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ABSTARCT
CHAPTER 1:
1. INTRODUCTION:
The approaching 4G (fourth generation) mobile communication systems are projected to
solve still-remaining problems of 3G (third generation) systems and to provide a wide
variety of new services, from high-quality voice to high-definition video to high-data-rate
wireless channels.
The term 4G is used broadly to include several types of broadband wireless access
communication systems, not only cellular telephone systems. One of the terms used to
describe 4G is MAGIC—Mobile multimedia, Anytime anywhere, Global mobility
support, Integrated wireless solution, and Customized personal service.
As a promise for the future, 4G systems, that is, cellular broadband wireless access
systems, have been attracting much interest in the mobile communication arena. The 4G
systems not only will support the next generation of mobile service, but also will support
the fixed wireless networks.
This paper presents an overall vision of the 4G features, framework, and integration of
mobile communication. The features of 4G systems might be summarized with one word-
Integration. The 4G systems are about seamlessly integrating terminals, networks, and
applications to satisfy increasing user demands.
CHAPTER 2:
2.1 HISTORY:
The history and evolution of mobile service from the 1G (first generation) to fourth
Generation are discussed in this section. Table1 presents a short history of mobile
telephone technologies. This process began with the designs in the 1970s that have
become known as 1G. The earliest systems were implemented based on analog
technology and the basic cellular structure of mobile communication. Many fundamental
problems were solved by these early systems.
Numerous incompatible analog systems were placed in service around the world during
the 1980s.The 2G (second generation) systems designed in the 1980s were still used
mainly for voice applications but were based on digital technology, including digital
signal processing techniques. These 2G systems provided circuit-switched data
communication services at a low speed.
The competitive rush to design and implement digital systems led again to a variety of
different and incompatible standards such as GSM (Global System Mobile), mainly in
Europe : TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) (IS-54/IS- 136)
U.S. : PDC (Personal Digital Cellular)
Japan : CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) (IS-95)
These systems operate nationwide or internationally and are today's mainstream systems,
although the data rate for users in these system is very limited.
During the 1990s, two organizations worked to define the next, or 3G, mobile system,
which would eliminate previous incompatibilities and become a truly global system. The
3G system would have higher quality voice channels, as well as broadband data
capabilities, up to 2 Mbps. Unfortunately, the two groups could not reconcile their
differences, and this decade will see the introduction of two mobile standards for 3G.
A very important aspect of 2.5G is that the data channels are optimized for packet data,
which introduces access to the Internet from mobile devices, whether telephone, PDA
(personal digital assistant), or laptop. However, the demand for higher access speed
multimedia communication in today's society, which greatly depends on computer
communication in digital format, seems unlimited. According to the historical indication
of a generation revolution occurring once a decade, the present appears to be the right
time to begin the research on a 4G mobile communication system.
1G was based on analog technology and basically intended for analog phones. It was
launched in the early 1980s.
It introduced the first basic framework for mobile communications like the basic
architecture, frequency multiplexing, roaming concept etc. Access technology used was
AMPS (Advances Mobile Phone Service).
GSM was one of the main attractive sides of 2G and it introduced the concept of SIM
(Subscriber Identity Module) cards.
Main access technologies were CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and GSM
(Global System for Mobile Communication).
The basic idea of 3G is to deploy new systems with new services instead of just provide
higher bandwidth and data rate. Support for multimedia transmission is another striking
feature of 3G. It employs both circuit switching and packet switching strategies.
The main access technologies are CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), WCDMA
(Wideband CDMA), and TSSDMA (Time division Synchronous CDMA).
Most modern cellular phones are based on one of two transmission technologies:
time-division multiple access (TDMA) or code-division multiple access (CDMA)
(Riezenman 2000, 40).
2.2.1 TDMA:
TDMA, or Time Division Multiple Access, is a technique for dividing the time domain up
into subchannels for use by multiple devices. Each device gets a single time slot in a
procession of devices on the network, as seen in Figure 3.
During that particular time slot, one device is allowed to utilize the entire bandwidth of
the spectrum, and every other device is in the quiescent state.The time is divided into
frames in which each device on the network gets one timeslot.
There are n timeslots in each frame, one each for n devices on the network. In practice,
every device gets a timeslot in every frame. This makes the frame setup simpler and more
efficient because there is no time wasted on setting up the order of transmission.
This has the negative side effect of wasting bandwidth and capacity on devices that have
nothing to send (Leon-Garcia and Widjaja 2000). One optimization that makes TDMA
much more efficient is the addition of a registration period at the beginning of the frame.
