Understanding HSDPAs implementation challenges

By David Maidment Product Manager picoChip Designs Ltd E-mail: david.maidment @picochip.com

Since its introduction, 3G technology has been heralded for its ability to deliver more voice channels and higher-bandwidth pipes. But operators have started to realize that while 3G allows for high-quality voice and media streaming services, it is a poor fit for high-speed data. High-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) technology promises to bridge the gap between 3G and the Internet, providing an overlay for the existing protocol stack that enables the delivery of high-speed data to many users in a cell. Instead of limiting high-speed data access to fewer than five users in a cell, HSDPA can deliver 384Kbps data to up to 30 users. Not simple But HSPDA is not a simple software upgrade to 3G systems. In many respects, the change from Release 99 to HSDPA is as significant as that from voice-only GSM to EDGEchanging both modulation and the way packets are processed. There are parts of the HSDPA standard that are relatively simple to implement using existing hardware. But, taken as a whole, HSDPA will simply break many deployed architectures and will require new hardware. Most base stations (also known as Node Bs) will need significant upgrades to cope with the increased data throughput and consequences of moving to a more complex protocol. HSDPA increases the downlink data rate within a cell to a theoretical maximum of 14Mbps, with 2Mbps on the uplink. However, it is not about delivering Ethernet bandwidth to one fortunate user. What is important is the ability to reliably deliver many sessions of high-speed, bursty data to a large number of users within

that cell. The changes that HSDPA enables include better quality and more reliable, more robust data services. In other words, while realistic data rates may only be a few Mbps, the actual quality and number of users achieved will improve significantly. Burst problems IP is a bursty protocol that demands changes to the widebandCDMA (W-CDMA) protocol stack to support IP efficiently. Bursty protocols are a poor fit with dedicated channels (DCHs) that are used in existing W-CDMA networks. Although the DCH can support many different types of traffic, use of the channel for bursty traffic is quite low. This is because the process of channel reconfiguration that can be used to tune the DCH for a change in traffic mix traffic is slow, taking on the order of 500ms. These issues have been addressed in Release 5 of the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, which radically changes the network to make it better suited to data traffic. Support for IPv6 has been incorporated into the core network with a key enhancement to provide high-bandwidth

support for bursty IP traffic for the mobile user. Instead of sending data using individual DCHs, HSDPA extends the downlink shared channel (DSCH), allowing packets destined for many users to be shared on one higherbandwidth channel called the high-speed DSCH (HS-DSCH). As with wired networks such as Ethernet, this allows for the more efficient use of available bandwidth. On top of that, a faster channel configuration process allows the base station to control the channel more effectively (Figure 1). Too many options There are many options available to base-station designers and operators when dealing with HSDPA. This complicates the provision of HSDPA as the network is upgraded, but intelligent choices over base-station implementation can result in higher throughput for highrevenue services, improving operators margins. The maximum bandwidth that can be achieved with HSDPA depends largely on cell size. To limit the power needed to send each bit of information, the maximum achievable bit rate tends to fall away for users

at the edge of the cell. For a large cell with a diverse range of users, the peak aggregate data rate will be in the range of 11.5Mbps. This can increase to more than 6Mbps as the cell size decreases to the microcell level and beyond. In principle, a picocell could see data rates of 8Mbps or more. To achieve higher raw data rates, HSDPA uses higher-level modulation schemes such as 16QAM at the PHY layer, together with an adaptive coding scheme based on turbo codes. Note that the modulation scheme is adaptive and changed on a per-user basis. The spreading factor used for the HSDSCH remains fixed at 16, but the coding rate can vary on a per-user basis between 1/4 and 3/4. In theory, the protocol allows an uncoded link of 4/4, but that is only useful for lab tests to achieve the theoretical maximum of 14Mbps using 16-QAM modulation. However, many of the results announced so far fall short of what is expected from a mature, robust system. In small cells (the 3G equivalent of hot spots), ver y high data rates should be realistically attained. Under poor reception conditions, the modulation can vary

HS-PDSCH

Downlink

High-speed physical downlink shared channel "The data bearer" Up to 15, always associated with a DCH Data bearer: Peak data rate 14.4Mbps SF = 16

HS-PDSCH HS-PDSCH HS-PDSCH

HS-SCCH

High-speed shared control channel "The signaling channel" Carries HARQ information and format parameters Up to 4 logical channels per UE SF = 128

Uplink

HS-DPCCH HS-DPCCH HS-DPCCH HS-DPCCH

High-speed dedicated physical control channel "Packet flow control signaling" Carries HARQ, channel quality information SF = 256

