UMTS link budgets

UMTS link budgets

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UMTS link budgets

Contents
What is a link budget?
Link budget parameters.
Uplink link budget.
Downlink link budget.
Cell ranges.
Cell loading.

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UMTS link budgets

The Link Budget Parameters

Information Rate
Interference margin (Intercell & Intracell)
Fast Fading Margin
Soft Handover Gain
Required Eb/No
Body Loss
Penetration Loss
Mobile antenna Gain
Base station antenna gain
Shadow Fading Margin

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UMTS link budgets

Information Rate
This is the bit rate that the user service requires.

Currently in UMTS the following non packet options are

supported: 4.75,5.15,5.9,6.7,7.4,7.95,10.2,12.2kbit/s (AMR
Voice Codec), 32, 64, 144, 384 kbits/s LCD

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UMTS link budgets

Interference margin
The interference margin is used to account for the increase in
the interference levels within the cell due to other users.

It introduces in the link a budget a way for accounting for the

loading of the cell.

The more loading is allowed the larger a margin is needed.

Typical values for the interference margin are between 1-3dB

corresponding to 20%-50% loading.

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Fast Fading margin

The Fast Fading margin is included to account for the
additional headroom needed in the mobile station transmition
power to maintain adequate power.

This is a consequence of the fast power control utilised in

UMTS

Typical values are between 2-5dB

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Soft Handover gain

Soft handover gain accounts for the diversity gain achieved
during soft handover conditions.

The soft handover gain is extracted by the receiver being able

to compensate for both slow and fast fading since it has
information arriving from almost uncorrelated paths.

It is highly sensitive to channel conditions and number of link

available.

Typical values are usually assumed to be between 2-4dB

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Required Eb/No
This the required Eb/No needed by the user service to maintain
error free links.

It can be affected by parameters such as

-channel type
-mobile speed
-QoS
-receiver implementation

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UMTS link budgets

Body Loss
The body loss introduces in the link budget the effect of the
human being handling the terminal.

It is a variable parameter that in general depend on the

operational conditions the environment and the human being.
Usually an average value is introduced in the link budget.

Typical values are about 3dB

Note that in UMTS it is expected that for a lot of non voice

The use of the terminal will not result in losses due to the
body.
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Penetration Loss
Penetration Loss accounts for the environment the mobile
operates in.

Typical examples include:

Indoor. Typical generalised value of about 15dB
In car. Typical generalised value of about 8dB

Note that the actual value between different environments can

vary significantly. Ideally measurements for the local
conditions are needed

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UMTS link budgets

Antenna Gain
Accounts for the gain at the antennas of the mobile terminal
and Base Station

Typical values for the Mobile station are 0dBi although it is

expected that some data terminal will have antennas giving
slightly higher gain ~2dBi.

Base station antennas gains are dependant on configuration but

Typically are similar to DCS 1800 values.

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Shadow fading Margin

The shadow fading margin introduces a way to include in the
link budget the effect of reliability required.

It is dependant on the environment surrounding the base station

and mobiles.

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Processing gain
Processing gain Gp is the ratio of transmission bandwidth Bt to
information bandwidth Bi.
Gp = __
Bt
Bi
It represents the ability of the receiver to disregard unwanted spread
signals.
P Rx Signal (= Tx Signal + Noise)

f
P
Channel
f

Spreading Code Signal

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Receiver Noise
The receiver noise power is mostly thermal noise which is increased by
the receiver noise figure.
Thermal noise can only be reduced by cooling the receiver.
The only way of reducing the level of noise is by selecting a receiver
with a low noise figure.
Receiver noise power = Receiver noise density + Information rate
[dbm/Hz] [db Hz]

Receiver noise density = Thermal noise density + Receiver noise figure

[dbm/Hz] [dbm/Hz] [db]

Information Rate = 10 log (Chip Rate)

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Uplink Budget
Mobile Terminal Side Base Station Side

Losses Losses

Transmitted Maximum Receiver Required

EIRP
Power acceptable Sensitivity Eb/No
Uplink
Path Loss
Gains Gains

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Downlink Budget
Base Station Side Mobile Terminal Side

Loading
Losses
Factor

Maximum
acceptable Uplink Receiver Required
EIRP
Uplink Path loss Sensitivity Eb/No
Path Loss

Reliability Gains Losses

margin Gains

Environment Output Power

Correction per link

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An Example of the Uplink Budget
Service type RT 144kbit/s, 3km/h

Mobile speed km/h 3

Frequency MHz 2000 F
Chip Rate MHz 3.84 W
Data Rate kb/s 144 R

Uplink link budget

Max Load 50 %
Transmitter (MS) BS
Max transmitted Power dBm 24 a
Antenna Gain dBi 0 b
Body Loss dB 0 c
Cable Loss 0 cl
EIRP dB 24 d=a+b-c-cl

Receiver (BS) MS
Thermal Noise density dBm/Hz -174 e
Receiver NF dB 5 f
Receiver Noise density dBm/Hz -169 g=e+f
Receiver Noise Power (Pn) dBm -103.1566878 h=g+10*log(W*10^6)
Interference Margin (Ir) dB 3.010299957 I
Total interference (Io) dBm -103.1566878 j=10*LOG(10^((i+h)/10)-10^(h/10))
Total interfernce + noise (Io+Pn) dBm -100.1463878 k=10*log(10^(h/10)+10^(j/10))

