THE MUOS-WCDMA AIR INTERFACE

John S. Sadowsky General Dynamics C4 Systems 8201 East McDowell Road, MD H2171 Scottsdale, AZ 85257 480 441 1534 john.sadowsky@gdc4s.com

ABSTRACT WCDMA is a 3rd generation wireless communication system developed for terrestrial cellular systems. The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) uses WCDMA as a basis for its waveform definition, thus exploiting the extensive development of this advanced commercial communications technology. MUOS is, however, a geosatellite system which in certain ways is a vastly different communications environment than the terrestrial cellular environment. This paper shall overview key changes to the WCDMA Layer 1 to yield the MUOS waveform definition. INTRODUCTION The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) is a geosatellite UHF communications system that utilizes the WCDMA air interface developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for terrestrial cellular systems. The geo-satellite link, however, poses a number of different characteristics than terrestrial cellular. These include ~600 ms round trip propagation delay, tight multipath delay spreads (due to satellite elevation), and long coherence time (due to a UHF rather than S-band carrier). The satellite footprint is segmented into 16 beams. Adjacent satellite beams are somewhat analogous to interfering base stations in the terrestrial case; however satellite beams fade in unison as opposed to independent fading seen in terrestrial systems. Thus, MUOS cannot exploit many of the diversity techniques designed into 3GPP WCDMA. This paper is a survey of the various MUOS changes to the 3GPP WCDMA Layer 1 definition. An important topic for the full understanding of the MUOS waveform is power control. This paper shall discussion how the power control feedback is encoded and communicated over physical control channel. We do not, however, discuss any details of the power control algorithm which is a topic worthy of an entire paper of its own.

3GPP WCDMA was designed to deal with S-band Doppler can result in coherence times less than 1 m sec. This requires rather a rather large dedicated physical control channel (DPCCH) power overhead to support layer 1 signaling and receiver tracking algorithms. The much longer MUOS UHF coherence times makes this costly high DPCCH power overhead unnecessary, and, furthermore, there is a strong desire to minimize control channel overhead in order to maximize data bearing capacity. Thus, the MUOS waveform was designed to operate with significantly less DPCCH and CPICH power than is typical in terrestrial WCDMA. In the user-to-base (U2B) direction, the DPCCH (which included dedicated pilot symbols and physical layer signaling) power is reduced roughly 7 dB. On the B2U direction, the common pilot channel (CPICH) may be reduced as much as 10 dB. The reduction in DPCCH power (in both directions) requires a re-design of physical layer control channel FEC coding. In order to achieve time diversity gains with the very long coherence times, the MUOS coding system shall employ a Dovetail-Interleaving (DTI) scheme. In comparison to the typical 3GPP interleaving span of 40 m sec, MUOS DTI achieves spans of 640 m sec. This is done with a relatively minor augmentation of 3GPP interleaving. THE WCDMA RADIO ACCESS BEARER The Layer 1 and 2 transmit data flow is illustrated in Figure 1 for a WCDMA radio access bearer (RAB). The inter-layer interface consists of logical channels called transport channels (TrCH). Typically there is one TrCH for higher layer control, and there are one or more TrCHs for user dedicated data. TrCH data is presented as transport blocks (ri p o s l blocks A TrCH m y ). transport format is the number of blocks to be transmitted. (In 3GPP WCDMA, block size is also a variable transport format parameter. Each MUOS TrCH has a single fixed block size.)

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Layer 2 has two sub-layers: radio link control (RLC) and media access control (MAC). There is one instantiation of RLC per TrCH. It performs packet segmentation and transport block construction, queuing and ARQ. The list of Transport Formats, one from each TrCH, is called a transport format combination (TFC). The main job of the MAC, in a nutshell, is to examine the blocks ready to transmit in the RLC queues and select the TFC. MAC TFC selection is constrained by TrCH priority and (in the U2B) available Tx power. Each RAB has a legal list TFCs all combinations not are allowed. The MAC communicates its selection to Layer 1 via the TFC indicator (TFCI). The TFCI is an important Layer 1 control signal that must be received and correctly decoded at prior to de-interleaving and decoding of dedicated data.

