LTE(long term evolution) PHY overview

What is LTE??
3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the name given to a project that aims to improve the UMTS mobile phone and it is not a standard but it will result in the release 8 of UMTS and it can be considered the real 3.9G & invited to join the 4G family.

Technical specifications:Bandwidth Multiple access technology Peak data rate Supported antenna configuarations Spectrum efficiency mobility

Scalable Bandwidth 1.25, 2.5, 5.0, 10.0 and 20.0 MHz. DL:OFDMA UL:SC-FDMA DL(2-channel MIMO):100 Mb/s in 20 MHz channel. UL(1-channel Tx):50 Mb/s in 20 MHz channel. DL: 4x2, 2x2, 1x2, 1x1. UL: 1x2, 1x1 5[bits/sec/Hz] Optimized for low speeds (<15 km/hr) High performance at speeds up to 120 km/hr Maintain link at speeds up to 350 km/hr Full performance up to 5 km Slight degradation 5 km 30 km Operation up to 100 km should not be precluded by standard

coverage

LTE PHY layer block diagram:-

Frame structure: it is FDD frame which is 10ms divided into 10 subframes each
of 1ms & each subframe is divided into 2 slots of 0.5 ms which carry 6 or 7 OFDM symbol

Randomizer: combines user data with known synchronization frame data bits.
The incoming data is first XOR-ed with the synchronized frame data generated from PN sequence generator.To prevent long sequences of ones and zeros and for synchronization.

FEC(forward error correction): The system uses 1/3 turbo encoder as a

channel coder(with puncturing to change rate) and 24 bit CRC for error detection.

Symbol mapper: The system uses adaptive modulation (mapping) and the
supported modulation schemes are QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM. o The OFDM is used to mitigate the multipath fading which will result in delay spread and frequency selective fading instead of using complex equalizers or high complexity rake receivers. o OFDM systems break the available bandwidth into many narrower subcarriers and transmit the data in parallel streams .each OFDM symbol is preceded by a cyclic prefix (CP), which is used to effectively eliminate ISI. o In practice, the OFDM signal can be generated using IFFT o with a CP of sufficient duration, preceding symbols do not spill over into the FFT period,Also, Once the channel impulse response is determined (by periodic transmission of known reference signals), distortion can be corrected by applying an amplitude and phase shift on a subcarrier-by-subcarrier basis. o Problems of OFDM are: susceptibility to carrier frequency errors (due either to local oscillator offset or Doppler shifts) and a large signal peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). o OFDMA is an excellent choice of multiplexing scheme for the 3GPP LTE downlink which allows the access of multiple users on the available bandwidth. o Each user is assigned a specific time-frequency resource.

OFDMA (Downlink):

o Allocation of PRBs is handled by a scheduling function at the 3GPP base station (eNodeB). o A PRB is defined as consisting of 12 consecutive subcarriers for one slot (0.5 msec) in duration. A PRB is the smallest element of resource allocation assigned by the base station scheduler.

SC-FDMA(single carrier freq domain multiple access)(uplink): o The system uses SC-FDMA as uplink multiple access method instead OFDMA to
decrease the PAPR and power requirements. o It offers the same degree of multipath mitigation but because the transmission is on single carrier PAPR is lower. o The basic idea is to add cyclic prefix to the mapped symbols and in the receiver multipath distortion can be handled by the same method as OFDM(carrier based equalization). o The DFT block in the transmitter is used to place the transmission in the correct position of the transmit spectrum in case of variable transmission bandwidth. o LTE used localized mapped subcarriers to exploit frequency selective gain.

 MIMO and MRC:o LTE system uses MIMO(multiple input multiple output) as advanced multiple antenna technique in order to achieve the ambitious requirements for throughput and spectral efficiency. o maximal ratio combining (MRC) : is used to enhance link reliability in challenging propagating conditions when signal strength is low and multipath conditions are challenging.

o Downlink MIMO: a 2x2 configuration for MIMO i.e. 2 transmit antennas at the base station and 2 receive antennas at the terminal side. Configurations with 4 antennas are also being considered. In downlink MIMO is used in two modes

Spatial multiplexing: allows to transmit

different streams of data simultaneously on the same downlink resource block(s)increase the data rate

Transmit diveristy : Here the receiver

will has many copies of the transmitted signal In case the channel conditions do not allow spatial multiplexing, a transmit diversity scheme will be used instead, so switching between these two MIMO modes is possible depending on channel conditions.

o Uplink MIMO: Uplink MIMO schemes for LTE will differ from downlink MIMO schemes to take into account terminal complexity issues. For the uplink, MU-MIMO can be used. Multiple user terminals may transmit simultaneously on the same resource block. This is also referred to as spatial domain multiple access (SDMA).