ECE-T512 Wireless Systems

Link Budget/Receiver Sensitivity

Receiver Sensitivity/Link Budget

Receiver Sensitivity refers to the ability of the receiver to detect radio signals. Receivers must detect radio signals in the presence of noise
External: Atmospheric (lightning), cosmic, man-made (e.g. automobile ignition) Internal: Thermal noise

Ratio of desired signal power to thermal noise power before detection is carrier to noise ratio,

Receiver Sensitivity/Link Budget

is a function of link parameters such as:
Transmitter power Path loss Antenna gains Effective input-noise temperature of receiver

Link Budget - Formula relating above parameters to

Link Budget (in Watts linear scale)

Pt Gt Gr Pr = Lrx L path N = kT0 Bw F Pr = N Ec = N0
Carrier to Noise Ratio

Bw Rc

Modulated Symbol Signal to Noise Ratio

S rx = Lrx kT0 FRc

Ec N0

min

Pt/r = transmit/receive power Gt/r = transmit/receive antenna gains Lp = Path loss Lrx = receiver losses N = input noise k = Boltzmans constant T0 = noise temperature Bw = noise bandwidth F = noise figure degradation of SNR from input to output (Typical 5-6 dB) = carrier to noise ratio Ec = energy per modulated signal N0 = PSD of white noise Rc = modulated symbol rate Srx = receiver sensitivity

Maximum Allowable Path Loss

Ec Pt G t G r = N 0 kT0 R c FL rx L path
Using logarithmic scale, in dB:

Srx = L rx kT0 FR c

Ec N0

min

Ec N0 Srx
( dB )

=P + + t ( dB) G t ( dB) G r ( dB)

dB

kT0

( dBm / Hz )

Rc

( dBHz )

( dB )

L rx

( dB )

L path

( dB )

=L

+ + + + rx ( dB) kT0 ( dBm / Hz ) R c ( dBHz ) F( dB)

Ec N0

dB

Typical design process: 1. Find minimum Ec/N0 From knowledge of modulation and coding 2. Solve for Srx and then solve for Lpath to find maximum allowable path loss:

L path,max

=P + + t ( dB) G t ( dB) G r ( dB) ( dB )

Srx

( dBm )

Can be translated to distance to find maximum cell radius

Additional Link Budget Parameters

Margin for system loading -- Interference Loading/Margin Shadow margin Handoff gain First two factors reduce maximum allowable path loss, LMAX, but the third increases it

Reducing LMAX corresponds to decreasing design specification of cell range Current discussion is around relative link budget adjustments (for comparing different system concepts) Absolute maximum allowable path loss requires other factors specific to the system (coding techniques, use of arrays, etc.)

Interference Loading / Margin

Cell breathing - Cell size fluctuation caused by varying subscriber load causing different levels of co-channel interference and adjacent channel interference Interference Margin introduced into link budget to account for system degradation due to high traffic --- otherwise coverage will be increasingly poor near planned cell boundaries Near/far effect - power control If CCI and ACI are assumed to be white noise (accurate for these purposes) the net effect of cell breathing effects will be to increase total noise power by multiplicative factor of LI (Interference Margin) To account for Interference Loading, we reduce LMAX by LI (both in dB scale) Required LI is a function of the ability of the system to deal with interference In general LI is greater for CDMA (more interference limited) than TDMA (where overlapping BW not used) Recall: Reducing LMAX corresponds to decreasing design specification of cell range

Shadow Margin
To maintain an acceptable outage probability in the presence of shadowing effects, we introduce shadow margin Quality of radio link is acceptable only when received signal power is greater than a threshold Edge outage probability - Probability that received power is less than threshold at cell edge

Area outage probability - Probability that received power is less than threshold power averaged over entire cell area

MSHAD is the value reducing maximum allowable path loss (decreasing cell design range) to maintain acceptable outage probability when shadowing effects are taken into account

Handoff Gain
Macrodiversity concept - Link to serving basestation may be shadowed such that the power from the serving basestation is below a critical threshold --however, the link to an adjacent basestation may be above threshold

Handoff reduces required shadow margin (of a single cell) by Handoff Gain - GHO Hard handoff - Different radio channels assigned by a neighboring basestation to takeover handling of mobile user call (TDMA systems) Soft handoff - Mobile switching center selects between instantaneous received signals from a variety of basestations (CDMA systems)