During this period, each device indicates how much data it has to send. Through this
registration period, devices with nothing to send waste no time by having a timeslot
allocated to them, and devices with lots of pending data can have extra time with which to
send it.
This is called ETDMA (Extended TDMA) and can increase the efficiency of TDMA to
ten times the capacity of the original analog cellular phone network.
The benefit of using TDMA with this optimization for network access comes when data is
“bursty.” That means, at an arbitrary time, it is not possible to predict the rate or amount
of pending data from a particular host.
This type of data is seen often in voice transmission, where the rate of speech, the volume
of speech, and the amount of background noise are constantly varying. Thus, for this type
of data, very little capacity is wasted by excessive allocation.
2.2.2 CDMA:
CDMA, or Code Division Multiple Access, allows every device in a cell to transmit over
the entire bandwidth at all times. Each mobile device has a unique and orthogonal code
that is used to encode and recover the signal (Leon-Garcia and Widjaja 2000).
The mobile phone digitizes the voice data as it is received, and encodes the data with the
unique code for that
phone. This is accomplished by taking each bit of the signal and multiplying it by all bits
in the unique code for the phone.
Thus, one data bit is transformed into a sequence of bits of the same length as the code for
the mobile phone. This makes it possible to combine with other signals on the same
frequency range and still recover the original signal from an arbitrary mobile phone as
long as the code for that phone is known.
Once encoded, the data is modulated for transmission over the bandwidth allocated for
that transmission. A block diagram of the process is shown in Figure 2.
The process for receiving a signal is shown in Figure 3. Once the signal is demodulated, a
correlator and integrator pair recovers the signal based on the unique code from the
cellular phone. The correlator recovers the original encoded signal for the device, and the
integrator transforms the recovered signal into the actual data stream.
CDMA has been patented in the United States by Qualcomm, making it more expensive
to implement due to royalty fees. This has been a factor for cellular phone providers when
choosing which system to implement.
By keeping security in mind while designing the new system, the creators of 2G wireless
were able to produce a usable system that is still in use today. Unfortunately, 2G
technology is beginning to feel its age. Consumers now demand more features, which in
turn require higher data rates than 2G can handle.
A new system is needed that merges voice and data into the same digital stream,
conserving bandwidth to enable fast data access. By using advanced hardware and
software at both ends of the transmission, 4G is the answer to this problem.
CHAPTER 3:
This new generation of wireless is intended to complement and replace the 3G systems,
perhaps in 5 to 10 years. Accessing information anywhere, anytime, with a seamless
connection to a wide range of information and services, and receiving a large volume of
information, data, pictures, video, and so on, are the keys of the 4G infrastructures.
The future 4G infrastructures will consist of a set of various networks using IP (Internet
protocol) as a common protocol so that users are in control because they will be able to
choose every application and environment.
The key concept is integrating the 4G capabilities with all of the existing mobile
technologies through advanced technologies. Application adaptability and being highly
dynamic are the main features of 4G services of interest to users.
The reasons for a new generation of mobile communication are listed below:
Need for continuously increasing data rate and bandwidth to meet the multimedia
requirements.
The end user terminals should be compatible with any technology, at any time, anywhere
in the world. The basic idea is that the user should be able to take his mobile to any place,
for example, from a place that uses CDMA to another place that employs GSM.
Multimedia support:
The user should be able to receive high data rate multimedia services. This demands
higher bandwidth and higher data rate.
Personalization:
This means that any type of person should be able to access the service. The service
providers should be able to provide customized services to different type of users.
security, and QoS through reuse of existing mechanisms while still trying to work on
some mobility and handover issues”.
Therefore, it is necessary for the organization to develop an effective series of tools that
support maximum 4G security measures as a means of protecting data that is transmitted
across the network from hackers and other security violations. Because of the nature of
the 4G network, there is an increased likelihood of security attacks, and therefore,
multiple levels of security, including increased requirements for authentication, will be
necessary to protect data and information that is transmitted across the network.
One of the main goals of G4 networks is to blanket very wide geographic area with
seamless service. Obviously, smaller local area networks will run different operating
systems. The heterogeneity of these wireless networks exchanging different types of data
complicates the security and privacy issues.
The encryption and decryption methods being used for 3G networks are not appropriate
for 4G networks as new devices and services are introduced for the first time in 4G
networks.
To overcome these security and privacy issues, two approaches can be followed. The first
is to modify the existing security and privacy methods so that they will be applicable to
heterogeneous 4G networks. Another approach is to develop new dynamic
reconfigurable, adaptive, and lightweight mechanisms whenever the currently utilized
methods cannot be adapted to 4G networks.
