation of
the channel influence on the uplink signal already at the mobile
station based on the channel estimation from the downlink signal.
The aim of this paper is to carry out a performance comparison of
different TDD/MC-CDMA channel pre-compensation techniques
in the uplink and to evaluate the limitations of applicability of
TDD/MC-CDMA due to the time variations of the channel. Fur-
thermore, the power constraint condition, that keeps the trans-
mitted power the same as in the case without pre-compensation,
is introduced. Different pre-compensation techniques with power
constraint are investigated in different mobile radio environments
and for different lengths of the transmission frame.
I. I NTRODUCTION
the different pre-compensation techniques is presented in
Section IV. Finally, Section V summarizes the results.
II. T RANSMISSION S YSTEM
The uplink transmitter of an TDD/MC-CDMA system is
shown in Fig. 1. Each MC-CDMA symbol of user i, i =
(i) (i)
1, . . . , K, consists of M symbols d(i) = (d1 , . . . , dM ) and is
generated in the following way. After serial-to-paralel conver-
sion (S/P) the symbols are spread with an user-specific spread-
(i) (i)
ing sequence c(i) = (c1 , . . . , cL )T of length L, where (.)T
denotes transposition. After another S/P frequency interleaving
is performed. For interleaving a block interleaver is used which
ensures the maximum frequency separation between the L
(i)
spread chips of each data symbol dm , m = 1, . . . , M .

Over the past several years MC-CDMA emerged as the most ˆ (i )

H
promising candidate for the downlink in next generation of (i )
c
wireless mobile radio systems [1] [2]. On the other hand, d 1( i ) s1(i) v1(i)
INTERLEAVER