Rate matching is an important algorithm. It operates on a per TrCH basis, but is coordinated across TrCHs. Rate matching allocates DPDCH bits between the TrCHs, and then applies puncturing or repetition (after channel coding), and DTX bit insertion in the B2U, in order to exactly match the number of TrCH coded bits to the allocated number of DPDCH bits. The lower sub-layer of Layer 1 is labeled the modulation sub-layer in Figure 1. This sub-layer performs modulation, spreading and scrambling. WCDMA utilizes Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor (OVSF) codes for spreading data, and a PN code for scrambling. The chip rate is 3.84 Mcps. After spreading and scrambling the waveform is constructed using a root raised cosine chip waveform. Layer 1 outputs DPDCH data on a 10 m sec time interval called a frame. The Layer 1-2 interface operates once per Transmission Time Interval (TTI), which may be 1, 2, 4 or 8 frames. Most MUOS RABs have an 80 ms (8 frame) TTI. 3GPP allows different TrCHs to have different TTIs within the same CCTrCH, but multiple TTIs are not allowed in MUOS. TTI is thus a key parameter for determining the channel coding time span, which is important for time diversity. Frames are divided into 15 slots. The slot duration is 2/3 m sec. In 3GPP WCDMA, the slot division provides the 1500 bps transmit power control feedback rate. Clearly, due to the long round trip delay, MUOS cannot support a fast (one bit per slot) feedback rate. MUOS TPC feedback is transmitted via a new control channel called the physical control channel (PCC). Nonetheless, the slot interval is important for MUOS DPCCH construction. Both TFCI and PCC are encoded using the 3GPP (32,10) Reed-Muller code, in separate code words. MUOS does not implement the 3GPP compressed mode (which is primarily used for inter-frequency and WCDMA GSM handover measurements). THE USER-TO-BASE WAVEFORM Waveform Construction The MUOS User-to-Base (U2B) waveform is very similar to 3GPP. DPDCH and the DPCCH are BPSK modulated, spread via orthogonal OVSF codes and I-Q multiplexed. The DPDCH is on the I-channel and DPCCH is on the Q-channel. After I-Q multiplexing, the composite symbols are scrambled using a QPSK

Layer 1 constructs the dedicated physical channel (PDCH), which has two parts: the dedicated physical data channel (DPDCH) that consists of coded bits from the Coded Composite Transport Channel (CCTrCH), and the dedicated physical control channel (DPCCH), which consists of the TFCI (from the MAC) and the PCC (power control feedback bits). As shown if Figure 1, Layer 1 is partitioned into two sub-layers. The upper sub-layer is the CCTrCH that performs the following functions separately for each TrCH: CRC attachment (to each transport block), FEC (forward error correction) channel coding (K9 convolutional or rate 1/3 PCCC turbo), rate matching, 1st interleaving and frame segmentation. The coded and interleaved data from the different TrCHs are then multiplexed into coded composite DPDCH data frames, and a 2nd interleaver mixes data across TrCHs on a per frame basis.

TFCI

Figure 1: The Radio Access Bearer.

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scrambling codes as described in [3]. Each UE is assigned a distinct scrambling code, which differentiates UE signals at the base station receiver. The DPCCH Spreading Factor (SF) is 256, resulting in ten DPCCH symbols per slot. Of these ten, six are pilots, two are coded TFCI and two are coded PCC bits, as discussed below. The DPDCH SF varies from 256 to 8, in powers of 2, depending on data rate. SF is selected by the CCTrCH for each TFC, and the resulting number of DPDCH bits is 10x256/SF per slot, or 150x256/SF per frame. For each TFC, the SF is selected so that rate matching is achieved with no more than 100% coded bit repetition. (The U2B rate matching algorithm strongly discourages puncturing in the U2B direction.) The MUOS U2B rate matching algorithm is the same as that used in 3GPP; see [2]. The DPDCH/ DPCCH power ratio is also TFC dependent (in proportion to data rate) as in 3GPP. As in 3GPP, power control controls DPCCH power, while DPDCH power is determined by the TFC dependent power ratio, which can change on TTI boundaries. The MUOS U2B DPCCH has 6 pilot symbols, 2 coded TFCI and 2 coded PCC bits per slot. The 32 bit 3GPP Reed-Muller code is punctured to 30 bits, 2 of which are transmitted per slot (as in 3GPP [2]). Recall that in 3GPP different TrCHs can have different TTI, which means that the TFCI can change on frame boundaries. This is why the TFCI is encoded and decoded on each frame in 3GPP. In MUOS, however, TFCI is constant across the (typically 8 frame) TTI. This allows the receiver to accumulate TFCI symbols across the TTI prior to TFCI decoding. Repetition across frames significantly improves TFCI reliability. For an 8 frame TTI the repetition gain is about 9 dB, which overcomes the 7 dB reduction (as mentioned in the introduction) of DPCCH power level relative to a terrestrial system. Likewise, the U2B PCC (power control feedback) is transmitted once every 16 frames. The 30 bit ReedMuller coded PCC is repeated across these frames and decoded once after accumulating up to 16 frames of repeated PCC. Time Diversity Enhancement via Dovetail Interleaving As noted in the introduction, the MUOS UHF channel fading characteristics are significantly slower than the terrestrial cellular S-band case. All else equal, coherence times are roughly 6 are longer at UHF