Required Eb/No dB 1.5 l

MDC Gain dB 0 Ia
Processing Gain 14.25968732 m=10*LOG(W/R)
Receiver sensitivity dBm -112.9060751 n=k-m+l-Ia

Antenna Gain dBi 18 o

Cable Loss dB 2 p
Body Loss pbl
Fast Fading margin (TPC) dB 4 q

Max Path loss dB 148.9060751 r=d-n+o-p-q

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An Example of the Downlink Budget
Downlink link budget

Max Load 50 %
Transmitter (MS)
Max transmitted Power dBm 8.564573042 dBm/channel a=d-b+cl
Antenna Gain dBi 18 b
Body Loss dB c
Cable Loss 2 cl
EIRP dB 24.56457304 d=r+n-o+p+q+pbl

Receiver (BS)
Thermal Noise density dBm/Hz -174 e
Receiver NF dB 8 f
Receiver Noise density dBm/Hz -166 g=e+f
Receiver Noise Power (Pn) dBm -100.1566878 h=g+10*log(W*10^6
Interference Margin (Ir) dB 3.010299957 I
Total interference (Io) dBm -100.1566878 j=10*LOG(10^((i+h)/
Total interfernce + noise (Io+Pn) dBm -97.1463878 k=10*log(10^(h/10)+

Required Eb/No dB 5.5 l

MDC Gain dB 1.2 Ia
Processing Gain 14.25968732 m=10*LOG(W/R)
Receiver sensitivity dBm -107.1060751 n=k-m+l-Ia

Antenna Gain dBi 0 o

Cable Loss dB 0 p
Body Loss 0 pbl
Fast Fading margin (TPC) dB 0 q

Path loss dB 131.6706482

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UMTS link budgets
An Example of the Range Dimensioner
Cell Dimensioning
Path loss dB 148.9060751

standard deviation 12
Added In-car loss dB 0
Added In building Loss dB 15
Standard Deviation (Sw) in dB 12
path loss exponent (n) 3.5
Area Location probability 80.00000183
Log Normal fading margin dB 4.235426958
Soft Handover Gain dB 2

Allowed Path loss 131.6706482

Frequency MHz 2000

Base Station Antenna Height (Hb
Mobile Antenna Height (Hm)
Road Width (Rw)
Road orientation (ro)
Building separation (Bs)
Building Height (BH)
m 30
m 1.5
m 20
deg 90
m 50
m 25

Clutter Correction loss (cm) 4

Mobile antenna height correction (a(hm)) 0
0.516047894
range in (Okumura-Hata) km 0.516016893

Range (Walfish-Ikegami) km 0.325279716

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Typical Ranges in UMTS

Indoor with 95% probability
Dense Urban SubUrban Rural Open
Urban
12 kbps Speech 0.28 0.39 0.99 1.28 2.16
64 kbps RT data 0.25 0.34 0.85 1.11 1.87
144 kbps NRT data 0.29 0.40 1.00 1.30 2.19
384 kbps NRT data 0.23 0.31 0.78 1.01 1.71

Outdoor with 95% probability

Dense Urban SubUrban Rural Open
Urban
12 kbps Speech 1.40 1.82 3.07 3.98 5.17
64 kbps RT data 1.21 1.57 2.66 3.45 4.48
144 kbps NRT data 1.42 1.84 3.10 4.03 5.24
384 kbps NRT data 1.11 1.44 2.43 3.15 4.10

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Uplink loading

The loading factor is defined as

Prxd
UL =
I total

Where Prxd is the received power for that link

Itotal is the total interference in the cell
It can be linked to the Noise Rise as
1
NoiseRise =
1 UL

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Uplink loading

The loading factor can also be linked to the user generated

traffic as: N
= (1 + i )
1
UL
W
j= 1
1+
(Eb N 0 )j R j j
Where Rj is the bit rate of the j-th link in the cell
j is the user activity factor
i is the other to own cell interference ratio
Eb/N0 is the target for the j-th link in the cell
W is the chip rate

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Uplink loading and Range

Effect of loading on cell range
2.5

Voice 12.2 kbit/s, 3km/h

2
Range (km)

1.5

0.5

0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90
Cell Loading

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Downlink loading

In the Downlink the loading factor can be expressed as

(1 j + ij)
N
1
DL =
W
j =1
1+
(Eb N 0 )j R j j
Where j is the orthogonality factor in the downlink
Rj is the bit rate of the j-th link in the cell
j is the user activity factor
i is the other to own cell interference ratio
Eb/N0 is the target for the j-th link in the cell
W is the chip rate

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Base Station Transmitted Power Dimensioning

The limiting factor in the Downlink is the maximum power

that the amplifier can provide.
An estimate of the Base Transmitted power can be
determined using: N (Eb N o )j
N rf W L j
j =1 (W R )j
Ptotal _ BS =
1 DL

Where Nrf is the noise spectral density at the receiver

N rf = 108.2 + NF

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Coverage vs Capacity relation

160

Capacity is uplink
limited

155

NRT Data 144k UL Pathloss

Pathloss

NRT Data 384k UL Pathloss

DL Pathloss, low asymmetry
DL Pathloss, medium asymmetry
DL Pathloss, high asymmetry

150

Capacity is
Downlink limited
145
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
UL Load

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