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Practical WCDMA

Mycom Academy - Confidential - Ferri Tafreshi 1


Agenda
Network Architecture
Basic WCDMA Concepts
Multiple Access Methods
WCDMA Characteristics
WCDMA Receiver
Design Concepts
Link Budget
Uplink
Downlink
CPICH
Physical and Logical Channels
Logical Channels
Transport Channels
Physical Channels

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Agenda
Radio Resource Management
Power Control
Handover Types
Capacity
Admission Control
Monitoring and Optimization
Drive testing
Drive testing results and optimization cases

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Network Architecture

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System Architecture

Node-B Iub MSC/VLR GMSC PSTN/ISDN


RNC
Node-B
(optional) HLR
Iur
Node-B

RNC
Node-B 3G-SGSN GGSN IP networks
UTRAN Iu
MS = Mobile Station (WCDMA)
Node-B = Base Station (WCDMA)
RNC = Radio Network Controller
SGSN = 3G Serving GPRS Support Node
GGSN = Gateway GPRS Support Node
HLR = Home Location Register
MSC = Mobile Switching Centre
GMSC = Gateway MSC
UTRAN = UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network

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System Architecture
Due to high bit rate requirements WCDMA has a new air
interface modulation compared to other technologies.
UTRAN consists of Base Stations and Radio Network
Controllers (RNC), which controls the Node-Bs.
A base station in WCDMA is called for Node-B.
New functionality has been implemented to manage the
radio resources.
RNC is controlling the Node-Bs. It manages the resource
allocation and is responsible for mobility management.
Node-B is managing the radio links and power control.

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System Architecture
New interface has been introduced between RNCs, Iur.
(3GPP TS 25.423)
Core network elements are evolved from GSM.
Subscriber management is based on SIM concept familiar
from GSM.
Security is based on GSM security principles and
mechanisms and enhanced further.

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Basic WCDMA Concepts

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Multiple Access Methods: FDMA
Frequency Division Multiple Access Power

One user uses one frequency ue


nc
y
T im F req
e

TDMA
Time Division Multiple Access
One users channel belongs to him Power
y
under a fraction of time and on certain Ti m qu
e nc
e F re
frequency
CDMA
Code Division Multiple Access E
D
Every user is using the same resource but Power CO
each user has a code that identifies its n cy
Tim ue
information e Fr
eq

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access
Duplex schemes:
Frequency Division Duplex (FDD)
Time Division Duplex (TDD)
Channel Spacing: 5MHz on 200kHz raster
Frequency band:
FDD: UL:1920-1980 and DL: 2110-2170
TDD: 1900-1920 and 2010-2025
Available channels: 12 for FDD and 7 for TDD
User data rates: up to 2Mbit/s
Chip rate: 3.84Mcps
Modulation:
Data modulation: QPSK (Downlink); BPSK (Uplink)
Spreading modulation: QPSK
Mycom Academy - Confidential - Ferri Tafreshi 10
WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Frame length: 10ms
Inter-BS synchronization:
FDD: Asynchronous
TDD: Synchronous (GPS or common clock)
Soft Handover
Power versus Capacity
Capacity limited by interference rather than number of
channels
Fast power control
1500Hz power control. GSMs power control rate is 2Hz.
This in order to reduce the near-far effect.
Spread spectrum technique:
Information is transmitted at a bandwidth much wider than
the information rate
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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Users are separated by codes.
Signals from other users would be like noise (interference)
WCDMA is interference limited (GSM is frequency limited)
Why would spreading the signal be good?
For a given information rate, the wider the bandwidth for
transmitting the information, the lower the required signal to
noise ratio would be.
This means that the wider the bandwidth is, the quality of the
channel can be lower.
This would also mean that the system is tolerant to
interference.
Information can be transmitted even if the quality is below noise
floor

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Spreading the signal done in two phases:
Phase 1 by using spreading codes:
In uplink to separate users and control data
In downlink to separate common and dedicated channels in
one cell
Phase 2 by using scrambling codes
In downlink it identifies the cell
In uplink is identifies the user (call)
The radio planner allocates the scrambling codes for the
downlink part
The system allocates the spreading codes and the
scrambling codes in uplink

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Spread Spectrum
A signal is spread in the spectrum by artificially
increasing the modulation rate (chip rate).
By this technique the wider the bandwidth used
for transmitting at a given information rate, the
lower the required signal to noise ratio.
This is the main advantage of spread spectrum
techniques.
The signal is later despread with the same
spreading signal to retrieve the original signal.