compared to S-band. However, all is not equal. Coherence time, which is inversely related to Doppler sr dr u srmt U vl i r av ta es pe ,e l f h Es e cy e t eo dne a st o e o t li multipath environment. Satellite elevation results in less terrestrial multipath than that occur from ground propagation in a terrestrial cellular system. While MUOS does support some high velocity vehicles, such as supersonic aircraft, these are generally not embedded in a rich multipath environment. Aircraft velocity results in a large Doppler shift, not a Doppler spread that would result in a reduced coherence time. MUOS vehicles that are embedded in a terrestrial multipath environment generally do not have the high velocities expected in terrestrial cellular systems. The end result is that MUOS coherence times are typically on the order of 100 m sec or longer. MUOS channels do experience ionospheric scintillation. About 85% of the users are expected to experience p m lionospheric conditions, about 1% are ot a i ee lsesd adh r tr ek sesd svr y t s , n t e a w al t s . e r e e s e y r e Optimal and weakly stressed channels have a strong Ricean line-of-sight component; strongly stressed channels are purely Rayleigh. Stressed ionospheric scintillation also has a coherence time, but again, it is typically on the order of 200 m sec or longer. While most MUOS channels benefit from a relatively strong line-of-sight Ricean component, unfortunately MUOS does not benefit from the various diversities present in terrestrial cellular. The MUOS satellite footprint is segmented into 16 beams, and the base station receiver can perform beam combining which is similar in implementation to terrestrial cellular antenna diversity (typically referred ta ot hnoe ) o s sf r advr e between sectors. However, all beams see the same terrestrial/inonspheric fading channel. Thus, beam combining is really a beam forming technique that focuses a beam on the UE to reduce multiple access interference (MAI). It is not a true diversity technique. The only true diversity that is available to the MUOS U2B link is time diversity. However, as explained above, MUOS coherence times can be on the order of 100 m sec or longer, while the maximum TTI is only 80 m sec. Thus, it is desirable to significantly increase the interleaving time span without breaking the 3GPP CCTrCH flow. The solution is dovetail interleaving (DTI). Recall in Figure 1 that the CCTrCH encodes transport blocks once per TTI, while the modulation sub-layer of Layer 1 operates frame-by-frame. DTI is a frame interleaver that

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is inserted between the two Layer 1 sub-layers, as shown in Figure 2.

BLER for 9.6 kbps RAB

1E+00
Urban, Severe Iono, DTM = 1 Urban, Severe Iono, DTM = 8 SSN, Optimal Iono, DTM = 1 SSN, Optimal Iono, DTM = 8 Maritime, Severe Iono, DTM = 1 Maritime, Severe Iono, DTM = 8

1E-01
BLER

1E-02

1E-03 0 1 2 3 4 Eb/N0 (dB) 5 6 7 8

Figure 2: DTI enhanced Layer 1. The operation of DTI is shown in Figure 3. Data from successive TTIs are encoded by the CCTrCH and l e d , , , I t example the TTI is 8 frames. a l A B C nh be is The CCTrCH encoded DPDCH frames are labeled A0, .., A7 for TTI A, B0, .., B7 for TTI B, and so on. The dovetail interleaver receives all 8 encoded frames of a single TTI at once, and stores most in memory. It then plays them out over time, interleaved with DPDCH frames from other TTIs i a dvtlah n n oe if i .The a so total transmission t eo a i n Tdata is DTM x i fr g e T I m v s TTI, where DTM is the dovetail multiplier. DTM = 1 indicates no DTI. In Figure 3, DTM = 4.

Figure 4: Some DTI performance results. Figure 4 presents some sample DTI performance results for the 9.6 kbps MUOS RAB on three different MUOS channel models. This RAB may be operated with DTM = 8 or with no DTI (DTM = 1). The results show 2-2.5 dB improvement on stressed channels, and almost 1.5 dB improvement on one optimal channel.