considering MC-CDMA for uplink transmission introduces x S/P

FREQUENCY

. PRE-COMP. . .
(i )
.
some additional problems due to the more complex propa- d

IFFT
.
S/P .
. . . P/S
CYC.
gation conditions. Especially, channel estimation and channel c(i) .(i ) .(i ) . EXT.
compensation are more difficult and require more complex al- d M( i ) sNc vN c
x S/P
gorithms. When applying TDD mode to MC-CDMA transmis-
sion it is possible to mainly overcome these problems [3] [4].
TDD/MC-CDMA exploits the strong correlation between up- Fig. 1. TDD/MC-CDMA uplink transmitter.
and downlink channel conditions of the slowly time-varying (i) (i)
channels and therefore enables pre-compensation of the chan- The resulting Nc = M L chips s(i) = (s1 , . . . , sNc )T
nel influence on the uplink signal already at the mobile station, are pre-compensated, with an Nc × Nc diagonal channel
based on the channel estimation from the downlink signal [5]. pre-compensation matrix G(i) . The elements of the pre-
The aim of this paper is to carry out a performance compar- compensation matrix G(i) are calculated from the channel
ison of different TDD/MC-CDMA channel pre-compensation state information derived from downlink channel estimation.
techniques in the uplink. Considered pre-compensation tech- Pilot-symbol-aided channel estimation is applied in the down-
niques are maximum ratio combining (MRC), equal gain link and the channel state information can be represented as
combining (EGC), zero-forcing (ZF) equalization, controlled diagonal Nc × Nc matrix Ĥ(i) with elements that represent
equalization (CE), minimum mean-square error (MMSE) the estimated fading on the Nc subcarriers [2]. The estimated
equalization and quasi-MMSE equalization. Furthermore, the values are acquired from the previous MC-CDMA downlink
power constraint condition, that maintains the transmitted frame. An MC-CDMA frame is a block of subsequent MC-
power the same as in the case without pre-compensation, is CDMA symbols. In the following, perfect downlink channel
introduced. Taking into account the power constraint condition estimation will be assumed.
the different pre-compensation techniques are analyzed in The result of the pre-compensation can be represented by
different mobile radio environments and for different lengths the vector v(i) as
of the transmission frame. v(i) = G(i) s(i) = (v1 , . . . , vNc )T .
(i) (i)
(1)
The paper is organized as follows: In Section II the
TDD/MC-CDMA uplink transmission system is described. The pre-compensated sequence v(i) is modulated onto Nc
The power constraint condition and the considered pre- subcarriers using the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT).
compensation techniques are discussed in Section III. The After that, parallel-to-serial conversion (P/S) is performed and
performance of the TDD/MC-CDMA system achieved with a guard interval, that exceeds the delay spread of the multipath
channel, is added as cyclic prefix. Several subsequent MC- reduces to
Nc Nc
CDMA symbols are grouped into one MC-CDMA uplink X
2
X
|Gl | = |Fl W |2 = Nc , (6)
frame.
l=1 l=1
Due to the frequency-selective fading of the time-variant
where Fl is the compensation coefficient without power
multipath channel, the AWGN influence, and the interference
constraint and W is a normalization factor, that keeps the
from other users the received signal for K active users at
transmitted power constant. W can be expressed as
the base station after guard interval removal and fast Fourier
! 12
transform (FFT) can be represented as Nc
W = PNc . (7)
K 2
t=1 |Ft |
X
y= H(j) G(j) s(j) + n = (y1 , . . . , yNc )T . (2)
Different pre-compensation techniques lead to different com-
j=1
pensation coefficients Fl , different normalization factors W ,
The Nc × Nc diagonal matrix H(j) represents the channel and different pre-compensation coefficients Gl , l = 1, . . . , Nc .
influence on the Nc subcarriers of user j. Since the duration A. Maximum Ratio Combining
of the guard interval exceeds the delay spread of the multipath
MRC corrects the phase shift and weights the transmitted
channel, intersymbol interference is avoided. The vector n =
signal with a coefficient proportional to the attenuation of the
(n1 , . . . , nNc )T represents the AWGN with variance σ 2 .
channel fading. The assigned pre-compensation coefficient is
The received signal y can alternatively be represented in a ! 12
form in which the desired signal part r(i) of user i and the Nc
∗
multiple-access interference (MAI) component i(i) are clearly Gl = Hl PNc , (8)
2
visible as t=1 |Ht |
where the superscript ”∗” denotes complex conjugation.
y = r(i) + i(i) + n = H(i) G(i) s(i) + i(i) + n. (3)
B. Equal Gain Combining
The interference from other users on user i is given by EGC, also known as phase equalization, corrects the phase
K shift, but not the attenuation of the channel fading. This
(i) (i) results in a normalization factor W = 1. The assigned pre-
X
i(i) = H(j) G(j) s(j) = (i1 , . . . , iNc )T . (4)
j=1,j6=i
compensation coefficient is
H∗
Finally, the received signal is despread and decoded. A com- Gl = l . (9)
|Hl |
plete TDD/MC-CDMA uplink transmission system for the
case M = 1 is illustrated in Fig. 2. C. Zero-Forcing Equalization
ZF equalization restores the orthogonality between users
c1(i ) G1( i ) H 1( i ) n1 i1( i ) c1( i )* and eliminates MAI by inverting the channel fading co-
efficients. However, due to the power constraint condition
x x x + + x residual fading remains which is equal for all subcarriers.
c (i )
2 G (i)
2 H (i )
2 n2 i (i)
2 c2( i )* Since large amounts of power are invested to pre-compensate
the signal on subcarriers in deep fade, the received power on
d (i) x x x + + x dˆ (i ) the subcarriers is very low compared to the noise level and,
+
thus, the received signal is largely affected by AWGN. The
...

...

...

...

...
...

