What is WLL?

Differences with mobile cellular systems

Why WLL?

System Analysis
examples

The future of WLL

 What is WLL?

- WLL is a system that connects subscribers to the local telephone station wirelessly. Systems WLL is based on:
Cellular Satellite (specific and adjunct) Microcellular

Other names Radio In The Loop (RITL) Fixed-Radio Access (FRA).

 This link between the end user and the local exchange

is called the Local Loop. This technology can be broken down into two broad categories, wired and wireless.

 Till around mid 80s' in India, a local loop or an Access

Network (AN) used to consist of a pair of copper wires connecting the subscribers at home or office to the nearest exchange. The local loop length in urban areas would be typically as large as 6 to 8 kms and the copper gauge used was 0.5 mm to 0.6 mm.

The picture below shows a cable with its twisted pairs exposed.

 The loop was designed to carry 4 kHz voice and was

difficult to maintain, with almost 85% of all faults found in the local loop. With the rising cost of copper and cost of digging increasing every year, the per line local loop cost itself would have been Rs.40,000 to Rs.50,000 and would have amounted to over 85% of the total cost of putting a telecom network.

 WLL is a system that connects subscribers to the local

telephone station wirelessly. Wireless Local Loop employs the use of electromagnetic radiation to connect subscribers to the local exchange without the use of wires

 Wireless access first started to become a possibility in

the 1950s and 1960s as simple radio technology. By the end of the 1970s, communities linked by radio often had dedicated radio links to each house, the links connected into the switch such that they were used in the same manner as normal twisted-pair links. The widespread deployment of the cellular base station into switching sites helped with cost reduction.

 Early 1950s. Single-channel VHF subscriber equipment

was purchased from Motorola, but the maintenance costs were too high as a result of the valve technology used and the power consumption too high. The trial was discontinued and the subscribers were connected by wire Mid-1950s. Raytheon was given seed funds to develop 6 GHz band equipment, which would have a better reliability and a lower power consumption. The designers failed to achieve those goals and the system still proved too expensive Late 1950s. Some equipment capable of providing mobile service to rural communities was put on trial. Users were prepared to pay a premium for mobile use, but the system still proved to be too expensive in a fixed application for which users were not prepared to pay a premium.

 Early 1960s. Systems able to operate on a number of

radio channels were developed, eliminating the need for each user to share a specific channel and thus increase capacity. The general lack of channels and high cost, however, made these systems unattractive.
Early 1970s. A Canadian manufacturer developed

equipment operating at 150 MHz that proved successful in serving fixed subscribers on the island of Lake Superior. The lack of frequencies in the band, however, precluded its widespread use.

 Late 1970s. The radio equipment from

several US manufacturers was linked to provide service to isolated Puerto Rican villages. The service was possible only because the geographical location allowed the use of additional channels, providing greater capacity than would have been possible elsewhere. Early 1980s. Communication satellites were examined for rural applications but were rejected as being too expensive. 1985. Trials of a point-to-multipoint radio system using digital modulation promised sufficient capacity and reliability to make WLL look promising.

 WLL, which stands for Wireless Local Loop is of

course a technology that connects subscribers to the PSTN using radio signals as a substitute for copper for all or part of the connection between the subscriber and the switch. This includes cordless access systems, proprietary fixed radio access, and fixed cellular systems. . WLL phones often connect to AC current rather than using batteries. They are used to provide voice, fax, and data connections.

 As WLL is a wireless technology it is reliant upon RF to

propagate data. In this WLL system we need to be able to get data (voice) to the PSTN and this process must take into account a number of factors: Safety Security Minimum of errors Most efficient data transfer

 For a WLL system to be successful, an adequate Signal

to Noise Ratio (SNR) must be achieved. As WLL is an unguided medium that uses air as the transmission medium, there are a number of factors that must be taken into consideration which will have an effect on the SNR

 a) Attenuation Due to Distance

b) Line of Sight
c) Diffraction d) Reflection

e) Fresnel Zones
f) Multipath

 The placement of transmitters must be carefully

considered during design to ensure adequate coverage and bandwidth. A single cell for a relatively large, open area with a low subscriber density may be sufficient. However, this cell may need to be broken up into smaller cells if: a)The subscriber density increased so that there was insufficient bandwidth to meet demand b)The terrain prevents satisfactory signal strength at the receiver due to LOS issues.

 a) Subscriber Density
b) Terrain and Obstructions c) Rainfall and Snow

i. Channel pay load (bit rate) ii. Signaling overhead iii. Cell-radius (range) iv. Choice of multiple access v. Interference reduction techniques vi. Modulation efficiency

 For voice communication on wireless systems, it may

be desirable to have efficient voice compression and lower bit-rate voice codecs. Therefore for voice communication on wireless systems, it may be desirable to have efficient voice compression and lower bit-rate voice codecs.