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Spread Spectrum
A signal is spread in the spectrum by another
signal
GSM

270 Kbit 200 KHz

W-CDMA

X Code

3.84 Mcps 5 MHz


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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Spread Spectrum

Code
A narrow band signal is spread
with an orthogonal code.

NB WB

Code
The signal is despread
with the same spreading code.

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Processing gain/Spreading Factor
Chip Rate
Processing Gain (G) is defined as G = 10 log( )
Service Rate

Processing
Gain

X Code (OVSF)

3.84 Mcps 5 MHz

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Processing gain differ for different services
Power Density (W/Hz)

R
Voice user (12.2 kbps) W 3.84 10 6
G= = 10 log( ) = 25dB
R 12.2 10 3

Spread wideband signal

W
Power Density (W/Hz)

W 3.84 106
R Packet Data user (384 kbps)
G= = 10 log( ) = 10dB
R 384 10 3

Spread wideband signal

W
As can be seen the wider the signal, the lower the power
intensity is. This is why the processing gain is lower

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WCDMA Basic Characteristics:
Spreading Factor
Spreading factor for different rates are:
Higher bit rates = the lower processing gain
Lower bit rates = the higher processing gain
For 384kbps data rate, the spreading factor is 4
For 8kbps data rate, the spreading factor is 128

The higher the bit rate, the more power would be needed to
meet the quality requirements
As can be seen from the processing gain calculations, for a
high bit rate service, the power needs to be increased.

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WCDMA Receiver
Rake Receiver:
Due to multi-path environment, the original transmitted
signal is reflected on obstacles such as buildings. This
makes the signal to take different path to a mobile
If multi-path signals could be combined together in a
constructive way, they can enhance the reception of the
signal.
Rake Receiver has several fingers which receive the
different multi-path signals with different delays
Each finger de-spreads the signal
After de-spreading the signals, they are combined.
For uplink purposes the fingers are used for macro-diversity.
This is done for soft handover.
The output of one finger is not combined and is used for
scanning the monitor sets. This finger is known as the
Search Finger. Mycom Academy - Confidential - Ferri Tafreshi 20
WCDMA Receiver
Mobiles usually have four fingers. Three for active sets and
one for scanning the monitor sets.
Node-Bs could have more fingers. Some manufacturers
implement 6 fingers in the Node-Bs.

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Design Concepts

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Design Concepts:
RF design;
Basically there is no difference between 2G and 3G in terms
of RF design methodology.
Important to understand that in WCDMA each new site is
effectively a new interferer.
Important to pay attention how to control the propagation of
the sites.
Common shared resource in WCDMA is power. Therefore
coverage is important.
Trade off planning = coverage versus capacity
Trade off planning means that if you give too much
coverage you take away capacity as you have to use more
power

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Design Concepts:
GSM WCDMA
Radio channels are isolated Radio channels will interfere
from each other. with each other.

The power broadcast on The more power broadcast


one channel will not affect on one channel the more
the power required to noise. The more noise, the
broadcast others. more power is required to
overcome that noise.
The level transmitted by a The level transmitted on a
channel is not so important channel is critical. Too little
and can be considered to be transmission results in
constant. signals not being received,
too much transmission
results in excessive noise
on other channels.
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Design Concepts:
GSM WCDMA
A worst case broadcast can One must consider all
be considered and one can broadcasting channels
be confident that all other together since each channel
broadcasts will work (BCCH will affect each other.
at max all the time).

The power level broadcast The power level broadcast


on the control channel is depends on the number of
constant and isolated from channels being broadcast.
other signals. Each channel needs a
certain amount of power to
transmit and a certain
amount more to cope with
the noise from other
channels.
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Design Concepts:
GSM WCDMA
Radio reception is Radio reception is
considered in terms of the considered in terms of the
absolute signal level received signal level against
received. noise or interference.

The design need only to The design must ensure


ensure that the level that all data channels are
received from a channel is received at an exact signal
above an acceptable to noise level, no more and
minimum level. no less.

An engineer needs to plan An engineer needs to plan


the frequencies the scrambling codes

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Design Concepts:
GSM WCDMA
Coverage does not vary Service levels depend on
with the number of channels the number of channels
being used nor on the present and the locations of
location of the users of users of those channels.
those channels. Service Service therefore depends
therefore does not vary with heavily on the traffic load.
the traffic.

