PART1 LTE Tutorials Chapter 2 Wireless Fundamentals Ww ireless data rates have typically lagged wired data rates by a factor of between 10 and 100, or equivalently, by about 10-15 years for the same data rate. For exam: ple, wireless LANs were 1 Mbps (and largely unavailable) when Ethernet was 10 Mbps, advanced to 10+ Mbps when Ethernet was at 100 Mbps, and so on. Similarly, cellular communication systems have trailed residential wired broadband services by roughly the same factor. At the time of writing, 3G cellular data services such as HSDPA have finally become widespread and advertise peak data rates in the 10 Mbps and above range, but despite such claims empirically offer typical throughput only approaching 1 Mbps, which has been available in DSL or cable modem for over a decade. Why is this? Large-scale wireless networks such as LTE. and its ancestors are inherently pow inefficient and interference-limited. It is very difficult to support mobility while simul- taneously achieving a high degree of power efficiency, for example, through directional antennas. To be cost-efficient, base stations must be deployed sparingly but support large user populations, resulting in a large amount of self-interference. For these reasons, it is very difficult—if not impossible—to simultaneously achieve high coverage, capacity, and reliability at low cost and consumed power. This chapter provides a tutorial introduction to wireless channels and systems and identifies their key properties and parameters. It will help the reader appreciate why universal wireless broadband has been so difficult to achieve, and why the design of UTE, has been taken in a very different direction from its predecessors. 2.1 Communication System Building Blocks All wireless digital communication systens must possess a few key building blocks, as shown in Figure 2.1. Even an LTE system can be conceptually broken down into a. collection of links, with each link consisting of a transmitter, channel, and receiver. ‘The transmitter receives packets of bits from a higher protocol layer, and its duty is to send those bits as electromagnetic waves toward the receiver. The key steps in the digital domain are encoding and modulation. The encoder generally adds that will allow error correction at, the receiver. The modulator prepares the digital signal for the wireless channel, and may comprise a number of different operations. The modulated48 Chapter 2 Wireless Fundamentals Digital i Analog Wave} , moaer LI Tinie [form 1 bia Ler z jis) Encoder Modulator [—T7] Analog [| Module “Wires i \ Chanel i N t y i la” i 1 F 1 _[ roan RF is Decision fe Decoder fe | DS: Dae [ 1 i 1 i Figure 2.1 Wireless digital communication system digital signal is converted into a representative analog waveform by a digital-to-analog (D/A) convertor, and then upeonverted to one of the desired LTE radio frequency (RF) bands. This RF signal is then radiated as electromagnetic waves by a suitable antenna, ‘The receiver performs essentially the reverse of these operations. After downconvert- Ing the received RF signal and filtering ont signals at other frequencies, the resulting baseband signal is converted to a digital signal by an analog-to-digital (A/D) convertor. ‘This digital signal ean then be demodulated and decoded with energy and space-efficient, integrated circuits to (hopefully) reproduce the original bit stream. There are, however, a nearly endless number of choices presented to the designer of a digital communication system, The LTE standard is primarily relevant to the digital aspects of wireless communication, in particular at the transmitter side. The receiver im- plomentation is unspecified: each equipment manufacturer is welcome to develop efficient proprietary receiver algorithms. Aside from agreeing on a carrier frequency and transmit spectrum mask, there are few requirements placed on the RF units. The main reason that ‘the standard is primarily interested in the digital transmitter is that the receiver must understand what the transmitter did in order to make sense of the received signal—but not vice versa. Next, we describe the large-scale characteristics of broadband wireless channels, and see why they present such a large design challenge 2.2 The Broadband Wireless Channel: Path Loss and Shadowing ‘Tho main goal of this chapter is to explain the fundamental factors affecting the received signal in a wireless system, and how they can be modelled using a handful of parameters. ‘The relative values of these parameters, which are summarized in Table 2.1 and described throughout this section, make all the difference when designing a wireless communication system. In this section we will introduce the overall channel model, and discuss the large scale trends that affect this model.2.2 The Broadband Wireless Channel: Path Loss and Shadowing 49 Table 2.1. Key Wireless Channel Parameters Symbol Parameter a Path loss exponent v Number of IST taps in channel (v +1 is total number of taps) ca Log normal shadowing standard deviation fo Doppler spread (maximum Doppler frequency), fy = @ Speed of light v Relative speed between transmitter and receiver i Carrier frequency X Carrier wavelength, feA = ‘Channel coherence time, T. © fp! ‘Channel delay spread (inaximum) Channel delay spread (Root Mean Square) Channel coherence bandwidth, By = 77 ‘Angular spread (Root Mean Square) The overall model we will use for describing the channel in discrete time is a simple tap-delay line (TDL) Alkyd] = hod[k,t] + hidlk — 1,4) +... + hel — vf). (2.1) Here, the discrete-time channel