THE BASE-TO-USER WAVEFORM The B2U DPCCH The Base-to-User (B2U) DPCCH consists of TFCI and PCC there are no dedicated pilot symbols (unlike the 3GPP downlink). As in 3GPP, the DPCCH and DPDCH are both QPSK modulated and time multiplexed within each slot. B2U MUOS beams are like sectors in a terrestrial cellular system. All links transmitted on a common beam are scrambled with the same scrambling code, and various links within a beam are distinguished via different orthogonal OVSF codes. Thus, an important issue in the B2U (as in cellular CDMA and WCDMA) is conservation of the OVSF code space. Unlike the U2B, B2U SF is constant (for the RAB) across all TFCs. SF is set to support the most heavily loaded TFC. Rate matching may employ some puncturing in order to avoid SF reduction, and hence, conserve OVSF code space. Since the SF is fixed, the total number of DPCH bits (which includes both DPDCH and DPCCH bits) per frame is 300x256/SF. Rate matching is discussed in more detail below.

Figure 3: DTI operation on frames. Most MUOS U2B RABs have TTI = 80 m sec and DTM = 8, resulting in an interleaving time span of 640 m sec. Recall that the geo-satellite round trip delay is about 600 m sec. Thus, DTI complement power control. Fading that occurs on a faster than 600 m sec time scale can be mitigated using the time diversity that DTI provides. Fading that occurs slower than 600 m sec time scale can be mitigated by power control.

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DPCCH and DPDCH have the same SF. In 3GPP, each slot has the same number of DPCCH bits, and moreover, the TFCI can be decoded on a frame-by-frame basis. (Recall that different TrCHs can have different TTIs in 3GPP, but not in MUOS.) For MUOS, this is an excessive DPCCH overhead, especially for low data rate (hence large SF) RABs. MUOS supports a 2.4 kbps RAB at SF = 512. Using the 3GPP design would result in as much as 40% DPCCH overhead for that RAB. Thus, to reduce DPCCH overhead, TFCI and PCC bits are distributed over the TTI (for TFCI) or PCC cycle, and decoded once. Unlike 3GPP, a frame is constructed using three slot formats: T, P and D. A T-slot contains TFCI bits and DPDCH bits, a P-slot contains PCC bits and DPDCH bits, and a D-slot contains only DPDCH bits. Figure 5 shows how TFCI and PCC bits are distributed across frames for a hypothetical 4 frame TTI. The first 2 slots of each frame are T-slots. Since there are 32 Reed-Muller coded TFCI bits, each T-slot must bear at least 4 TFCI bits. There may be integral order repetition, so the T-slots may have of 4 TFCI bits. Including repetitions, the entire TFCI is distributed across the frames of the TTI, and at the receiver decoded once per TTI.

balancing block error rate (BLER) across TrCHs on the most heavily loaded TFC. For under-loaded TFCs (having fewer transport blocks), the rate matching algorithm inserts DTX bits in the DPDCH in order to maintain the same TrCH puncturing or repetition rates across all TFCs. Unlike the U2B where DPDCH/DPCCH power ration varies with TFC, the B2U symbol amplitude is constant across TFCs. Thus, in the B2U power is throttled up or down with data rate via DTX bit insertion. This works fine for a terrestrial system, but not for a military system with strict user data rate requirements. I ae etass m t de i d dtr es n t r r lyt , e avrs a a ijust r si e h te a t the maximum rate achieved by the most heavily loaded TFC and does not account for block errors or ARQ retransmissions. For example, consider a RAB with one dedicated data TrCH and one control TrCH. The TFC is indicated as { N D , N C } where N D is the number of data blocks and N C is the number of control blocks. An de i d dtr e f 2 bs i tci e b avrs a a o 3 kp m g ah vd y te a t h e transmitting N D = 4 blocks of 320 bits in a 40 m sec TTI. The actual data rate that the user sees, however, is less due to block errors. Nonetheless, the rate matching rates (puncturing or repetition) will be set by the most heavily loaded TFC, which might be the {4,1} TFC. Alternatively, the {4,1} combination may be illegal (per the RAB defined legal TFC list), so the most heavily loaded may be either {4,0} or {3,1}. It is usually the case that the control TrCH has a higher MAC priority than does data. So control blocks transmission preempt data, and preemption for control blocks is not accounted frne etade i d dtr e o it r r lavrs a a . r si te a t Military systems, such as MUOS, are required to deliver a guaranteed user data rate. Thus, a MUOS RAB must include TFCs that transmit data at a higher rate than the specified rate in order to allow for block errors, retransmissions and periodic control preemption. In the above example, we will need to add {5,0} TFC extended data rate TFC, and probably also the {4,1} TFC to prevent control preemption at the specified 32 kbps rate. These are called extended rate TFCs. (Like the rock band Spinal Tap, our guitar amps with volume knobs that go up to 11 instead of just 10.) This presents a problem. The most heavily loaded TFC will be one of these extended rate TFCs, which sets the puncturing or repetition rate for all TFCs. Since it is highly desired to constrain SF in order to conserve OVSF codes, the extended rate TFCs are very likely force excessive puncturing, and then. Excessive puncturing has a detrimental impact on performance, especially beyond

