Multi-hop Radio Access Cellular Concept for Fourth-Generation Mobile Communications System

Yasushi Yamao*, Toru Otsu*, Atsushi Fujiwara*, Hidekazu Murata** and Susumu Yoshida** NTT DoCoMo* and Kyoto University**
Phone Number: +81-468-40-3166 Fax Number: +81-468-40-3842 E-mail: yamao@ieee.org Address: 3-5 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, 239-8536, Japan Abstract- This paper proposes a Multi-hop Radio Access Cellular (MRAC) scheme for achieving both highspeed/high-capacity and good area coverage in fourth generation mobile communications systems. In this scheme, we assume two kinds of hop stations, one is a dedicated repeater station installed at a good propagation location such as a rooftop, and the other is a user terminal that temporarily experiences good propagation conditions. For both cases, the path diversity effect can be obtained between single-hop and multi-hop paths. Four propagation models were studied representing the paths among the base station, hop stations, and mobile station. Based on the propagation models, suitable MRAC operation conditions are discussed. For mobile stations located at the cell edge area, MRAC operation is effective in reducing the transmit power. Consequently, MRAC reduces the interference in cellular systems and enhances the area coverage. Keywords- mobile communications, multi-hop radio access, cellular system, fourth generation mobile system. cost. Since the target data rate of future systems is more than two orders of magnitude higher than the present systems, the equivalent noise bandwidth in a receiver also increases by two orders of magnitude. This results in a smaller cell. On a simple assumption that the urban mobile radio propagation index is around 3.5 to 4, the noise bandwidth increase causes a cell radius decrease of 1/4. This means a large number of base station (BS) sites with the current cellular configuration will be required, which will push costs high. Therefore, we should research more efficient ways of achieving good area coverage and high capacity. This paper proposes a Multi-hop Radio Access Cellular (MRAC) scheme that assumes two kinds of hop stations (HS), one is a dedicated repeater station installed at an advantageous propagation position such a roof-top, and the other is a user terminal that temporarily experiences good propagation conditions. For both cases, the path diversity effect can be obtained between the single-hop and multi-hop paths. Thus, transmit power for a mobile station (MS) can be reduced for the same transmission speed, or the MS can communicate at higher speeds using the same transmit power. Consequently, the cell radius can be increased. Moreover, the interference currently caused by high-power users located at the edge area of a cell will decrease and system capacity will be enhanced.

I. INTRODUCTION
The IMT-2000 3rd generation mobile communication system (3G) was launched in Japan in 2001 and will soon be introduced worldwide [1]. The system can provide a variety of mobile multimedia communication services through its high-speed transmission and wide-area coverage capability. Growing demand for mobile multimedia services including mobile Internet and mobile E-commerce will result in a remarkable increase in 3G traffic. The fourth generation mobile communication systems (4G) will be introduced from around 2010 and are expected to have significantly higher performance than that of IMT2000 [2],[3]. The transmission speed of 50 to 100 Mbit/s, which is two-orders of magnitude higher than that of the currently operated 3G services, is under discussion. The bit cost should be dramatically decreased so that people can enjoy the convenience of broadband communications without paying high communication charges. However, it is quite difficult to achieve both very highspeed/high-capacity and good area coverage at a reasonable

II. Current Cellular Systems

Current mobile communication systems including IMT2000 employ a cellular configuration. A wide service area is divided into many small cells and the frequency spectrum is reused among areas that are separated from each other. Thus, this configuration satisfies two important requirements for mobile communications: seamless area coverage and spectrum economy. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of inter-cell interference, which degrades the communication quality and decreases system capacity or throughput to half or less. Therefore, a great number of BSs (or sectors) are required to maintain the target capacity, which raises the cost of the systems. The effect of inter-cell interference is remarkable at the edge area of a cell, both in generating interference and in