With respect to network quality, many telecommunications providers are promising that
there will be enhanced connectivity, and the quality of data that is transmitted across the
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Wireless network 3G and 4G
network will be of the highest possible quality, as in the case of Ericsson’s 4G Network
for TeliaSonera .
The company promises that “The new 4G network will do for broadband what mobile
telephony did for voice. With real-time performance, and about 10 times higher data rates
compared to today's mobile broadband networks, consumers can always be connected,
even on the move” .
The main challenge that 4G networks are facing is integrating non-IP-based and IP-based
devices. It is known that devices that are not IP address based are generally used for
services such as VoIP. On the other hand, devices that are IP address based are used for
data delivery. 4G networks will serve both types of devices. Consequently, integrating the
mechanisms of providing services to both non-IP-based as well as IP-based devices is one
of key challenges 4G networks have to address.
To reduce operating costs, devices that operate on 4G networks should have the capability
to operate in different networks. This will not only reduce the operating cost but will also
simplify design problems and will reduce power consumption. However, accessing
different mobile and wireless networks simultaneously is one of the major issues 4G
networks have been addressing.
One mechanism that has been proposed to handle this problem is termed “multi-mode
devices”. This mechanism can be achieved through a software radio that allows the end-
user device to adapt itself to various wireless interfaces of the networks. Figure 4 shows
an example of such solution.
Due to the heterogeneity of 4G networks, wireless devices have to process signals sent
from different systems, discover available services, and connect to appropriate service
providers.
Various service providers have their own protocols which can be incompatible with each
other as well as with the user’s device. This issue may complicate the process of selecting
the most appropriate technology based on the time, place and service provided, and thus,
may affect the Quality of service provided to the end user.
Another approach to handle this problem is based overlay networks. In such case, the
end-user device is connected to different networks through an overlay network. The
overlay network performs all necessary tasks such as protocol translation and Quality of
service negotiation as depicted in Figure 5.
Managing user accounts and billing them has become much more complicated with 4G
networks. This is mainly due to heterogeneity of 4G networks and the frequent interaction
of service providers. The research community addressed this concern and proposed
several frameworks to handle the customers’ billing and user account information.
CHAPTER 4:
4.1 WIRELESSARCHITECTURE:
When the users move to the mobile zone (i.e. Highway, Beach, Remote area, etc.),the
same terminal can automatically switch to the wireless mobile networks (i.e.GPRS,W-
CDMA,cdma2000, TD-SCDMA, etc.).
Greatly increase the spectrum efficiency Mostly ensure the highest data-rate to the
wireless terminal Best share the network resources and channel utilization Optimally
manage the service quality and multimedia applications Figure 3 shows the wireless
evolution to 4G mo bile communications based on OWA platform, where 3G,Wireless
LAN and other wireless access technologies will be converged into 4G mobile platform
to deliver the best infrastructure of mobile communications with optimal spectrum
efficiency and resource management.
In fact, this OWA model had already been accepted by most wireless industries, for
example, the W-CDMA/W-LAN/Bluetooth 3-in-1 terminal is being designed in many
companies.
The global 4G Mobile R&D focuses on the following Open Wireless Architecture:
Mobile IPv6 [Johnson and Perkins, 2001, Montavont and Noel, 2002, Beloeil, 2002] is
proposed to keep any communication between a mobile node and a correspondent node
(CN) while the mobile node moves from one IPv6-based sub-network to another one.
In this design, each MN has a home address identifying its home network. Within its
home network, each MN uses the traditional routing functions to exchange IP datagram
with its CN.
Whenever an MN moves from its local network to a new network, its home address
becomes invalid. And then the MN can create a new address called care-of address (CoA)
from a router advertisement message sent by the new visited network.
A binding between MN’s CoA and its home address is updated to the MN’s home agent
to keep continuous communications between the MN and its correspondent(s). In this
way, MN’s home agent can always detect coming communication packets to MN with
MN’s home address, and locate the current position of MN with MN’s CoA.
After verifying the uniqueness of its linklocal address on the new link, the MN will create
an IPv6 address called CoA from the corresponding prefix in RA. After that, MN will
exchange binding update information which include MN’s CoA with its HA and its CN to
allow all of them to maintain their connections, shown in Figure 7
Mobile IPv6 can reasonably keep track of MN’s new address by timely binding update
between the MN and its home agent. However, before finishing binding update, data
packet communications are interrupted. The MN needs to spend time discovering new
subnet, establishing new care-of address, and exchanging information between MN and
its home agent.
For 4G high-speed data multimedia communications, all of them will create a lot of
signaling traffic and latency, resulting in packet loss.