 As signaling is key to setting up, monitoring and

tearing down of a call, signaling communications need to be carried out on air between subscriber equipment and the base stations.

 Cell radius is perhaps the most important factor

governing the spectrum utilization in a wireless system. Number of subscribers that can be served in the cell works out to N/e and Subscriber Density (SD) that can be served in this cell is approximately,

 A key parameter determining the efficient reuse of

spectrum is governed by multiple-access technique used. The access technique defines how the frequency spectrum is divided into channels and affects reuse of the channels.

 The oldest technique used in wireless access, especially

in mobile communications, is Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). This can be used for both analog as well as a digital communications

 The most widely used multi-access technique today,

both for mobile as well as in wireless local loop, is Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA). . The technique can be used only for digital communication, and the ability to work with smaller signal to interference ratio in digital domain, gives this technique better reuse factor as compared to the analog FDMA.

 Late in the eighties emerged a multiple-access

technique referred to as Direct Sequence, Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA). . CDMA enables multiple channels to use the same frequency and time slots. Each bit to be transmitted by or for a user is uniquely coded by spreading the bit into 64 or 256 or even 1024 chips.

 One of the latest access techniques that has emerged

is the Multi-Carrier-Time Division Multiple Access or MC-TDMA with Dynamic Channel Selection (DCS). MC-TDMA is a variation of TDMA.

 Fixed Channel Allocation requires prior allocation of

certain number of channels (carrier frequencies) to a sector in a cell using an exercise generally referred to as frequency planning Dynamic Channel Selection (DCS), does no assignment of channels to any base station or subscriber equipment.

 All channels are available to everyone. The radio

equipment is designed to measure the signal strength that it receives on all channels (using something akin to a spectrum analyzer) and thus determine the actual radio environment in its vicinity.

 Interference reduction techniques are widely used in

wireless systems to increase re-use efficiency while retaining the target SIR requirement. The main 2 techniques are Sectorization Voice Activity Detection

 Capacity = C = Numbers of subscribers served per

sqkm , the capacity or subscriber density C that can be served is

subscribers per sq.km

i) 802.16-2001 ii) GSM iii) CDMA a) CDMA2000 1X b) CDMA2000 1xEV-DO iv) LMDS v) MMDS

 Customer Premises Equipment Nortel Networks Lucent Base Station Equipment Nortel Networks Nokia

 Mobile Telephone System: Mobile Telephone systems are primarily meant to

provide telephony for people on the move. The key here is universal coverage A modest voice quality is acceptable as the user may mostly be speaking from a location with high ambient noise.

 Data communication is not very important, and

wherever required, low-bit rate data communication will be acceptable One is typically looking at 0.01 to 0.02 Erlang traffic per subscriber.

 Wireless in Local Loop (WiLL), on the other hand, is

meant to serve subscribers at homes or offices. Its voice quality must be high -- a subscriber carrying out long conversation must not be irritated with quality;

 The traffic supported should be reasonably high at

least as high as 0.1E per subscriber. The telephone must support fax and modem communications and should be connectable to a Public Call Office. Ability to provide at least medium rate Internet access is a must.

 WLL systems may prove to be useful in areas where an

increase in demand for telecommunication services cannot be fulfilled in a timely fashion due to the time required to lay cable, or in instances where the laying of new cable is impractical

 Sony has committed itself to providing a

broadband WLL system in Japan. It plans to offer a solution that provides voice, video and data services. In a press release by Qualcomm, it has been stated that Qualcomm had been selected to provide a CDMA WLL system to fulfill a demand by 250,000 subscribers in Krasnodar City and its surrounding region in Russia.

 As technology improves, prices for WLL equipment

will fall, while speeds will continue to increase, meeting demands of next generation applications. . The basic consensus is that the individual voice, television and data networks will all converge into a single packet switched network where each subscriber is connected via a broadband link.

 In this paper, an attempt has been made to compare

the subscriber densities that can be supported by major wireless access standards including GSM, IS-95 and DECT. The emphasis is on their applicability for the local loop, which implies not only the need to support very higher user densities, but also provide toll quality voice and simultaneously cater to high speed Internet requirements.

 It is expected that with the advent of 3G wireless

standards, not only will greater bit-rates be delivered to mobile users, but there will be a substantial improvement in the bit-rates and services for fixed wireless applications like the local loop and broadband to home as well.