cL(i )* assigned pre-compensation coefficient is

cL(i ) GL(i ) H L(i ) nL iL(i )
! 12
x x x + + x 1 Nc
Gl = PNc 1 . (10)
Hl t=1 2 |Ht |
Fig. 2. TDD/MC-CDMA uplink transmission system, M = 1.
D. Controlled Equalization
CE combines EGC and ZF equalization [2]. When the
III. P RE -C OMPENSATION T ECHNIQUES channel attenuation |Hl | is below a threshold athresh , only
As already indicated, channel pre-compensation can be EGC is used to prevent investing large amounts of power on
performed with MRC, EGC, ZF equalization, CE, MMSE weak subcarriers. Otherwise ZF equalization is performed. The
equalization, or quasi-MMSE equalization. The main focus of assigned pre-compensation coefficient is
( 1
this investigation is on constrained pre-compensation, where Hl W : |Hl | ≥ athresh
the transmit power is the same as in the case without pre- Gl = Hl∗ (11)
|Hl | W : |Hl | < athresh ,
compensation. In the following, the index which denotes
the user i is omitted for convenience. The condition for where the normalization coefficient W is equal to
! 12
constrained pre-compensation can be derived from
Nc
Nc Nc
W = PNc , (12)
t=1 Wt
X X
2 2
|Gl sl | = |sl | . (5)
l=1 l=1
and Wt is given by
 1
|Ht |2 : |Ht | ≥ athresh
Under the presumption that the power of the transmitted sym- Wt = (13)
bol is constant on all subcarriers in the frequency domain, (5) 1 : |Ht | < athresh .
E. MMSE Equalization Since MMSE-PS is the best known single-user equalization
According to (3) the received signal part on one subcarrier technique for downlink transmission, it is expected that quasi-
l can be represented as MMSE pre-compensation performs quite good.
The drawback of quasi-MMSE is that the knowledge about
yl = Hl Gl sl + il + nl . (14) both the number of active users K and the noise variance σ 2
is required at the mobile station.
Equalization according to the MMSE criterion minimizes the
mean-square value of the error l between the transmitted IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
signal part sl and the received signal part yl In this section, the simulation results for uplink TDD/MC-
l = sl − yl . (15) CDMA with channel pre-compensation in different indoor
scenarios are presented. The maximal Doppler frequency is
The mean-square error chosen in such a way that it corresponds to typical pedestrian
Jl = E |l |2

(16) movements in an indoor environment.
A. Channel Models and TDD/MC-CDMA System Parameters
can be minimized applying
Table I shows the main parameters of the channel models
∂Jl used for the simulations. The mobile radio channel models
= 0. (17)
∂G∗l Gl,opt are taken from [6]. For the indoor scenario with line of sight
MMSE without power constraint results in the following condition (LOS) ’Model D’ is used, whereas for the indoor
pre-compensation coefficients scenario without line of sight condition (NLOS) ’Model E’ is
used. For both channels the maximum Doppler frequency is
1 chosen to be fDmax = 26 Hz, which corresponds to a velocity
Gl,opt = , (18)
Hl of 1.5 ms (5.4 km
h ) for operation in the 5.2 GHz frequency band.
which in fact is the same result as for ZF equalization without The coherence time of the channel can be defined as the time
power constraint. In the case of ideal channel estimation, over which the time correlation function is above 0.5 and,
unconstrained MMSE is capable to pre-compensate the influ- thus, can be approximated by [7] (∆t)c ≈ 16πf9Dmax .
ence of the channel completely. However, for unconstrained
TABLE I
MMSE the transmitted power is not limited and therefore this
M AIN CHANNEL MODEL PROPERTIES
approach is not practical.
Considering MMSE with power constraint leads to the Model D Model E
problem to minimize the mean-square error under the power Line of Sight (LOS) yes no
constraint condition Max. Channel Delay 1050 ns 1760 ns
! Max. Doppler Frequency 26 Hz
Nc
X Coherence Time of the Channel 6.89 ms
 2 2
Jl = E |l | + λ |Gt | − Nc . (19)
t=1 The TDD/MC-CDMA system under investigation uses a
From (19) the optimal pre-compensation coefficients are transmission bandwidth of 25 MHz and a carrier frequency of
5.2 GHz. The number of subcarriers is Nc = 256, resulting in
Hl∗
Gl,opt = , (20) an useful MC-CDMA symbol duration of 10.24 µs. The guard
|Hl |2 + E{|sλl |2 } interval duration is 1.8 µs. The loss in transmission energy
where λ is the solution of due to the guard interval is not taken into account, since it is
Nc
the same for all simulations. Walsh-Hadamard codes of length
X |Hl |2 L = 16 are used for spreading. The number of simultaneously
2 = Nc . (21)
(|Hl |2 + λ) transmitted symbols is M = 16. Table II shows the main
l=1
parameters of the MC-CDMA simulation system.
Constrained MMSE pre-compensates the channel only partly,
but keeps the transmitted power constant. The drawback of TABLE II
constrained MMSE is, that in general λ can be determined only MC-CDMA SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR SIMULATIONS

numerically. This introduces a large computational complexity.

