Application Note

Forward & Reverse Link Measurements with the Tektronix WCA200A Series Wireless Communication Analyzers

The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) specification provides an important pathway to third-generation (3G) global wireless communication systems. The current cdma2000 evolved from the cdmaOne standard under the guidance of the Third Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2). Originating in North America, cdma2000 technology was quickly adopted around the globe and became the first third-generation technology to be deployed.

This application note addresses only the cdma2000 1xEV-DO (EVolution-Data Optimized) phase and discusses the use of the Tektronix WCA200A Series Wireless Communication Analyzers to make forward and reverse link measurements.

Forward & Reverse Link Measurements

Application Note

1/2 Slot 1.024 Chips Data 400 Chips MAC G4 Chips Pilot 9G Chips MAC G4 Chips Data 400 Chips Active Slot Data 400 Chips MAC G4 Chips

1/2 Slot 1.024 Chips Pilot 9G Chips MAC G4 Chips Data 400 Chips

MAC G4 Chips

Pilot 9G Chips

MAC G4 Chips Idle Slot

MAC G4 Chips

Pilot 9G Chips

MAC G4 Chips

Figure 1. Forward link slot structure.

cdma2000 is being introduced in three phases. The first phase (cdma2000 1X) supports 128 Walsh codes for data communications on a single existing 1.25 MHz cdmaOne carrier. The chip rate is 1.2288 Mcps, which is exactly the same as the earlier cdmaOne IS-95 rate. The second phase includes cdma2000 1xEV-DO and 1xEV-DV, which use an additional time domain component to increase data rates within a 1.25 MHz carrier and provide high rate data packet services to meet the demands of high speed web or mail downloading. The third phase (CDMA-3X) specifies 256 Walsh codes and accommodates three adjacent 1.25 MHz carriers (to remain backward compatible with cdmaOne). Note: The cdma2000 1xEV-DO specification uses the term access network for base station, and access terminal for mobile terminal. In this note, base station and mobile terminal will be used. 1xEV-DO Forward Link The cdma2000 1xEV-DO specification uses the same frequency band, channel bandwidth (1.23MHz) and chip rate (1.2288Mcps) as cdma2000 1X, but other characteristics are very different. In the forward link, the mobile terminal continually updates the base station with the data rate it can receive. With this information the system can service a single user at any instant. To support multiple users, it utilizes time division multiplexing (TDM) to search for the mobile terminal that requests the highest data rate. This data rate control feature enables the base station to efficiently transmit at full power, achieving very high peak data rates for users in good coverage areas. The TDM forward link slot structure (active and idle) is shown in Figure 1 above. In cdma2000 1xEV-DO, each forward link frame is 26.666 msec and consists of 16 slots. Each 1.666 msec slot is divided into two half slots of 1024 chips, for a total
2

of 2048 chips. Within each half slot are 800 data chips, 128 Media Access Control (MAC) chips and 96 pilot chips. The data chips transmit the Forward Traffic Channel or Forward Control Channel. The Traffic Channel carries user data packets. The Control Channel carries control messages, and it may also carry user traffic. Within each slot, the Pilot, MAC, and Traffic or Control Channels are timedivision multiplexed with the preamble, which can be from 64 to 1024 chips depending on the data rate of the channel. Each channel is further decomposed into code-division-multiplexed quadrature Walsh channels. The modulation scheme depends on the data rate. The MAC chips in the forward link slot structure transmit the Forward MAC Channel, which consists of three sub-channels: RPC (Reverse Power Control) Channel DRCLock (Data Rate Control Lock) Channel RA (Reverse Activity) Channel. RPC is time division multiplexed with DRCLock; then this multiplexed channel is frequency division multiplexed to support multiple mobile terminals. MAC uses a Walsh cover length of 64. The code number called MAC Index is selected from 5 to 63. The pilot chips transmit the Forward Pilot Channel, which is the reference for frequency, phase and chip timing. All the chips are complex multiplied by I/Q short PN sequence (quadrature spreading) then fed to a baseband filter and a phase equalizer. The filter and the equalizer are the same as those specified for cdma2000 1X, but base stations have a different short PN sequence offset. This PN sequence offset value is used for the identification of the base station.