0-7803-7589-0/02/$17.00 2002 IEEE

PIMRC 2002

MS1 MS2
BS BS 1 BS2

x
HS

BS

Transmit power
Fig. 1 Transmit power required for a mobile terminal in a cellular system. being affected by it. This is due to the near-far problem, which is quite common to radio communications. Figure 1 shows the average transmit power required for an MS in a cell. Radio path loss L (dB) for an MS varies over time and is expressed as L = Lp + Ls + L f , (1) where Lp denotes large-scale propagation loss, Ls denotes the loss due to shadowing, and Lf denotes the instantaneous fading loss. The farther the location of an MS is from the corresponding BS, the greater is the propagation loss, Lp. Therefore, MSs at the cell edge area require the highest transmitting power both in the up and downlinks, which results in generating a certain amount of interference to other users. The two other loss components, Ls and Lf, are generally assumed to be independent of the distance to the BS, but dependent on the local environment such as the arrangement of the streets and buildings. The shadowing loss, Ls, depends on the micro-level location of the MS. Recent digital access technologies such as wideband CDMA mitigate the effect of instantaneous fading with a wide-band spectrum spread and accurate transmitter power control [4]. However, propagation loss Lp, which dominates the near-far problem, is not influenced by the access technologies. Also, limits on transmit power for both BS and MS cause imperfect transmitter power control in the cell edge area, which results in frequent transmission error. Therefore, other approaches from the viewpoint of cellular architecture design should be studied.

MS1: Single-hop path MS2: Double-hop path via HS Fig. 2 Multi-hop radio access cellular (MRAC) concept. Figure 2 shows a graphical representation of the concept. It adds hop stations (HS) such as radio repeaters or wireless packet routers between users and corresponding BSs. The HS can be dedicated for relaying signals, or any user terminal experiencing good propagation conditions can assume the role of the HS. The MSs can choose one of two path modes. For the first, an MS can directly access a BS when the propagation conditions are sufficient to satisfy the communication requirements (speed, error rate, etc.). We call this the single-hop path. When the propagation loss is high, the MS selects an available HS and communicates with the HS at a lower transmit power than that of the single-hop path. The HS relays the communication to the BS. This is called the double-hop path. By choosing the optimum path to the BS, the transmit power for the MS can be reduced for the same transmission speed, or the MS can communicate at higher speeds using the same transmit power. Utilizing these modes results in decreasing the interference from the MS in the power domain or in the time domain, and enhances the cell size or area coverage by relaying transmissions. Since future generation mobile communication systems will focus on IPbased services, a broadband packet transmission scheme will be employed. Considering this, the path selection can be performed packet by packet, and path diversity is effective for shadowing. Therefore, we can expect further improvement by path diversity. In double-hop modes, the HS requires some extra radio resources for relaying transmissions. This may offset the interference reduction effect. When dedicated repeaters are deployed at the edges of a roof or at the corners of the sides of buildings, they are set to maintain the line of sight (LOS) to the BSs and directional antennas can be employed at both the HS and BS. Therefore, interference from the HS-BS hop

III. Multi-hop Radio Access Cellular Concept

Multi-hop packet radio transmission [5] is an effective technique for extending the range of communications at minimum power. In order to reduce interference from highpower communication users at the cell edge and to enhance area coverage, we propose the Multi-hop Radio Access Cellular (MRAC) concept.

is relatively low. On the other hand, if a user terminal is employed as an HS, the interference due to the HS-BS hop will be greater than that using the dedicated HS. However, in a highly populated urban area, many user-terminal-based HS candidates may be found. By choosing the best one, the total amount of interference from the MS-HS and HS-BS paths can be minimized. Other issues for employing a user terminal as an HS are realizing the relay function in the terminal, as well as applying the frequency spectrum to the BS-HS and HS-MS paths. In order to avoid adding an extra transceiver and spectrum to the terminal, time division duplex relay (TDDR) operation is desirable. Although TDDR operation is limited with respect to the transmission speed due to transceiver time-sharing, it is mitigated by asymmetric-speed TDDR operation. For example, when the propagation conditions of the HS-BS path are good, a higher transmission speed is possible for the path, which results in conservation of the forwarding time in the HS-BS path. Thus, a high percentage of time can be reserved for the HS-MS path communication and the speed can be maintained.