It is even worse when an MN roams between two ARs several times. This frequent
roaming will cause pingpong effects, which refer to the situation in which too frequent
and unnecessary location updates and handoffs occur in a short time. In this case, MN
cannot keep normal continuous communications with its CN. In the meantime, all packets
destined for the old care-of address are dropped.
Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) [Soliman et al., 2001, Pack and Choi, 2003] is
developed to reduce the amount of signalling traffic required, which affects handoff
latency of MN’s communications.
Unlike MIPv6, HMIPv6 addresses the issue of local mobility and global mobility
separately, which means local handoffs are managed locally without notifying home
agent, while global mobility is managed with the
MIPv6 protocol.
In HMIPv6, the global internet is divided into regions for local area mobility and each
region is connected to the rest of IP network with a new node called Mobility Anchor
Point (MAP), which is a kind of anchor point in charge of several ARs (from 1 to k), as
shown in Figure 8.
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Wireless network 3G and 4G
In this scheme, each mobile node has two care-of addresses. One is a regional care-of
address and the other is a local care-of address. The regional care-of address is local to
the MAP's covered region. An MN communicates with its correspondent nodes via its
regional care-of address.
When an MN moves into a new region or domain, it will first get a regional care-of
address from MAP advertisement information, and then the MN will inform its home
agent and its correspondents about its “regional location” as its raw location information.
When the MN moves between two ARs in the same region covered by a same MAP, MN
will update its localization into the domain and get a new local careof address by sending
local registration to the MAP, instead of sending to its home agent.
The MAP intercepts data packets designated to MN’s regional care-of address and tunnels
them to the corresponding MN’s local care-of address. So in this way, handoff latency
and signaling traffic are reduced because each MN hides its local movements in a region
from its home agent and correspondents, and meanwhile MN can keep unbroken
communications with its correspondent(s).
CHAPTER 5:
These players will cooperate with the incumbent mobile operators to contribute additional
value to the mobile service provision process but will also compete for the lion’s share of
user revenue.
Nonetheless, mobile users will expect seamless global roaming across these different
wireless networks and ubiquitous access to personalized applications and rich content via
a universal and user-friendly interface. In studying the implications of the heralded
“Always Best Connected” vision of 4G mobile systems, we identify the notion of utility,
implicitly embedded in the “best” adjective.
Inasmuch as the network is unable to provide the required levels of service, application
will become dysfunctional and any user-perceived benefits of these applications will
remain elusive, thus leading to a degraded user experience.
Considering that a single system that optimally meets a wide range of use cases and
satisfies diverse service requirements is likely to remain an engineering utopia, we
understand that heterogeneous architectures that can exploit individual system
capabilities’ to optimally server the instant application and value-added service mix in a
flexible manner are a plausible design approach.
The goal of future mobile communication systems will be to incorporate and integrate
different wireless access technologies and mobile network architectures in a
complementary manner so as to achieve a seamless wireless access infrastructure.
It is widely accepted that the individual (wireless and/or wireline) access networks will
interface to core and/or backbone network elements over the IP protocol, the lingua
franca of networking technology.
Regardless of their particular technological blueprints (e.g., licensed or unlicensed
frequency band, mobility management protocol, etc), these wireless access networks are
expected to have the following in common:
1) A dynamic address assignment mechanism (e.g., DHCP, SLP, IPv6) that is capable of
associating a short-lived or long-lived IP address to the respective wireless interface at the
mobile terminal (e.g., Mobile IP COA association)
Technical reviews of existing wireless access standards and research contributions on the
similarities of wireless network architectures validate these assumptions.
The subscription and service profile of WH are maintained by its HA in Internet. In our
proposed WLAN/GPRS interworking architecture, two types handoff procedures are
performed..
We take the scenario that a GMS is initially in GPRS network and she maintains a session
with correspondent node (CN) N1 in the Internet through GPRS network. The terminal’s
GPRS system is active and WLAN radio system is in passive scan mode. When the GMS
moves to WLAN hotspot, her WLAN card is activated on receipt of beacon signal from
WLAN access point(AP).
The GPRS sytem is triggered off and terminal performs association with AP.
subsequently she performs MIP based registration with HA at GGSN. After MIP based
handoff completion, she can send packets to CN through WLAN with much higher speed
and packets are directly routed in the Internet.
Thus GGSN acts as an anchor point of GMS while she is in a WLAN hotspot. The
incoming packets from the Internet are routed to GGSN. If destination WMS is in a
WLAN hotspot, GGSN forwards the packets to responsible FA using MIP tunneling.
GPRS entertains IP connection for a WH because the GPRS operator has an agreement
with the Internet. The GPRS network maintains the profiles for service and QoS that a
WH can avail through GPRS network. A WH may have subscriptions to access GPRS
network from selected cells or routine area also.