A mobile will only connect to A mobile can connect to


one cell at one time. There several cells at the same
is no benefit from combining time. The signal paths are
the signal from several combined to improve. This
connections. results in lower power to
make the connections,
hence less noise.
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Design Concepts:
Reuse of legacy sites (co-location)
Advantage: cheap
Disadvantage: Inflexible design. Same mistakes
as in the existing network can occur.
Enough space must be available on pylons and
floor
Availability of extra Power supply and E1
Some high capacity design might not be possible
(e.g. 6-sector design on a 3-sector GSM network).

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Antenna Installations
X-polar X-polar
UMTS Dual Band
antenna antenna

Duplexer Duplexer Duplexer Duplexer

Duplexer Duplexer Duplexer Duplexer

DCS UMTS DCS UMTS DCS UMTS


1800 1800 1800
Node-B Node-B Node-B
BTS BTS BTS

Independent feeders / Shared feeders / Shared feeders /


independent antennas Independent antennas Shared antenna

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Design Concepts:
Typical cell sizes
There is no difference from RF point of view
In WCDMA the effective service area for a certain
service shrinks when the load increases (the so
called cell breathing). This happens for the shared
channels.
For common channels, there is no impact on the
cell size. Cell type Typical cell radius

Macro cells 1km to 30km

Small macro cells 0.5km to 4km

Micro cells Up to 1km

Pico cells Up to 400m


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Design Concepts:
In GSM the desired signal must be strong enough to
override interference.
In WCDMA all the cells are transmitting on the same
frequency band. The figure of quality is Eb/No and Ec/Io .
Ec/Io is the case when other interferer are also taken into
consideration. This is indicated by the letter I.
Right at sector, Ec/Io is ratio of pilot power to total power
radiated from that sector.
Elsewhere, Ec/Io is ratio of power of particular pilot to total
power received from all sources.
e.g. if two sectors have Ec/Io of -5dB, the measured Ec/Io of
either of them at the equal Ec/Io boundary will be -8dB.

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Design Concepts:
Cell Breathing
The more load in the system, the more
interference will be generated in the system.
This will have the effect that the receiver noise
floor is higher in a loaded system compared to an
unloaded system.
Each service requires a certain Ec/Io
In order to keep the Ec/Io requirement the best
service area for each cell will be smaller as to this
noise raise when the system carries more traffic.

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Design Concepts:
Different services have different cell sizes
Different data rates, have different Ec/Io
requirements.
This means that for a given output power the cell
sizes are different for different data rates
The higher data rate the smaller the cell size is.

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Design Concepts:
Aim is to contain each sector to its intended
coverage area
Poor coverage control leads to:
Access Failures
Slow Handoff dropped calls
Reduced capacity
Key metric is Ec/Io (not absolute level)

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Design Concepts:
Power is the common resource in WCDMA.
Control channels and traffic channels share the same
resource i.e. power.
If more power is used for control channels, the portion for
traffic channels is reduced. Thus capacity is reduced.
The coverage for control channels must be higher than
traffic channels so that mobiles can decode neighbouring
cells before entering a soft handover zone.
The broadcast channel containing the cell information has to
be decoded before the mobiles enters the coverage area of
the cell.
This is why it is important to distribute the power in a correct
way between the common channels.

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Design Concepts:
Common channels that need to share the power are:
Synchronization Channel (SCH)
Primary Common Control Physical Channel (P-CCPCH)
Secondary Common Control Physical Channel carrying the
Paging Channel
Secondary Common Control Physical Channel carrying the
Forward Access Channel
Common Pilot Channel (CPICH)
Acquisition Indication Channel (AICH)
Page Indication Channel (PICH)
Typically the CPICH power is defined and the other
channels powers are set relative to CPICH power

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Design Concepts:
Rule of thumb:
CPICH power 5%-10% of the total power
Usually 30dBm 33dBm
Transmitted Channel Power Setting

P-CPICH 33dBm

PCCPCH -5dB

SCCPCH-1 0dB

SCCPCH-2 0dB

P-SCH -3dB

S-SCH -3dB

PICH -8dB

AICH -8dB

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Design Concepts:
It is important to consider the percentage of
maximum power of base station used for SCH
SCH consists of
Primary SCH (P-SCH) used to find slot
synchronization
Secondary SCH (S-SCH) used to find scrambling
code and frame synchronization