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Forward & Reverse Link Measurements

Application Note

1xEV-DO Reverse Link Like the forward link, the reverse link frame is 26.666 msec and consists of 16 slots. In the reverse link, the mobile station transmits the Access Channel or the Traffic Channel. The Access Channel consists of a Pilot Channel and a Data Channel. The Traffic Channel consists of Pilot, MAC and Data Channels. The MAC Channel consists of three sub-channels: The Reverse Rate Indicator (RRI) sub-channel is used to indicate whether or not the Data Channel is being transmitted on the Reverse Traffic Channel and if it is being transmitted, its data rate. The Data Rate Control (DRC) sub-channel is used by the mobile terminal to indicate to the base station the supportable Forward Traffic Channel data rate and the best serving sector on the Forward HDR Channel. The Acknowledgement (ACK) sub-channel is used by the mobile terminal to inform the base station whether or not the data packet transmitted on the Forward Traffic Channel has been received successfully. The Traffic Channels are code domain multiplexed by Walsh covers and separated into I (in) and Q (quadrature) phases. The reverse link uses HPSK for spreading, and the spreading sequence composes short and long PN sequences.The long PN sequence is initialized at every start of the frame. The Pilot and RRI channels are time division multiplexed at each slot. The first 16 symbols consist of RRI and the remaining 112 symbols of the slot are the Pilot. The ACK channel is transmitted only for the first half period of a slot, and the DRC starts from the second half period of a slot. The following sections describe how to measure the transmitter characteristics with WCA200A Series measurement examples. Code Domain Power Code domain power (CDP) measurements are used for validating the correctness of the transmitted code channel numbers, their powers, and their code lengths. A base stations ability to accurately control the power in individual Walsh codes is a prerequisite to properly handling multiple user links with varying RF losses and to ensure interferencefree transmissions. Inadequate or unbalanced power can result in loss of quality and channel capacity. In a cdma2000 1xEV-DO system, all channels are I/Q separated, so CDP must be measured for each channel

separately. The only exception is the data channel of the forward link. The forward channels Preamble, Data, MAC and Pilot are time division multiplexed, so CDP must be measured for each multiplexed division.

Figure 2. Forward link code domain power measurement.

Figure 2 shows the CDP measurement results for the signal including active and idle slots. The user can select a desirable half slot that includes any combination of the channels. The WCA200A Series Wireless Communication Analyzers allow other graphs to be displayed with the CDP graph. It is very useful, for example to display a symbol level constellation or EVM vs. symbol graph with the CDP graph in order to confirm the cause of the errors of code channel. In reverse link measurements, the different lengths of Walsh codes are used. The Wireless Communication Analyzer measures the ratio of power in each Walsh code to the total transmitted channel power. Using the bit-reverse order for CDP display, the shorter code can be easily identified as it is displayed in the adjacent vertical bars with a horizontal arrow (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Reverse link code domain power measurement.

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Forward & Reverse Link Measurements

Application Note

In Figure 4, code domain power for the RRI, DRC, ACK and Data channels are compared with the pilot channel power which doesnt include RRI channel period.
Data Structure of Forward Link
Forward Traffic Channel Control Channel QPSK/8PSK/1 6QAM TDM (in slots) 16 Ary Walsh Covers I/Q ch Data Chips T D M T D M

QPSK

Preamble

All '0'

even i : Wi/2

32

I ch (Q ch:0)

Preamble Chips (TDM with Data Chips in front of the data packets)

odd i : W(i-1)/2

32

RPC Channel

RPC ch gain(i)

TDM (in slots)

even i : Wi/2

64

I ch

MAC Chips (4 repetition per slot)

DRCLock Channel

DRCLock ch gain(i)

odd i : W(i-1)/2+32

64

Q ch

RA Channel

RA ch gain

W2

64

I ch

Pilot Channel

All '0'

Walsh Cover 0

I ch (Q ch:0)

Pilot Chips

i: MAC index, RPC: Reverse Power Control, DRCLock: Data Rate Control Lock, RA: Reverse Activity

Reverse Access Channel

I ch Pilot channel 128bits '0' /slot W016 (gain only at preamble)

Q ch

Data channel

256bits /frame

W2

gain

Reverse Traffic Channel

I ch Pilot ch RRI ch ACK ch DRC ch 112 bits '0' /slot 3 bits/frame 1 bit/slot 4 bits/slot 3 bits/slot DRC cover symbol Data ch 256 bits/frame 512 1024 2048 4096 1/4 turbo coding 1/4 1/4 1/4 1/2 256 bits/frame (coded) 128 bit/slot (repetition) 16 bits/slots (coded) 16 TDM 112 W016

(transmitted half slot) Wi8 Select i

W4

gain gain (mid slot starting)

Q ch

W816

8 repetition 4 2 1 1

W2

gain

RRI: Reverse Rate Indicator, DRC: Data Rate Control, frame = 16 slots
Figure 4. Code domain power comparison.