When WH comes out of a WLAN hotspot, she will in cellular coverage. Therefore, her IP
based ongoing sessions can continue through GPRS network. She will perform MIP
based signaling for mobility and handoff management through GPRS netowrk.
GPRS network provides the bearer service for IP packets in conjunction with PDP
context maintained at SGSN and GGSN. The MIP registration request is a IP packet
which needs PDP context for transportation through GPRS network.
This packet is dealt by FA at GGSN. Hence, after GPRS attach procedure, a WH needs
two passes for MIP registration. In first pass, PDP context is created in GPRS network
and in second pass, MIP registration is performed . The handoff delay in two-pass method
is substantially larger.
We propose a one-pass technique for both PDP context activation and MIP registration to
reduce the handoff delay.
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Wireless network 3G and 4G
Before sending the activate-PDP-context request message, the GPRS session management
(GSM) entity retrieves the MIP registration request [MRR] packet from network layer.
Then, it inserts this packet in the information field of PDP request message.
Following sequential operations are performed by a WH and GPRS network for hand off
management.
- WH performs GPRS attachment signalling with GPRS network and terminal equipment
attains the GPRS attached state.
- GSM sub-layers of terminal retrieves the MRR packet from network layer.
- GGSN fills the care-of-address field of MRR message with the PDP address and gives
the MRR packet to FA.
- Now FA processes the MRR packet for MIP signaling with HA and simultaneously,
create-PDP-context response message travel through GPRS network.
- FA receives the MIP registration response packet from HA and gives this packet to
GGSN addressed to WH.
- Now PDP is already established. Therefore the MIP response packet is tunneled to
SGSN using GTP protocol and SGSN sends this packet to WH.
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Wireless network 3G and 4G
Figure 10: The sequence of signaling for MIP based handoff from WLAN to GPRS
CHAPTER 6:
OFDM-TDMA:
In OFDM-TDMA, a particular user is given all the sub-carriers of the system for any
specific OFDM symbol duration. Thus, the users are separated via time slots. All symbols
allocated to all users are combined to form a OFDM-TDMA frame.
The number of OFDM symbols per frame can be varied based on each users requirement.
Frequently, an error correcting code is applied to the data to compensate for the channel
nulls experienced by several random bits.
This scheme allows MS to reduce its power consumption, as the MS shall process only
OFDM symbols which are dedicated to it. On the other hand, the data is sent to each user
in bursts, thus degrading performance for delay constrained systems delay constrained
systems.
OFDMA:
In OFDMA, available sub-carriers are distributed among all the users for transmission at
any time instant.
The subcarrier assignment is made for the user lifetime, or at least for a considerable time
frame.
The scheme was first proposed for CATV systems and later adopted for wireless
communication systems.
OFDMA can support a number of identical downstreams, or different user data rates, [e.g.
assigning a different number of sub-carriers to each user].
Based on the sub-channel condition, different baseband modulation schemes can be used
for the individual sub-channels, e.g. QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM etc.
This is investigated in numerous papers and referred to as adaptive subcarrier, bit, and
power allocation or Quality of Service (QoS) allocation.
OFDM-CDMA:
In OFDM-CDMA, user data is spread over several subcarriers and/or OFDM symbols
using spreading codes, and combined with signal from other users .
OFDM provides a simple method to overcome the Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) effect
of the multi-path frequency selective wireless channel, while CDMA provides the
frequency diversity and the multi-user access scheme.
Different types of spreading codes have been investigated. Orthogonal codes are preferred
in case of DL, since loss of orthogonality is not as severe in DL as it is in UL.
Several users transmit over the same sub-carrier. In essence this implies frequency
domain spreading, rather than time domain spreading, as it is conceived in a Direct
Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) system.
The channel equalization can be highly simplified in DL, because of the one tap channel
equalization benefit offered by OFDM.
6.2.1 Flexibility:
OFDM-TDMA
Different OFDM symbols can be allocated to different users based on certain allocation
conditions. Since
the OFDM-TDMA concept allocates the whole bandwidth to a single user, a reaction to
different subcarrier
attenuations could consist of leaving out highly distorted sub-carriers .
The number of OFDM symbols per user in each frame can be adapted accordingly to
support heterogeneous data rate requirements.
An efficient multiple access scheme should grant a high flexibility when it comes to the
allocation of time-bandwidth resources.
On the one hand, the behavior of the frequency- selective radio channel should be taken
into account, while on the other hand the user requirements for different and/or changing
data rates have to be met.