50-m high /20 dBi

BS-HS1 path Line-of-Sight

30 -m high /15 dB

BS
BS-HS2 path Non Line-of-Sight 1.5-m high /0 dBi HS2

HS

HS1-MS path Non Line-of-Sight

HS2-MS path Line-of-Sight

1.5-m high /0 dBi MS

Fig. 3 Assumed propagation models. Table 1. Propagation Models and Antenna Parameters

Propagation Loss Model

BS-HS1 BS-HS2 HS1-MS Free space propagation Urban mobile communication propagation considering multiple diffractions caused by buildings [6,7] Urban mobile communication propagation considering multiple diffractions caused by buildings [6,7] Two-ray (direct wave and ground-reflected wave) propagation with line of sight assuming street-cell micro cellular systems [8]

IV. Propagation Models

Interference and area coverage performance in cellular systems strongly depend on the propagation conditions. Therefore, we should study what specific propagation models are suitable for evaluating the target system. Figure 3 shows the assumed propagation models. In the figure, the BS is a typical cellular site with a relatively high antenna tower (~ 50 m high and the antenna gain of 20 dBi), HS1 is a dedicated repeater placed at the edge of the roof of a building (~ 30 m high and the antenna gain of 15 dBi), and the MS is held by a human (height ~ 1.5 m and the antenna gain of 0 dBi). HS2 is a user terminal repeater with the same height and antenna gain as that of the MS, but it is in LOS to the MS. The proposed propagation models with antenna parameters are summarized in Table 1. The BS-HS1 path is considered to be free space. Urban area mobile propagation models are applied to the BS-HS2 and HS1-MS paths [6],[7]. HS2 and the MS are assumed to be on a street, and the two-ray (direct wave and ground reflected wave) propagation model is used [8]. Figure 4 shows the propagation loss examples for the paths. The curves in Fig. 4(a) represent the basic propagation losses versus distance (using an isotropic antenna for both transmission and reception). In order to analyze the effective range from the HSs, the antenna gains of the HSs should be taken into account. Thus, the antenna gains are added to the basic propagation losses and are shown in Fig. 4(b). Hereafter, these compensated losses are referred to as transmission losses. From Fig. 4(b), it is clear that that the transmission loss of the BS-HS1 path is lower than the other paths by 30 to 50 dB. Therefore, the required transmit power is very low and the interference to other stations is not serious. On the other hand, the BS-HS2 and HS1-MS propagations are assumed to be normal mobile propagations with a loss exponent index

HS2-MS

Antenna Parameters
Gain (dBi) BS HS1 HS2 MS 20 15 0 Height (m) 50 30 1.5

of 3.8; thus, the losses are relatively high. With regard to the HS2-MS path, its propagation loss in Fig. 4(a) is lower than that of the BS-HS2 because the two-ray propagation model has a LOS component. However, its transmission loss in Fig. 4(b) is higher than that of BS-HS2 due to the low antenna gains of HS2 and the MS. Compared with the single-hop path, which is identical to the BS-HS2 path, the transmission loss of the HS1-MS path is higher because of its lower antenna height. This means that the double-hop area created by HS1 is narrower than the BS cell. However, HS1 can be located not only inside the BS cell area, but also outside, which is important to enhance area coverage.

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 HS1-MS

160 140

Propagation Loss (dB)

Transmission Loss (dB)

BS-HS2(MS) HS2-MS

HS1-MS 120

HS2-MS BS-HS2(MS)

BS-HS1

100 80 BS-HS1 60 40

200

400

600

800

1000

200

400

600

800

1000

Distance (m)
Fig. 4(a) Basic propagation loss versus distance.

Distance (m)
Fig. 4(b) Transmission loss versus distance.

the double-hop transmission is remarkable when HS1 is located at the cell edge, since the transmission loss of the Based on the propagation models, suitable MRAC operasingle-hop path is very high in that area and high transmit tion conditions are discussed in this section. Figure 5 shows power is required. In this figure, the transmission loss of the the double-hop area created by HS1. HS1 is located 800 m HS1-MS (double hop) path is lower than that of the BS-MS from the BS. All the transmission loss curves are copied (single-hop) path when the MS is located at a distance from from Fig. 4(b). As discussed in the last section, the transmisaround 600 m to 1100 m. Certainly, path diversity is effecsion loss of the BS-HS1 path is very low and we can positive at the crossover area at the distance of 600 m and 1100 tion HS1 anywhere. However, improvement by employing m; therefore, the MRAC effective area (possible double-hop area) is depicted beyond the border. Double-hop area (Microcell) In this area, the transmit power required for communication can be reduced. The relative transmit power for each path, which is proportional to the 140 transmission loss, is depicted in the same figure. They PBM are PBM, PHM and PBH, which correspond to the BS-MS (single-hop) path, HS1-MS path, and BS-HS1 path, 120 respectively. In this area, Power (2) PHM + PBH PBM BS-MS reduction can be achieved. 100 HS1-MS PHM In order to evaluate interference generated from the paths, it is necessary to consider transmitting antenna gains. For the up-link, total radiated power can be reduced in the area that 80 satisfies the following condition: BS-HS1 G M PHM + GH 1 PBH GM PBM (3) PBH where GM and GH1 are antenna gains for the MS and HS1, 60 respectively. Since the second term of the above inequality is small, the area is almost same as that for the condition (2). For the down-link, the area that satisfies the following 40 condition generates less interference in MRAC: 0 200 400 600 800 1000 G H 1 PHM + G B PBH G B PBM (4) HS1 Distance from BS (m) where GB is the antenna gain for the BS. Since the second term of the above inequality is small, and also Fig. 5 Double-hop area generated by HS1. (5) GH 1 < GB , Transmission Loss (dB)