Figure 1: Instead of sending data using individual DCHs, HSDPA extends the DSCH, allowing packets destined for many users to be shared on one higher-bandwidth channel called the HS-DSCH.

as well, possibly reverting to QPSK from the higher-order modulation of 16-QAM. Link adaptation ensures the highest possible data rate is achieved both for users with good signal quality who are typically close to the base station and for more distant users at the cell edge who may receive data with a lower coding rate. The link adaptation is performed on each transmission timing interval (TTI), with the user equipment sending an estimate of the channel quality to Node B that is then used to select the modulation and coding rate for that user on the next transmission. Moving MAC control The more important change that HSDPA makes is to move control of the medium access control (MAC) layer from the radio network controller (RNC) into the base station. Crucially, this move enables the use of fastscheduling algorithms where, under constructive fading conditions, users are served data based on channel-quality estimates. This compares to risking high error rates to be experienced by users in poor reception conditions using a conventional user-priority or round-robin scheme, where the scheduler uses average channel conditions to select the modulation and coding scheme used. As a result, fast scheduling works hand-inhand with the algorithms used to select optimum modulation and coding schemes. This increases the responsiveness of the base station. The 16-QAM coding change increases the peak speed in the same way that a high-powered engine can boost the performance of a car, but it is the MAC change that makes HSDPA deliver a real-world speed increase, much like replacing a learner driver with a Formula One racing driver. Performance will be noticeably better even if 16-QAM modulation cannot be used. This demonstrates how a shift in the 3G architecture from a traditional dumb pipe with intelligent center to a more datacom-like smart edge can yield better results. Overall, the data rate has increased sevenfold, the response time was reduced by 80 percent and the algorithms, scheduling and complexity have increased

significantly. These changes will be difficult to achieve in a hardware design that was not architected to support them. Indeed, some early demonstrations only implemented a few of these features or only achieved limited data rates. While 16-QAM modulation is the most obvious change and easy to demonstrate at a trade fair, the capabilities of the MAC-hs and adaptive control loops are more important, but less visible. Developing, testing and hardening these algorithms for field deployment are the major challenges for manufacturers. Increasing complexity The improved performance and processor power provided by HSDPA implies an increase in complexity. Many high-speed feedback loops are needed to implement HSDPA efficiently and provide users with the best data rates possible.

packets can be retransmitted quickly at the request of the mobile terminal. In existing WCDMA networks, these requests are processed by the RNC. As with fast scheduling, better responsiveness is provided by HSDPA by processing the request in the base station. The hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocol developed for HSDPA allows efficient retransmission of dropped or corrupted packets. The protocol was designed to allow the average delivered bandwidth of HSDPA to be higher than would be possible if more extensive forward error correction were to be used. However, it puts significant demands on the base station, since support for HARQ calls for low latency. The latency demanded for efficient HARQ support calls for retransmissions to be processed within 2-7ms. But the feedback loop that allows HARQ to be implemented is not

cremental redundancy can be used. In this scheme, parity bits are sent to allow the mobile terminal to combine the information from the first transmission with subsequent retransmissions. The scheduler and retransmission manager require large buffers to hold all the packets that might need to be re-sent. This function was not present in earlier functions, so the supporting hardware needs to have been designed in readiness for it for existing implementations to support HSDPA at sufficiently high data rates. Factors impacting scheduling It is simple to devise a scheduling algorithm that will work well for a few users in the laboratory with artificially generated constructive fading conditions, but it is much harder to develop one that works robustly in the field for many usersall with different, complicated and

R4 Tx symbol rate Transport layer termination

lub/FP termination HS Tx encode MAC-hs

R4 Tx chip rate HS Tx chip rate

Tx sample rate To/from ADC/DAC and RF

Channel element controller R4/HS-DPCCH Rx chip rate Rx sample rate

lub

HS-DPCCH decode R4 Rx symbol rate Device 1 (PC 102) PowerPC SDRAM

Device 0 (PC 102) SRAM

Transport network layer - NBAP transport (ATM, AAL5) - Transport signaling (ALCAP) - Data stream transport (ATM, AAL2) - Specific O, A and M

Radio network layer - NBAP (TS5.433); - L1 resource management and measurement - Framing protocol termination for dedicated and common channels

Figure 2: Protocols such as HSDPA work well on parallel-processing architectures.