is time-varying (so changes with respect to 4), and has non-negligible values over a span of v +1 channel taps. Generally, we will assume that, the channel is sampled at a frequency f, = 1/T, where T is the symbol period, and hence the duration of the channel in this ease is about wT. The v-+1 sampled valwes are, in general, complex numbers. ‘Assuming that the channel is static over a period of (v +1)T' seconds, the output of the channel can then be described as lb] = So Meal 22) © nk, t]eatkh 3) where [4] is an input sequence of data symbols with rate 1/7’, and + denotes convolution. In simpler notation, the channel can be represented as a time-varying (v+ 1) x 1 coluran vector:? h(t) = [ho(t) h(t) ...hel@)]". (2.4) 1 The symbol period T i the amount of time over which a single data symbol is transmitted. Hence, the data rare in a digital transmission system is directly proportional to 2. (JF denotes the standard transpose operation50 Chapter 2 a Wireless Fundamentals Although this tapped-delay line model is general and accurate, it is difficult to design a communication system for the channel without knowing some of the key attributes about h(t). Some likely questions one might have are What is the value for the total received power? In other words, what are the relative values of the hy terms? Answer: As we will see, a mumber of different effects cause the received power to vary over long (path loss), medium (shadowing), and short (fading) distances. ¢ How quickly does the channel change with the parameter t? Answer: The channel coherence time specifics the period of time over which the channel’s value is correlated. ‘The coherence time depends on how fast the trans mitter and receiver are moving relative to each other. © What is the approximate value of the channel duration v? Answer: This value is known as the delay spread, and is measured or approximated based on the propagation distance and environment, The rest of the chapter explores these questions more deeply in an effort to charac- tetize and explain these key wireless channel parameters, which are given in Table 2.1 2.2.1 Path Loss ‘The first obvious difference between wired and wireless channels is the amount of trans- mitted power that actually reaches the receiver. Assuming an isotropic antenna is used, as shown in Figure 2.2, the propagated sigual energy expands over a spherical wavefront, 0 the energy received at an antenna a. distance d away is inversely proportional to the sphere surface arca, 4rd. The free-space path loss forreula, or Friis formula, is given Figure 2.2 Free space propagation2.2 The Broadband Wireless Channel: Path Loss and Shadowing, BL more precisely as 5 p MGC. Pr PE (25) where P, and P; ate the received and transmitted powers and 2 is the wavelength. In the context of the TDL model of (2.1), P,/P; is the average value of the channel gain; that is, P,/P; = Eljbl|?, where B|-] denotes the expected value, or mathematical mean, If directional antennas are used at the transmitter or receiver, a gain of G, and/or Gy is achieved, and the received power is simply increased by the gain of these antennas. An important observation from (2.5) is that since ¢ = fed = \ = e/fe, the received power fall offs quadratically with the carrier frequency. In other words, for a given transmit power, the range is decreased when higher frequency waves are used. This has important implications for high-data rate systems, since most large bandwidths are available at higher frequencies. Range vs. Bandwidth AAs observed in (2.5), P- xx X?, which means that P. x dr. Clearly, higher frequencies suffer greater power loss than lower frequencies. As a result, lower carrier frequencies are generally more desirable, and hence very crowded. For example, compare an LTE system at 2100MHz (the new PCS frequencies) with one deployed in the newly available 700MHz, spectrum. All else being equal, the 700MIHz system will have nine times the received power. In fact, measurement campaigns have consistently shown that the effective path loss exponent a also increases at higher frequencies, dite to in- creased absorption and attenuation of high frequeney signals [27,32,33,55) 50 the difference ean be greater still. From a coverage point of view, this creates a distinct advantage for 700MHz systems. On the other hand, bandwidth at higher carrier frequencies is more plentiful, more consistently available on a global basis, and almost always less expensive. Hence, a high-rate, low-cost system would generally prefer to operate at higher frequencies, if the customer base is dense enough to overcome the coverage problems at those frequencies. Perhaps an ideal seenario from an operator standpoint would be to initially roll out LTE at ow frequencies (like 700MHz) in order to serve many customers with few base stations. Then, as the subscriber base grows to a critical mass, shift to fa shorter-range network operating at higher frequencies to support higher density at lower cost. ‘The terrestrial propagation environment is not free space. Intuitively, it seems that re~ floctions from the Earth or other objects would actually increase the received power since 3 For an ideal isotropic radiator, Gy = Gy = 152 Chapter 2. Wireless Fundamentals more energy would reach the receiver. However, becanse a reflected wave often experi- ‘ences a 180-degree phase shift, at relatively large distances (usually over a kilometer) the reflection serves to create destructive interference, and the common 2-ray approimation for path loss is: GohPh2 Pea PO, (2.6) which is significantly