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Design Concepts:
Scrambling code
Scrambling code planning in WCDMA is similar to
frequency planning for BCCH in GSM.
Each cell has its own scrambling code.
Total 512 scrambling codes are available.
These are in 64 groups (each group containing 8
codes) Group 0 1 2 63
0 8 16 504
1 9 17 505
2 10 18 506
3 11 19 507
4 12 20 508
5 13 21 509
6 14 22 510
7 15 23 511

Code
Group 1
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Design Concepts:
Scrambling code need to be selected in optimum
way because:
It has a great impact to the cell search algorithm
The call setup/HO performance depends on the
reliability of the search procedure in the cell
search setups
There must be large enough separation between
two cells using the same scrambling code.
A recommended minimum reuse distance of 64
can be used.

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Design Concepts:
Scrambling code planning is independent for
each carrier layer.
The same codes could be used for two carriers.
Cell search time increases when the number of
neighbours is high e.g. in Urban area where a lot
of sites exist.
This means that the size of the number of
neighbours sets should be large enough to
include all useful candidates but as small as
possible to maintain fast synchronization
process.

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Link Budget

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Link Budget:
Link budget is needed for path loss and cell
range calculations before planning
There are a few WCDMA specific parameters:
Processing Gain
Load Margin (interference)
Power Control headroom
Soft Handover Gain
It is a must to consider both of the links when
balancing the uplink and downlink service areas.

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Uplink Link Budget

Mobiles with data capability might have a higher output power (3GPP TS 25.101)
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Link Budget:
Required Eb/No means that for some quality target
(BLER) a certain average bit-energy over total
noise+interference spectral density (Eb/No) is
required.
The value depends on the service and the MS
speed for which the link budget is to be
calculated.

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Link Budget:
The reason why Eb/No requirement is lower for higher bit
rates is:
DPDCH and DPCCH are sent together.
DPCCH includes the overhead information bits.
When sending data, the DPDCH will require higher power.
The amount of overhead information does not increase
proportionally with information bit rate.
As DPDCH will have higher power when sending with
higher bit rates, DPCCH will enjoy higher power as well.
Therefore lower quality requirement will be put on DPCCH
channel.
Thus lower Eb/No for higher data rates.

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Downlink Link Budget

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CPICH Link Budget

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Physical, Logical and Transport Channels

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Logical Channels:

3GPP TS 25.211

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Logical Channels
BCH Broadcast Channel
Carries system and cell-specific information; always
transmitted over the entire cell with a low fixed bit rate
PCH Paging Channel
For messages to the mobiles in the paging area
FACH Forward Access Channel
Carries control information from base station to mobile in
one cell when the system knows the location cell of the
mobile
May also carry short user packets
May be transmitted over whole cell or over a portion using
lobe-forming antennas

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Logical Channels
RACH Random Access Channel
Uplink channel used to carry control information from the
mobile station
May also carry short user packets
Always received from the entire cell
CPCH Common Packet Channel
Carries small and medium-sized packets
A contention-based, random access channel used for
transmission of bursty data traffic
Associated with a dedicated channel on the downlink, which
provides power control for the uplink CPCH

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Logical Channels
DCH Dedicated Channel
A downlink or uplink channel used to carry user or
control information between the network and the
UE
Corresponds to three channels:
DTCH Dedicated Traffic Channel
SDCCH Stand-Alone Dedicated Control Channel
ACCH Associated Control Channel
Transmitted over the whole cell or only a part
using lobe-forming antennas
May have fast rate changes (even every 10 ms),
and fast power control

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Transport Channels:
Logical channels are mapped onto transport channels

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Physical Channels:

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Physical Channels
DPCH - Dedicated Physical Channel
A downlink or uplink dedicated physical channel used to
carry user or control information to User Equipment (UE)
over an entire or cell or part of the cell that uses
beamforming antennas
PRACH - Physical Random Access Channel
A common uplink physical channel used to carry control
information or short user packets from the UE
PCPCH - Physical Common Packet Channel
A common uplink physical channel used to carry short and
medium-sized user packets. Its always associated with a
downlink channel for power control