For example, both for OFDMA and OFDM-TDMA, the usage of AMC on different sub-
carriers, as proposed in figure 7, may increase overall system throughput and help in
further exploiting CSI.
OFDMA
Here, the fact that each user experiences a different radio channel can be exploited by
allocating only “good” sub-carriers with high SNR to each user.
Furthermore, the number of sub-channels for a specific user can be varied, according to
the required data rate. Thus, multi-rate system can be achieved without increasing system
complexity very much.
OFDM-CDMA
In OFDM-CDMA, the flexibility lies in the allocation of all available codes to the users,
depending on
the required data rates. As OFDM-CDMA is applied using coherent modulation, the
necessary channel
estimation provides information about the subcarrier attenuations; this information can be
used when
performing an equalization in the receiver.
OFDM-TDMA
Unit resource is one OFDM symbol. Thus, in a frame unit (consists of a number of basic
OFDM symbols), the symbols can be wholly assigned to any particular user.
Thus, similar to OFDMA, static and dynamic allocation can be implemented. In largely
static environment, such as indoor scenario, Dynamic Sub- Carrier Allocation (DSA)
based on CSI may not give much improvement in OFDM-TDMA compared to static
allocation scheme.
For very dynamic environment, DSA can be very beneficial for this scheme. But, from
another point of view, channel changes very frequently for a very dynamic wireless
channel, and so, static allocation may be enough to avoid fading. It can be safely assumed
that resource allocation is much simpler in this scheme than OFDMA.
OFDMA
Static:
Sub-carriers are allocated to a user for the entire duration of the connection time without
considering CSI. If the user is allocated some sub-carriers that are in fade, the signal will
remain faded until the user moves out of the fade or the sub-carriers are re-allocated after
some number of frames. So, when a user is in fade in allocated sub-carriers, it remains
there for long time, which is not desirable.
Dynamic:
Sub-carriers are allocated dynamically, assuming that the base station has instantaneous
(or near-instantaneous) knowledge of the CSI for each user. This is called DSA. In this
case, the subcarriers are allocated in real-time based on the knowledge of channel strength
at all sub-carriers for all users.
In the interleaved case, the sub-carriers are successively assigned to the different users
and then interleaved over the total number of sub-carriers. One important advantage is
that it has potential to reap more channel diversity gain.
The disadvantage is that issues like synchronization for the entire OFDM symbol become
crucial, as the user sub-channel is scattered over the OFDM symbol.
In the dynamic sub-carrier assignment case, CSI is used to assign the sub-carriers best
suited for each user. This is advantageous in the sense that users at different locations
have different channel conditions, and most likely different optimal sub-carriers.
The benefit is that high throughput rate can be obtained, the disadvantages are that;
channel information is needed, sub-carriers must be reassigned whenever conditions
change, leading to additional signalling overhead whenever sub-carriers are reassigned.
OFDM-CDMA
All sub-carriers are shared by all the users. Thus, resource allocation does not include
sub-carrier allocation. In this scheme, user code allocation is the resource allocation.
Practically, any well-known code allocation scheme used in Wideband Code Division
Multiple Access (WCDMA) system can be adopted for OFDM-
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Wireless network 3G and 4G
OFDM-TDMA
Besides static and dynamic allocation of OFDM symbols for different users, symbol
hopping can also be implemented in OFDM-TDMA system. As it is mentioned earlier,
this can bring some benefits for severely time and frequency selective outdoor scenario.
OFDMA
When it is not possible to be obtained CSI at the transmitter, an alternative to DSA can be
Subcarrier hopping (SCH) schemes. Frequency hopping in OFDMA systems can be
obtained in two ways: contiguous sub-band hopping and sub-carrier hopping.
This is very similar to Fast Low-Latency Access with Seamless Handoff Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (FLASH-OFDM) system. Depending on the frequency
of the hopping schemes, SCH-OFDMA can be divided into two kinds of systems, namely
Fast Sub-Carrier Hopped Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
(FSCHOFDMA) and Slow Sub-Carrier Hopped Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access (SSCH-OFDMA).
In an FSCH-OFDMA system, once sub-carriers are allocated to users, the index of the
assigned subcarrier
Department of electronics and communication Page 35
Wireless network 3G and 4G
is changed, i.e. hopped at every OFDMA symbol. Users are separated by non-overlapping
subcarrier hopping patterns.
These patterns constitute the hop-set available at the BS. The arrangement of the hop-set
available at neighboring cells depends on the cellular structure of the system. SSCH-
OFDMA system is very similar to FSCH-OFDMA system, except that the hopping
duration is at least a number of OFDM symbols.
OFDM-CDMA
The OFDM-CDMA scheme that we are referring here was actually proposed in the name
of Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA).