TTI

TTI

Figure 5: DPCCH insertion in the B2U. The B2U PCC is encoded using a (16,5) bi-orthogonal code, which is a sub-code of the (32,10) Reed-Muller code that can be encoded and decoded using the same algorithms. In the example of Figure 5, the PCC codeword is transmitted over 8 P-slots, with each P-slot bearing 2 PCC bits. The B2U PCC is transmitted every 80 m sec, so the four PCC code words shown in Figure 2 are repetitions. Base-to-User Rate Matching A second significant deviation from the 3GPP is in the B2U rate matching algorithm. In the 3GPP algorithm, a puncturing or repetition rate is set for each TrCH by

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about 20% puncturing for the 3GPP rate 1/3 turbo code. Once 3GPP sets the puncturing rate for the most heavily loaded TFC, im i a sh r eo a T C . ht t a tn t sa frl F s T a s ni i t l OK for terrestrial systems because the most heavily l dd F it ok oshtevrt o e T C sh w r hr t dl e h a e e a i s e advertised data rate. For MUOS, however, we would have the situation that an infrequently used extended rate TFC constrains the performance across the entire RAB, which is not acceptable. The solution is a MUOS modification to the 3GPP rate matching algorithm. The TFC set is partitioned into two subsets: the nominal set and the exception set. The exception set contains the extended rate TFCs. The nominal set contains all other TFCs, and within the nominal set the most heavily loaded TFC should be the one that delivers the specified RAB data rate. The 3GPP downlink rate matching algorithm, with DTX on underloaded TFCs, is applied only to the nominal set. Thus, puncturing/repletion rates are set using the specified data rate TFC (which would be the {4,0} TFC in our example). This protects the nominal set from excessive extended rate puncturing. The rate matching for each TFC in the exception set is done in a fashion similar to the 3GPP uplink algorithm. There is no DTX on exception set. For each exception set TFC, repetition and puncturing rates are set to completely utilize all available DPDCH bits. Of course, the exception set TFCs will have a diminished performance relative to the nominal set. To overcome this performance disadvantage, these TFC need a power boost, again, much like the 3GPP uplink case. Figure 3 illustrates the MUOS solution. A frame is illustrated with T, P and D slots. As in 3GPP, the DPCCH fields may be transmitted with inflated amplitude relative to the data. All nominal set TFC D D Hsm o a t nm td i ai d nm nl P C y bl r r s ie wt f e o i s ea t h x a set amplitude n pwer is throttled back for underad o loaded TFCs (in the nominal set) via DTX bit insertion. The nominal set TFC having the specified rate (the {4,0} TFC achieving 32 kbps in our example) will have no DTX, and will be transmitted at the nominal set amplitude. An extended rate TFC is transmitted with a large amplitude, in order to overcome its performance loss.

Tx Amplitude

TFCI

Figure 3: B2U amplitude profile across one frame. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION This paper has reviewed the MUOS Layer 1 air interface as a modification of the 3GPP WCDMA definition. The main modification for U2B transmission is the insertion of dovetail interleaving that allows MUOS to exploit time diversity in a long coherence time UHF fading environment. The B2U has been modified in the way DPCCH bits are inserted into the waveform, and a modified rate matching algorithm efficiently accommodates extended rate operation.

PCC

REFERENCES [1] T 2. 1hs acanlad ap g f S 5 1,P yi lhne n m pi o 2 c s n transport channels onto physical channels (D ) 3 P T cn aS ecification. F D , G P ehi l p c [2] T 2. 2 lp x g n canloi , S 5 1,Mu i ei ad hnecd g 2 tl n n 3GPP Technical Specification. [3] T 2. 3ped g n Mou t n F D , S 5 1,S r i ad dli (D ) 2 an ao 3GPP Technical Specification.

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PCC