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Physical Channels
CPICH - Common Pilot Channel
A fixed-rate downlink physical channel that carries a
predefined bit/symbol sequence
P-CCPCH Primary Common Control Physical Channel
A fixed-rate downlink channel used to broadcast system and
cell-specific information
The P-CCPCH is not transmitted during the first 256 chips of
each slot (I.e., it maintains a 90% duty cycle)
S-CCPCH Secondary Common Control Physical Channel
A downlink physical channel used to carry the FACH and
PCH transport channel

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Physical Channels
SCH Synchronization Channel
A downlink signal used for cell search. The SCH
consists of two subchannels, the primary and
secondary SCH, which are transmitted during the
P-CCPCH idle period
PDSCH
A downlink channel used to carry the DSCH
transport channel
AICH Acquisition Indicator Channel
A fixed-rate downlink physical channel used to
carry access preamble acquisition indicators for
the random access procedure

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Physical Channels
AP-AICH Access Preamble Acquisition Indicator Channel
A fixed-rate downlink physical channel used to carry access
preamble acquisition indicators of CPCH
PICH Paging Indicator Channel
A fixed-rate downlink physical channel used to carry the
paging indicators which disclose the presence of a page
message on the PCH
CSICH - CPCH Status Indicator Channel
A fixed-rate downlink channel used to carry CPCH status
information
A CSICH is always associated with a physical channel used
for transmission of CPCH AP-AICH, and uses the same
channelization and scrambling codes

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Physical Channels
CD/CA-ICH Collision-detection/Channel-Assignment Indicator
Channel
A fixed-rate common downlink physical channel used to
carry CD indicator only if the CA is not active, or a CD/CA
indicator at the same time if the CA is active
CDM Continuous Code Division Multiplex Pilot Channel
Similar to the cdma2000 pilot
Two types of pilot channels are defined:
Primary CPICH (P-CPICH)
Transmitted over the entire cell
Used as phase reference for SCH, P-CCPCH, AICH, PICH,
and default reference for all other downlink physical channels
Secondary CPICH (S-CPICH)
Can be transmitted over part of the cell, not entire cell. May be
used as reference for the S-CCPCH and downlink DPCH, or in
beamforming antenna schemes
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Radio Resource Management

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Power Control

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Power Control
Power control is very important in WCDMA as
users are interferer to each other.

User 2

Channel #i
Channel #i
User 1

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Power Control
The aim is to control the transmitted power from the
mobiles so that interference is minimized
Two different types of power control procedures for UL:
Open Loop; at call setup
Closed Loop; during the connection
Open Loop power control (UL):
The mobile (UE) estimates the access power level by
sending a preamble message at an estimated power level. If
the Node-B does not respond to the mobile, the mobile
waits a certain period of time and retransmits at a higher
power level. The mobile continues doing so until it receives
a response from the Node-B.

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Power Control
Closed Loop power control (UL):
When the connection is established, the power is controlled
by the closed loop power control procedure.
The RNC sets the target BLER level for the service. From
this BLER, it derives a SIR target and sends it to Node-B.
The Node-B estimates an UL SIR level and decides if the
power of the mobile has to be increased or decreased (this
part is called for Inner Loop).
This power control is done 1500 times/second to achieve a
minimum output power.
The RNC calculates the SIR target once every 10ms (or
more) and adjusts the SIR target (this part is also called
Outer Loop).
DL power control is controlled by the mobile by sending
messages to the Node-B (the RNC determining the target
BLER and sending it to the mobile).
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Power Control:

Open Loop
At call setup

Outer Loop
Quality target
RNC

Inner Loop
During a connection

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Handover Types

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Soft Handover (within WCDMA network)
Mobile is connected to two cells or more cells
from different Node-Bs.

RNC

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Softer Handover (within WCDMA network)
Mobile is connected to two cells from the same
Node-B.

RNC

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Hard Handover (within WCDMA network)
Mobile makes a handover to another frequency.
It is used usually when there is no network
support of macro diversity (soft handover).
It can also be used to change the mode between
FDD and TDD.

RNC

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Inter-Radio Access Technology Handover (with
other networks)
Handover from WCDMA to another radio system
access system such as GSM.
GSM

WCDMA

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Capacity

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Capacity in WCDMA
Capacity is tuned mainly by power
Capacity is constrained by the number of active users in a
cell and the power allocation strategies.