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Forward & Reverse Link Measurements

Application Note

Modulation Accuracy Modulation accuracy measurements provide a tool for judging the quality of the transmitted CDMA signal and offer a quick view into the overall performance of the system. The two primary metrics used to determine modulation accuracy are error vector magnitude (EVM) and waveform quality (:Rho). EVM is a modulation domain metric determined by the ratio of the magnitude of the error vector to the magnitude of the ideal vector.

is a time domain metric determined by the normalized

correlated power between the actual waveform and the ideal waveform. cdma2000 1xEV-DO specifies that overall_1, overall_2 and pilot in the forward link shall be greater than 0.912, but should be greater than 0.97. For the reverse link, cdma2000 1xEV-DO specifies that overall shall be greater than 0.944. overall_1 and overall are defined for the 1024 chips of a half slot. overall_2 is defined for the last 512 chips of a half slot plus the first 512 chips of the next half slot. pilot is, of course, defined for the pilot channel. An example of a modulation accuracy measurement is displayed in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Modulation Accuracy Comparison.

Modulation Accuracy is a chip level measurement. It can be useful, however, to switch the display between the chip level and the symbol level graphs, especially when waveform quality errors are thought to exist in the symbol level. These symbol constellation graphs can be displayed in Modulation Accuracy measurement without moving to the code domain power measurement.

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Forward & Reverse Link Measurements

Application Note

Spurious Emissions Mask (SEM) Spurious emissions can seriously degrade signal quality. Therefore, cdma2000 1xEV-DO specifies Active slot mode and Idle slot mode in the forward link SEM measurement. For the Idle slot, the standard specifies that the active measurement shall be made during a window that starts 5 s before and stops 15 s after the MAC and Pilot Channel transmissions. There are many spurious emissions masks depending on the band class and the co-existence of any communications systems like GSM. The user typically will measure spurious emissions by using various masks for margin testing or characterizing the equipment. The WCA200A Series Wireless Communication Analyzers provide a frequency mask trigger for detecting spurious events based on both amplitude and frequency content. The instrument triggers only on signals that meet the amplitude settings within the chosen frequency ranges. Two trigger amplitude levels can be specified: one within the masked frequency area and a different level for all other frequency bands. In addition, the WCA200A Series provides a limit table editor so that the user can easily change limits values; and save/load features so the user can quickly call up saved limits and change the limits values set.

Figure 7. Limit editor.

Power versus Time (PvT) PvT is defined for both Active and Idle slots in the forward link. For Active slot, the time response of the ensemble average shall be within the limits shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Forward link Active slot PvT measurement.

For Idle slot, the time response of the ensemble average shall be within the limits shown in Figure 9.

Figure 6. SEM measurements.

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Figure 9. Forward link Idle slot PvT measurement.

Forward & Reverse Link Measurements

Application Note

The reference line for the idle slot shall be set to the value obtained in the measurement of active slot PvT. The example of PvT measurement for Idle slot is shown in Figure 10a and Figure 10b.

Mean output power of the ensemble average. (reference line)

Time response of the ensemble average. (non-idle half slot)

2.5 dB

2.5 dB

833.33 s (1024 chips) time Slot boundary Half Slot boundary

Figure 10a. PvT Mask for Active Slot.

Mean output power of the Pilot/MAC burst ensemble average. (reference line)

Time response of the ensemble average. (idle half slot)

2.5 dB 5 dB

7 dB 7 s

180.66 s (222 chips)

833.33 s (1024 chips) time Slot boundary Half Slot boundary

Figure 10b. PvT Mask for Idle Slot.

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Copyright 2004, Tektronix, Inc. All rights reserved. Tektronix products are covered by U.S. and foreign patents, issued and pending. Information in this publication supersedes that in all previously published material. Specification and price change privileges reserved. TEKTRONIX and TEK are registered trademarks of Tektronix, Inc. All other trade names referenced are the service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. 02/04 DM/WOW 37W-17150-0

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