different from free-space path loss in several respects. First, the antenna heights now assume a very important role in the propagation, as is anecdotally familiar: radio transmitters are usually placed on the highest available object. Second, the wavelength and hence carrier frequency dependence has disappeared from the formula, which is not typically observed in practice, however. Third, and crucially, the distance dependence has changed to d~‘, implying that energy loss is more severe with distance in a terrestrial system than in free space In order to more accurately describe different. propagation environments, empirical models are often developed using experimental data. One of the simplest: and most eom- mon is the empirical path loss formula: P= PP, (4) en which groups all the various effects into two parameters, the path loss exponent a and the measured path loss P, at a reference distance of do, which is often chosen as | meter. Although P, should be determined from measurements, it is often well approximated (within several dB) as simply (X/4x)? when d, = 1. This simple empirical path loss formula is capable of reasonably representing most of the important. path loss trends with just these two parameters, at least over some range of interest, Example 2.1. Consider a user in the downlink of a cellular system, where the desired base station is at a distance of 500 meters (.5 km), and there are numerous nearby interfering base stations transmitting at the same power level. If there are three interfering base stations at a distance of | km, three at a distance of 2 km, and ten at a distance of 4 km, use the empirical path loss formla to find the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR, i.e., the noise is neglected) when a = 3, and then when a = 5. For a = 3 and do in units of kilometers, the desired received power is Prd = PrP, d3(0.5)-8, (2.8) and the interference power is Py, = PpPad3 [8(1)~9 + 8(2)~4 + 10(4)"9] (2.9)2.2 The Broadband Wireless Channel: Path Loss and Shadowing 58 ‘The SIR expressions compute to Pra pie = 227 (3.55 4B), SIR(a=5) = 10.32 (10.32 AB), SIR(a = 3) = demonstrating that the overall system performance can be substantially improved when the path loss is in fact large, These ealeulations ean be viewed as an upper bound, where the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) is less than the SIR, due to the addition of noise. This, means that as the path loss worsens, microeclls grow increasingly attractive since the required signal power can be decreased down to the noise floor, and the overall performance will actually be better than in a system with lower path loss at the same transmit power level. 2.2.2 Shadowing ‘As we have seen in the last section, path loss models attempt to account for the distance- dependent relationship between transmitted and received power. However, many factors other than distanice can have a large effect on the total received power. For example, as shown in Figure 2.3, obstacles such as trees and buildings may be located between the transmitter and receiver, and cause temporary degradation in reecived signal strength jon path wonkd result in while on the othor hand a temporary line-of-sight tran: abnormally high received power. Since modelling the locations of all objects in every possible communication environment is generally impossible, the standard method of accounting for these variations in signal strength is to introduce a random effect called shadowing, With shadowing, the empirical path loss formula becomes panne), ean) where y is a sample of the shadowing random process. Hence, the received power is now also modelled as a random process. In effect, the distance-trend in the path loss can be wy Figure 2.3 Shadowing can cause large deviations from path loss predictions.ba Chapter 2 m Wireless Fundamentals thought of as the mean (or expected) received power, while the y shadowing valne causes a perturbation from that expected value. It should be emphasized that since shadowing, is caused by macroscopic objects, typically it has a correlation distance on the order of meters or tens of meters. Hence, shadowing is often alternatively called “large-scale fading,” ‘The shadowing value x is typically modelled as a lognormal random variable, that is x= 107, where 2 ~ N(0,02) (2.11) where (0,02) is a Gaussian (normal) distribution with mean 0 and variance 03. With this formulation, the standard deviation a, is expressed in dB. Typical values for , are in the 6-12 dB range. Figure 2.4 shows the very important effect of shadowing, where 7 = 118 4B and o = 8.9 dB, respectively. Shadowing is an important effect in wireless networks because it causes the received SINR to vary dramatically over long time scales. In some locations in a given cell, reliable high-rate communication may be nearly impossible. The system design and base station deployment must account for lognormal shadowing cither through macrodiversity, vari- able transmit power, and/or by simply accepting that some users will experience poor performance at a certain percentage of locations. While on occasion shadowing can be beneficial—for example, if there is an object blocking interference—it is generally detri- ‘mental to system performance because it requires a several-dB margin to be built into Let’s do a realistic numerical example to see how shadowing, affects wireless AlIMeasuement Locations net ne Path Loss (4B) TUR Separation (km) Figure 2.4 Shadowing causes large random fluctuations about the path loss model. Figure from [42], courtesy of IEEE.