One variation of this scheme is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing with Code
Division Multiplexing (OFDMA-CDM), where one user is given a set of sub-carriers and
all the data symbols it has to transmit, are spread on those subcarriers only and
transmitted in OFDM fashion.
There is a need of such variation of the original OFDMCDMA scheme to make it even
more usable. The afore-mentioned scheme has the advantage that it does not introduce
Multiple Access Interference (MAI) as MC-CDMA does.
OFDM-TDMA
Users need to process the data symbols that are intended for them only. This is a feature
that gives OFDM-TDMA a little advantage over other two schemes.
OFDMA
As all the active users are present at every OFDM symbol in OFDMA, it is a requirement
that all active
users need to receive, detect and decode every OFDM symbol. This is expensive, in terms
of power
requirement etc.
OFDM-CDMA
Similar to OFDMA, all the users need to receive and decode all the symbols in OFDM-
CDMA system.
6.2.5 Synchronization:
In the UL, OFDMA and OFDM-CDMA require that active users be synchronized in time
and frequency to maintain orthogonality among themselves. Otherwise, MUI will occur.
Complex solutions to solve this problem are devised in the literature. In the DL, BS
transmitter can perform the complex calculations to solve the PAPR problem. It can be a
severe problem in UL, where only a small number of sub-carriers are used, thus, PAPR
can be very high. This is the case for all the schemes being discussed in the document.
OFDM-TDMA
The Bit Error Rate (BER) performance in this scheme is not different from basic OFDM
scheme, unless a form of AMC is used.
OFDMA
The BER of an OFDMA system is given by the modulation scheme used and averaged
over the channel distribution. For the same channel conditions, the overall BER of an
OFDMA system does not differ from the one found for OFDM systems.
When CSI-based resource allocation is used to exploit Multi-user Diversity (MuD), then
the BER performance of OFDMA gets much better compared to single-user basic OFDM
system.
OFDM-CDMA
The amount of MAI depends on particular combining scheme. This dominates the BER
performance. In
general, BER degrades with increasing number of users
.
Using schemes such as soft interference cancellation or Maximum Likelihood Symbol-
by-Symbol Estimation (MLSSE) can improve the performance. Otherwise the
performance depends a lot on the channel estimation and equalization.
OFDM-TDMA
The spectral efficiency is equals to that of OFDM for a single user case. The spectral
efficiency depends on the baseband modulation scheme, and the code rate used.
OFDMA
OFDMA might have lower spectral efficiency than OFDM-TDMA when it is used in the
uplink.
OFDM-CDMA
High throughput under ideal conditions can be achieved. Due to the available frequency
diversity via spreading across all the sub-carriers, BER performance improves, which in
turn also improves the throughput.
In the DL, delay spread tolearance of all basic schemes does not differ from the basic
OFDM scheme: Delay spread can be tolerated, provided that the guard interval is larger
than maximum delay spread.
In the uplink, due to different timing-offset between users, the delay spread tolerance of
OFDMA and OFDM-CDMA might be affected.
6.2.10 Mobility
OFDM-TDMA
Mobility gives Doppler spread, and this causes ICI. In OFDM-TDMA, a single user is
allocated all the sub-carriers of any particular symbol, thus, MAI due to ICI does not
happen in this scheme, while this happens in other two schemes.
Because of this, the error floor due to Doppler spread in OFDM-TDMA happens at a
much lower BER and higher SNR than in other schemes.
OFDMA
Mobility can simply be evaluated on the ratio between OFDM symbol duration and
channel coherence time, where Ts < Tc. In Appendix A.2, coherence time for different
user speeds is shown.
If compared to the IEEE 802.14.4c downstream mode from Table 4.1, it is obvious that
for the 2k mode, extreme mobility cannot be handled, whereas low mobility is not a
problem.
OFDM-CDMA
Maximum doppler spread tolerance is dependent on the sub-carrier spacing. As such there
is MAI due to non-ideal channel compensation under synchronous environment as well.
Doppler spread leading to frequency spread will add to it since inter sub-carrier
interference will come into play, further worsening the situation.
But if the sub-carrier spacing is large enough, which is again a system design issue as in
an OFDM system, such that the doppler frequency is very small compared to the sub-
carrier spacing, i.e. normalized doppler frequency is small and the ICI will be less.
Otherwise the system will become
interference limited.
6.2.11 Latency:
OFDM-TDMA
Processing is done on every OFDM symbol, but a user gets service once in every U _ Ts,
given that there are U number of users in the system and everyone is given one OFDM
symbol per frame.