V. MRAC Deployment Models

Double-hop area (Street cell) 140

PBM Transmission Loss (dB)

120

End of LOS Power

BS-MS

PBH
100

PHM reduction

HS2-MS
80

60

BS
Single-hop Area
0 200 400 600

40

HS2

800

1000

MRAC Area Fig. 7 Cell layout with MRAC. were discussed. For mobile stations located at the cell edge area, MRAC operation is effective in reducing the transmit power. Consequently, MRAC reduces the interference in cellular systems and enhances the area coverage. Detailed protocol studies including a relay duplex scheme, MAC (Media Access Control), and a performance analysis on the interference reduction remain as future work. REFERENCE
[1] Special issue on IMT-2000: Standards efforts of the ITU, IEEE Pers. Commun., vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 8-40, 1997. [2] M. Flament et al., An Approach to 4th Generation Wireless Infrastructures Scenarios and Key Research Issues, in Proc. IEEE VTC99, pp. 1009-1016, May 1999. [3] Y. Yamao et al., Radio Access Network Design Concept for the Fourth Generation Mobile Communication System, in Proc. IEEE VTC 2000-Spring, Tokyo, Vol. 3, pp. 2285 2289, May 2000. [4] A. J. Viterbi, CDMA -Principles of Spread Spectrum Communication, Addison-Wesley, Massachusetts, 1995. [5] E. S. Sousa and J. A. Silvester, Optimum transmission ranges in a direct-sequence spread-spectrum multihop packet radio network, IEEE J. Selec. Areas Commun., vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 762-771, June 1990. [6] J. Walfisch and H. Bertoni, A theoretical model of UHF propagation in urban environments, IEEE Trans. Ant. Propagat., vol. AP-36, pp. 1788-1796, 1988. [7] H. Xia, A simplified analytical model for predicting path loss in urban and suburban environments, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. VT-46, pp. 1040-1046, 1997. [8] H. Xia, et al. Radio Propagation Characteristics for Line-ofSight Microcellular and Personal Communications, IEEE Trans. Ant. Propagat., vol. AP-41, pp. 1439-1447, 1993.

Distance from BS (m) Fig. 6 Double-hop area generated by HS2. the condition (4) can be achieved easier than the condition (3). Thus, the interference can be reduced while enhancing the area coverage. A similar discussion is possible for HS2, shown in Fig. 6. In this case, HS2 is a user terminal and the BS-HS2 path loss curve is identical to that of the BS-MS (single-hop) path. In order to reduce the transmit power for the MS by using the double- hop, HS2 should be located at a better position than the MS. For example, HS2 is located closer to the BS than the MS in this figure. Considering the same conditions in Equation (2), the MRAC effective area is around HS2 and farther, until the end of LOS. In this area, however, it is considered that the total transmit power reduction will be achieved mainly by the path diversity effect between the single-hop and double-hop paths because the macro-scale power difference between the MS-BS path and HS2-BS path is not large. The cell layout of the MRAC is shown in Fig. 7. The layout is very similar to honeycomb cells. The center area of each cell is a single-hop dominant area. The cell border area is the MRAC area, in which many HSs exist for relaying communications, and both single-hop and double-hop paths are used to access the BSs.

VI. Concluding Remarks

In order to achieve high-speed/high-capacity and good area coverage at a reasonable cost, the Multi-hop Radio Access Cellular (MRAC) architecture was proposed for the fourth generation mobile communications systems. Two kinds of hop stations were proposed and four propagation models were studied representing the paths among the base station, hop stations, and mobile station. Based on the propagation models, suitable MRAC operation conditions