3G Handover & Mobility

Rolf Fischer, Hans Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel VTN-Access-Design

Intrafrequency Handover in UMTS

Soft Handover

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Intrafrequency Handover in UMTS (1)

GSM: Hard Handover 1
BTS BTS NodeB NodeB

UMTS: Soft Handover

2
BTS BTS NodeB NodeB

3
BTS BTS NodeB
Company Confidential / C2

NodeB

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Soft and Softer Handover

Softer Hand-Over: Adjacent cells from one Node B
BTS

RNC

RNC

BTS

Soft Hand-Over: Adjacent cells from two Node Bs

BTS

RNC controlled soft and softer-handover Inter RNC soft-handover via Iur Interface
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Important for Design: - Consider handover zones by cell-overlapping while maintaining low inter-cell interference - 30% of cell area allowed for overlapping
Company Confidential / C2

Soft - Handover - Procedure

Functions: - carry out measurements - filtering of measurements - create measurement report - Soft Handover Algorithm - Handover execution

- Active Set: - Inter Node B SHO: e.g.: 2-3 cells - Intra Node B SHO (Softer): e.g..: 2-3 cells - Monitoring Set: - 6 or more cell at same frequency - Synchronisation of cells: P-SCH&S-SCH - Scrambling codes of neighbour cells
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Types of Handover

Macro Cells of WCDMA network

Pico cells of WCDMA network

Micro cells of GSM network
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Handover Objectives (1)

Mobile initiated: - mobile makes quality measurements - picks the best BS - switches with network cooperation - triggered by poor link quality Network initiated: - BS makes measurements and reports to RNC - RNC takes decision to handover or not - triggered for reasons other than radio link control e.g. traffic distribution between cells Mobile assisted: - mobile and network make measurements - mobile reports results from nearby BSs - network makes decision to handover or not

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Handover Objectives (2)

Objectives: - keep required QoS - minimise interference level of the whole system by keeping the mobile linked to the strongest BS - roaming between different networks - load balancing Triggers: - link quality (UL and DL) - the changing of service - changing of speed - traffic reasons - O&M intervention

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Handover Measurements and Procedures

Measurements Phase: - effected by neighbour list - to long or wrong sorted neighbour list leads to wrong measurements - wrong measurements lead to wrong decisions and HO
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Principles of Soft Handover (1)

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Principles of Soft Handover (2)

(a)

(b)

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Principles of Soft Handover (3)

Recommendation: From capacity point of view it is goal to have the actual number of cells in the active set as small as possible by minimising the soft/softer handover areas and by reducing the time a UE is in soft/softer handover mode.
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover Algorithm

It uses absolute thresholds

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover Algorithm (1)

(Active Set Size = 2)

It uses relative thresholds

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover Algorithm (2)

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover Algorithm (3)

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover Improvement

Power control loop increases mobile transmit power to guarantee QoS in the uplink while mobile moves away from its serving BS

Due to selection combining in the uplink the stronger frame is selected the weaker frame is discarded. The required power to meet the same QoS is lower. Therefore the interference contributed by this mobile is lower under soft handover.

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Soft Handover Gain

The Mobile and the Radio Network Controller combines two or more links. => Diversity gain Maximum Ratio Combining in DL => 1.5 dB Soft Handover Gain

Maximum Ratio Combining UL only if cells belong to same site. Selection diversity used if cells belong to different sites. => 1.0 dB Soft Handover Gain
Reduced Intercell Interference
Company Confidential / C2

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Interfrequency Handover in UMTS

Hard Handover

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Multi carrier network

f0,f1,f2
f0 f0 f0, f1 f0,f1,f2 f0, f 1

f0,f1 f0,f1

IF-HO

f0

f1 f0

f2 f1 f0

f1 f0

: Interfrequency HO between f0 - f1, f1-f2, ... needed

Requirements: Interfrequency-measurement & Interfrequency HO

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Multi-Layer 3G/UMTS Radio Network

Cell type: Macro or large Micro or medium Pico or small fo f1

f3

Advantage: - load specific & user data rate specific steering Requirements: - IF - Handover & Softhandover - at least 2 x 10 MHz - flexibles Radio Ressource Management
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Inter-Frequency Measurements
TDMA: Discontinuous transmission
Uplink Downlink

TX RX

TX RX
Idle time for IF measurements

UTRA/FDD: Normally continuous transmission

Uplink Downlink
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

TX RX
Company Confidential / C2

Downlink Compressed Mode

Interrupt of Downlink transmission measure of other frequency channels different pattern possible

f1 BTS fo

.
One frame (10 ms)

. TGL Idle Periode for inter-frequency

measurements

MS

Monitoring: Frame timing, Scrambling Code & Ec/No of P-CPICH

TGL: Transmisssion Gap Length
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Possible transmission gap positions

single-frame method and double-frame method

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Three methods for compressed mode are proposed in the UMTS standard :
Puncturing: One way to save transmission time is to remove information by puncturing; this is especially applicable in combinations of transport channels and physical channels where the rate matching is done by repetition Spreading Factor Reduction: Halving the spreading factor, twice the data will be transmitted in the same amount of time, as the data rate is twice as high. Higher Layer Scheduling: The higher layers are scheduling their data for a later transmission, using subsets of the allowed Transport Format Combination (TFC).

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Events for Compressed and Hard Handover

Event 2d: Quality of serving cell is below a certain threshold, trigger to enter compressed mode for inter frequency or inter rat measurements

Event 2f: Quality of serving frequency is again above certain threshold and compressed mode is stopped
Event 3a: Quality of serving cell in used frequency is below threshold and quality of neighbour cell in other system is above threshold, trigger for hard handover Recommendation: The time in compressed mode is minimised obviously by setting the threshold for 3a above the threshold for 2d. This means that as soon as the UE is in compressed mode and has sufficient measurements done on the 2G neighbours the handover will be initiated.

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

UTRAN Events
Event Classes: - Handover related

1: Intrafrequency (A..I) - add / remove / replace UE to Active Set 2: Interfrequency (A..F) - enter / suspend Compressed Mode 3: Inter-RAT (A..D) - Handover execution 6: UE specific (A..G) - power level monitoring, (maximum power level reached)
- Not Handover related: 4: Traffic Volume (A,B) - PS traffic / channel handling 5: Quality (A) - not used 7: Positioning (A..C) - not used
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

IRAT Handover between UMTS and GSM Hard Handover

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

GSM and UMTS Coverage

3G/UMTS- coverage 2G/GSM-coverage

- 3G/UMTS local coverage - 2G_3G same bearer services (speech, low data rates) - Fallback - solution - 2G/GSM Network need to provide enough capacity in border areas - HO from 3G/UMTS to 2G/ GSM and vice versa at least cell-re-selection from 2G/GSM to 3G/UMTS
Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design
Company Confidential / C2

Handover preparation from 3G/UMTS to 2G/GSM

Interruption of Downlink transmission-compressed mode Perform measurements on 2G/GSM Uplink Compressed Mode required to prepare HO GSM1800

Inter-system handover and compressed mode state model

GSM System

Note that the handover back to UMTS leads to the regular operation instead of compressed mode

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Thresholds
Because of vendor specific implementation issues ranges have been agreed for 3G to 2G handover and reselection Settings: CS Ec CS Ec/Io PS Ec PS Ec/Io from -102 to -108 from -12 to -14 from -110 to -115 =< -14 dBm dB dBm dB

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Message sequence for inter-system handover from UTRAN to GSM

Thank you

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2

Thank you

Rolf Fischer, Hans-Jrg Hamers, Christoph Kenkel , VTN-Access Design

Company Confidential / C2