OFDMA
In OFDMA the processing is made on one OFDM symbol, giving that the latency is equal
to Ts.
OFDM-CDMA
OFDM-TDMA
No intra-cell interference is present also as only one user is transmitting at any certain
OFDM symbol duration.
OFDMA
For OFDMA, there will be no Intra-Cell interference, since all users are using a unique
sub-set of the available sub-carriers.
Depending on ICI and Doppler spread, the users who occupy neighboring subcarriers,
may interfere each other.
OFDM-CDMA
In DL, the effect of MAI is already mentioned before. It occurs due to orthogonality loss
among spreading
codes because of channel fading.
It has also been noted that channel estimation error introduces intra-cell interference and
highly influences the performance of the system.
OFDM-TDMA
Inter-cell interference happens only if other cells are using the same time-slot and carrier
frequency as the current cell.
OFDMA
In a multi-cell environment there will be interference, assuming that the same carrier
frequency is used. The reason is that sub-carriers are assigned to sub-channels, and when
a neighbor cell uses the same sub-carriers there will be interference.
OFDM-CDMA
With proper choice and allocation of codes to users based on location and co-ordination
between BS, inter-cell interference can be kept to a quite low value, but in general, the
system is susceptible to intercell
interference.
One of the major problems associated with transmitting information from subscriber
premises is so called
NarrowBand Interference (NBI). In OFDM-based systems, the effect can be loss of sub-
carriers and degraded BER performances.
OFDM-TDMA
OFDM-TDMA much more severely than OFDMA systems. As only one user occupies
the whole bandwidth, if the particular user is subdued with high Signal to Interference
Noise Ratio (SINR), then the whole system collapses.
This is evident in the results mentioned in the above mentioned paper, where it is shown
that OFDM-TDMA collapses at around 2dB of SINR, which is a staggering 30dB higher
than OFDMA systems. In summary, a low interference level jams a few carriers in
OFDMA and slightly reduces the system capacity, whereas an OFDM-TDMA system can
still operate at its full capacity.
OFDMA
OFDMA performs better when NBI is present in the system. NBI affects certain sub-
carriers, thus, only the users who are allocated those sub-carriers are affected by
increasing NBI.
Thus, number of users operating at a certain BER when NBI increases is reduced
gradually, and only at very low SINR, i.e. at -30dB level, all users are out of service due
to NBI.
OFDM-CDMA
Users spread their signals over whole of the bandwidth, thus, NBI does not affect the
system as it does in OFDM-TDMA. This is one of the benefits that is brought by
incorporation of CDMA with OFDM.
OFDM-TDMA
The same result mentioned below in case of OFDMA should be valid for OFDM-TDMA
system also.
OFDMA
It was shown that the reuse factor for OFDMA in multi-cell environments is at least 3.
This is shown by simulation.
OFDM-CDMA
This does not have unity frequency re-use factor, but using a PN-sequence might provide
this benefit.
Usual network control related signalling overhead is almost similar to all of the systems.
The main difference appears when the amount of signalling is compared for resource
allocation purpose.
OFDM-TDMA
This means that MSs need to send much less information to BS for allocation purposes.
Similarly, the BS needs to send only the information of OFDM symbol by symbol
allocation. This is much smaller compared subcarrier by subcarrier allocation information
in OFDMA systems, especially for large bandwidth with large number of subcarriers in
the system.
With different number of users in the system, OFDM-TDMA requires the least amount of
signalling compared to OFDMA and OFDM-CDMA schemes.
OFDMA
For static allocation, once the allocation information is conveyed to the user, the BS does
not need any other resource allocation based signalling. For DSA, CSI is required
continuously, thus significant signalling is needed for transmitting both channel
information and subcarrier allocation.
In case of SCH systems, conveying the hopping seed at the beginning of communication
is enough for the system to perform perfectly.
OFDM-CDMA
The signalling overhead is very limited compared to above two schemes. Some
information about spreading code is enough for MS to start transmitting.
OFDM-TDMA
Implementation complexity is very much similar to basic OFDM system. Even when
dynamic allocation is used, the decision about resource allocation needs to be taken once
per symbol, which requires much smaller effort than deciding on every sub-carrier.
OFDMA
Thus, continuous channel estimation for all the users on whole band and computationally
extensive resource assignment policy increases the system complexity very much.
OFDM-CDMA
Equal Gain Combining (EGC), Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) and Controlled
Equalization (CE) are some of the simple methods of detection. Several other complex
detection schemes exist such as Soft Interference Cancellation and MLSSE.
The performance of the scheme increases with the complexity of the detection scheme. It
is a purely implementation tradeoff that needs to be decided for a particular situation.