For example, the TTI used for modulation and coding selection for individual frames in HS-DSCH is just 2ms, compared with a typical time of 10ms (and up to 80ms) for the TTI used for power control in the existing Release 99 shared channel. Furthermore, the algorithms needed to make good use of all the possibilities provided by fast scheduling will be more complex than those implemented by existing RNC software, but those decisions have to be made within a millisecond. When link errors occur, data

one that exists in Release 99 base stations, as that function sits in the RNC for existing DCH and DSCH transmissions. Hence, not only must things work faster, but many functions are new, adding to the capabilities and intelligence of Node B. In addition to fast retransmissions, a number of techniques are used to provide the mobile terminal with a better chance of receiving the data correctly. For users with a high coding rate, simple chase combining may be used, which simply repeats the packet. For users with a low coding rate, in-

changing situations. Many circumstances will affect realworld systems, not the least of which are evolving capabilities of the terminals themselves, whether they are handsets or data cards inserted into PCs. Latency demands of HSDPA mean that designs will react differently to changing fading conditions and packet deliver y speeds. Similar problems were seen in the early days of the Internet, when interactions between the different layers of the protocol stack led to less-efficient bandwidth use than expected. Tech-

niques were developed to overcome the problems and inserted into terminal equipment and infrastructural systems to bring performance back up to their expected levels. If a scheduler is not designed to react to problems, operators may see some users with terminals that are able to handle high-speed transfers starved of bandwidth, while other users with less-capable systems use up too much of the HS-DSCH bandwidth. Such a situation will see much lower data use than expected. A more intelligent scheduler that watches for changes to channel and terminal conditionsand schedules packets for terminals that can receive at higher data rates will improve overall revenue. However, the need to support different quality-of-service (QoS) contracts with each terminal will further complicate the situation for the scheduler, as it cannot simply deny bandwidth to a terminal with a high QoS setting just because it happens to be in a poor reception area or is unable to react quickly enough to the data it receives from the base station. As well as allowing for evolution in scheduler design, in many cases, it will be desirable to have different scheduling policies in action at different times of the day or tuned for certain locations, such as an airport waiting lounge. Testing

this requires multiple scenarios to be evaluated under different loading conditions. As a result, architectures that maximize f lexibility will be key to efficient HSDPA implementation. Granularity needed Processing granularity will be an major consideration for the efficient implementation of an HSDPA-compliant base station. Systems based on a small number of high-performance DSPs tend to demand large buffers and work on large groups of data at any one time to reduce the overhead of switching between tasks. This makes things clumpy with high latency. However, such a coarse-grained approach to task scheduling is a poor fit for algorithms such as scheduling that need low latency to work effectively. Advanced silicon processes available today make it possible to implement hundreds of processors on a single chip with distributed memory blocks and an interconnect structure that efficiently delivers data needed to implement the required feedback paths. Protocols such as HSDPA, as with earlier versions of W-CDMA, work well on parallel-processing architectures, as many different processes need to happen at the same time (Figure 2). Fine-grained control will be necessary to implement features such as fast scheduling and per-

user coding and modulation adaptation. With a large number of processing elements, it becomes possible to dedicate processing and buffer resources almost on a per-user or per-function basis. For example, one processor may collate information for a processor that just runs an advanced scheduling algorithm. This allows the processor to perform scheduling decisions all the time. This will yield much lower latencies than a system where scheduling is shared with other tasks on a generalpurpose processor or DSP. Future-proofing A flexible, software-based design will be vital for future improvements to the W-CDMA service offering. HSDPA is an unbalanced system with a maximum of 14Mbps on the downlink and 2Mbps on the uplink from the terminal to the network. That can be a concern, as TCP can easily be uplink-choked if acknowledgments are slow, reducing the downlink rate. Release 6 of the 3GPP specification will change that by introducing high-speed uplink packet access (HSUPA). This allows users to take advantage of faster uplinks with lower latency when sending large files or emails. That in turn improves the efficiency of the link, increasing effective throughput even if the modulation has not changed. Indeed, without the improved

efficiency of HSUPA, it is highly likely that HSDPA will be impaired in applications that have more balanced bandwidth needs. HSUPA puts even more strenuous demands on the basestation design and processing electronics will have to deal with a much more complex decode environment in the same way that HSDPA demands much more of the terminals in decoding. HSUPA means moving control functions from the RNC to the Node B. As is the case for HSDPA, these will likely break many installed architectures. Given the speed that these changes are arriving, having a f lexible or upgradeable platform is important. HSDPA significantly improves the quality and performance of wireless data for 3G, with a corresponding impact on the operators profit. Changes to the modulation, architecture and networking control algorithm are all required. However, despite some claims, this upgrade is not simple and many base stations will require new extensive hardware if they are to deliver on the potential. Immediately following HSDPA is its counterpart for the upstream. This also has great advantages, but likely requires further hardware changes. Carriers should plan for the major opportunity, but also minimize the disruption.