PHYSICAL LAYER PROCEDURES

AND SCHEDULING
Hybrid-ARQ Feedback
 In LTE ,the H-ARQ protocol is applied to improve the transmission reliability
over the wireless channel for uplink and downlink respectively.
 The LTE downlink employs the asynchronous adaptive H-ARQ protocol, for
which the retransmission are scheduled in a similar fashion to the first
transmission.
 In the uplink, synchronous adaptive H-ARQ protocol is used, for which the
retransmission are automatically scheduled after certain time window and the
UE does not need to send the H-ARQ process number.
 In these section we are discussing the H-ARQ feedback for both downlink
and uplink .They are:-1. H-ARQ Feedback for Downlink Transmission

2. H-ARQ Indicator for Uplink Transmission

1. H-ARQ feedback for downlink transmission

 H-ARQ transmission in the downlink , UEs need feed back the associated

ACK/NAK information on PUCCH or PUSCH.

 One ACK/NAK bit is transmitted in case of single-codeword downlink

transmission, while two ACK/NAK bits are transmitted in case of two-

codeword downlink transmission .
 For two-codeword transmission, codeword swap is enabled by a 1-bit

transport block to codeword swap flag, which allows both codeword's to

experience similar channel conditions after H-ARQ retransmission when
the channel is static or experiences little or no variation between subsequent
H-ARQ transmission.
 For FDD mode, the UE transmits H-ARQ- ACK/NAK in a sub frame n for

a PDSCH transmission in sub frame n-4.

1. H-ARQ feedback for downlink transmission
 For TDD mode, two ACK/NAK feedback modes are supported by higher
layers configuration
ACK/NAK bundling using PUCCH format 1a or 1b,which is default
mode and consists of one or two bits of information.
ACK/NAK multiplexing using PUCCH format 1b which consists of
between 1-4 bits of information.
 The Feedback of H-ARQ-ACK in the UL sub frame n corresponds to the
detection of the PDSCH transmission within sub frame(s) n-k, where the
parameter k is different for different UL/DL configuration and different sub
frames, and k Ʃ K with K specified in the following table .
 TDD UL/DL Subframe n
Configuration
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

0 6 4 6 4
1 7,6 4 7,6 4

2 8,7,4,6 8,7,4,6
3 7,6,11 6,5 5,4

4 12,8,7, 6,5,4,
11 7
5 TBD

6 7 7 5 7 7
2. H-ARQ Indicator for uplink transmission
 For the uplink H-ARQ process, as spatial multiplexing of transport blocks is

not supported, only a single-bit H-ARQ Indicator needs to be sent to each

scheduled UE, which is carried on the PHICH physical channel.
 For FDD mode, an ACK/NAK received on the PHICH assigned to a UE in

subframe n is associated with the PUSCH transmission in subframe n-4 .

 For TDD mode, different from the feedback for the downlink transmission,

there is no problem to transmit multiple acknowledgment on PHICH.

For UL/DL configuration 1-6, an ACK/NAK received on the PHICH in
the subframe n is associated with the PUSCH transmission in the subframe
n-k as indicated in the following table
The value of k for TDD Configuration 0-6

TDD UL/DL DL Subframe Number n

Configuration
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 7 4 7 4
1 4 6 4 6

2 6 6
3 6 6 6
4 6 6
5 6
6 6 4 7 4 6
Channel Quality Indicator Feedback
 The Channel Quality contains information sent from a UE to the eNode-B to
indicate a suitable downlink transmission data rate i.e., a modulation and
coding scheme value(MCS).
 CQI is a 4-bit integer and is based on the observed signal-interface-plus-
notice at the UE.
 The CQI estimation process takes into account the UE capability such as the
number of antennas and the type of receiver used for detection
 This is important since for the same SINR value the MCS level that can be
supported by a UE depends on these various UE capabilities ,which needs to
be taken into account order for the eNode-B to select an optimum MCS level
for the transmission .
 The CQI reported values are used by the eNode-B for the downlink
Channel Quality Indicator Feedback

LTE supports wideband and sub band CQI reporting.

A wideband CQI is single 4-bit integer that represents an
effective SINR observed by UE over entire Bandwidth.
A sub band CQI report consists of vector of CQI values where
each value represents SINR observed by UE over a sub band.
A Primer on CQI Estimation
 Downlink cell specific reference signals are used by each UE estimate the

MIMO channel from the eNode-B

 The estimated MIMO channel along with the known reference signal is

then used to calculate the other- cell interference level

 The UE uses the estimated channel and interference plus noise variance to

compute the SINR on the physical resource element carrying the reference
signal
 The UE computes SINR samples over multiple OFDM symbols and

subcarriers which are then used to calculate an effective SINR .

 The effective SINR is given as:-

SINReff, =α1 I-1 (1/N Ʃk=1 k I(SINRK /α2 ))