Carrier Frequency 5.2 GHz
Transmission Bandwidth 25 MHz
F. Quasi-MMSE Equalization
Number of Subcarriers 256
The MMSE per subcarrier equalization (MMSE-PS) [2] Useful MC-CDMA Symbol Duration 10.24 µs
used in downlink MC-CDMA transmission can be modified Guard Length 1.8 µs
Length of MC-CDMA Frame variable
in order to satisfy the power constraint condition and applied Spreading Codes Walsh-Hadamard
to uplink transmission. This solution is termed quasi-MMSE Length of Spreading Codes 16
equalization, since it does not represent the real MMSE uplink Signal Constellation QPSK
Channel Coding no
pre-compensation technique. The assigned pre-compensation
coefficient is
  12 B. Results
∗
Hl Nc
Gl = P  . Different power constrained channel pre-compensation tech-
(K − 1)|Hl |2 + σ 2 L Nc |Ht |2
2
t=1 ((K−1)|Ht | +σ L)
2 2 niques for a fully-loaded TDD/MC-CDMA system are com-
(22) pared in Fig. 3 for the indoor mobile radio channel ’Model E’.
 0 0
10 10

-1 -1
10 10
Bit Error Rate

Bit Error Rate

-2 -2
10 10

AWGN channel AWGN channel

-3 -3
10 MRC 10 MRC
EGC EGC
ZF ZF
CE CE
Quasi-MMSE Quasi-MMSE

-4 -4
10 10
0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20

Eb/No in dB Eb/No in dB

Fig. 3. Performance of basic TDD/MC-CDMA power constrained pre- Fig. 5. Performance of basic TDD/MC-CDMA power constrained pre-
compensation techniques; Channel ’Model E’, spreading length L = 16, compensation techniques; Channel ’Model D’, spreading length L = 16,
K = 16 active users, frame length Nsym = 1. K = 16 active users, frame length Nsym = 1.

0
10

AWGN channel ’Model D’ is used can be found in Fig. 5. The frame length is
1 MC-CDMA Symbol, 0.17% of (∆t)c
50 MC-CDMA Symbols, 8.74% of (∆t)c
set to Nsym = 1 MC-CDMA symbol. ’Model D’ has a domi-
-1 100 MC-CDMA Symbols, 17.47% of (∆t)c nant LOS component but a considerably shorter channel delay.
10 150 MC-CDMA Symbols, 26.21% of (∆t)c
200 MC-CDMA Symbols, 34.95% of (∆t).c
This leads to a slightly better TDD/MC-CDMA performance
compared to the case in which ’Model E’ is applied.
Bit Error Rate

-2
10
V. C ONCLUSIONS
Different power constrained channel pre-compensation tech-
niques for uplink TDD/MC-CDMA systems have been ana-
-3 lyzed and compared in different indoor mobile radio environ-
10
ments. It can be seen, that quasi-MMSE and CE outperform
other pre-compensation techniques. Analysis of the influence
of the transmission frame length on the performance has
-4
10 shown, that the coherence time of the channel is the most
0 5 10 15 20

Eb/No in dB
Fig. 4. Performance of TDD/MC-CDMA with various transmission frame
lengths; Channel ’Model E’, quasi-MMSE pre-compensation, spreading length
L = 16, K = 16 active users.
In this case, the frame length is set to Nsym = 1 MC-CDMA
symbol. As it can be seen, quasi-MMSE and CE perform
very good, while other pre-compensation techniques show
much larger signal degradation. For CE the threshold value
is set to athresh = 0.175. This threshold value gives optimal
performance for the bit error rate probability of Pb = 10−3 for
the investigated system.
In Fig. 4 the influence of the transmission frame length on
the performance of a fully-loaded TDD/MC-CDMA system
with quasi-MMSE pre-compensation for the indoor mobile
radio channel ’Model E’ is shown. It can be seen, that MC-
CDMA frame lengths which are not larger than approximately
10% of the coherence time of the channel are acceptable and
do not suffer from large signal degradation. Moreover, Fig. 4
illustrates, that the coherence time of the channel is the crucial
parameter that determines the limits of TDD applicability to
uplink MC-CDMA.
The performance of different power constrained channel
pre-compensation techniques for a fully-loaded TDD/MC-
CDMA system in the case when indoor mobile radio channel
important parameter that determines TDD applicability to MC-
CDMA. A rule of thumb has been derived, which states
that MC-CDMA transmission frame lengths which are not
larger than approximately 10% of the coherence time of the
considered channel are acceptable. In this case, MC-CDMA
performance does not suffer from large signal degradation.
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