PBTS = Pi
Pi is the power given to user I at a certain time
PBTS is the maximum available power of the Node-B
How to reduce congestion?
Could reduce power allocation to all users = power limiting
bad for quality for many users
not recommended
Better approach: block at certain power threshold (before
power limiting)

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Capacity in WCDMA
Capacity is controlled by mainly three different
features:
Admission Control which decides whether a
connection should be allowed or not.
Load Control which takes action when load is
increased so that the interference is minimized
Packet Scheduling which controls the handling of
the non-real time traffic so that the most optimized
way of transferring packets is chosen.

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Capacity enhancement
6 sectored sites
More carriers than in 3 sectored site
Capacity gain is around 80% capacity (not 100%
as inter-sector interference has a negative impact)
Additional Carriers
Doubling the amount of carriers with power
splitting gives around 60% increased capacity
Increasing power
More power means more capacity as well
Other none-implemented features

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Admission Control

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Admission Control
Admission Control is a feature that decides whether a
request to establish a Radio Resource Connection (RRC) or
Radio Access Bearer (RAB) is admitted in the Radio Access
Network (RAN) or not.
It controls the load in the system.
Admission Control is used to maintain stability and the
traffic capacity of RAN.
The Admission Control algorithm is executed when radio
access bearer is setup or the bearer is modified.
It takes all kind of handovers into account when calculating
the impact.
Both uplink and downlink is estimated separately.
The inter-cell interference effect is estimated. Bearer is not
admitted if the predicted load exceeds a certain thresholds
either in uplink or in downlink.
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Admission Control
The traffic can be divided into two groups
Real Time (RT) or non-controllable
Non-Real Time (NRT) or controllable
Some portions of capacity must be reserved for the real
time traffic for mobility purposes all the time.
The proportion between RT and NRT traffic varies all the
time.
Since it is not enough to divide the load to RT and NRT, one
must take into account the interference coming from
surrounding traffic.
This gives that traffic is divided between controllable and
non-controllable traffic.

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Admission Control
Non-controllable traffic:
Real time traffic user
Other-cell users
Noise
Other NRT users which operate minimum bit rate
Controllable traffic:
NRT users
When is an RAB accepted?
An RAB is accepted if the estimated non-controllable uplink
and downlink load, measured in total received interference
power and transmitted carrier power, is kept below the
planned load target and the total load below the overload
threshold.

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Monitoring and Optimization

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Monitoring an WCDMA network
Drive testing
On street level signal strength and quality
Operational measurements from OMC
Per-sector attempts, blocks, failures, dropped
calls etc.
Performance Data from Node-Bs
Transmit/receive power
Usage and handoff statistics
Carrier Equipment usage
Diagnostic Logs from RNC and Node-Bs
Use on as needed basis

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Monitoring an WCDMA network
Pre-Commercial; Initial Tuning
Drive Test based methods
Post Commercial; Optimization
Performance Monitoring (identify problem areas):
Dropped calls,
Access failures,
Node-B Performance Data (poor capacity, high handoff)
Congestion
Root Cause Analysis (identify solutions):
RNC Diagnostic Log analysis
Drive Test
Node-B Diagnostic Log analysis

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Tools
Planning
Atoll, NetAct or Planet or etc
Drive test data collection
TOM or TEMS
Dedicated phones (usually 2)
Scanners
Post processing tools
NIMS PrOptima
ACTIX
Performance monitoring tools
NIMS PrOptima
NetAct

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Drive Testing
WCDMA specific measures to look for:
RSCP for CPICH channel (RSCP = Received Signal Code Power)
Ec/Io
Scrambling code
Number of Active Sets
Number of Monitor Sets
BLER
Signal to Interference ratio (SIR) level
Tx power from the mobile (UE)

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Initial tuning phase
Perform a full network/cluster drive test in an unloaded
network (RSCP and Ec/No)
Perform dropped call and access failure analysis.
Perform the RF coverage analysis
Optimize pilot pollution by
Tilting the antennas
Azimuth changes
Change of antennas
Power parameter changes
Tune the neighbour lists

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Initial tuning phase
Collect both continuous calls and short calls to
get network statistics

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Reporting examples:
Scanner RSCP sample distribution.
RSCP = Received Signal Code Power = signal strength

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Reporting examples :
Scanner Ec/No sample distribution.

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Reporting examples :
Scanner RSCP versus Ec/No sample distribution:

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Reporting examples :
Problem area definition based on signal strength:
SC17-05 SC17-06

SC17-01

SC17-03

SC17-02 SC17-07

SC17-08

SC17-09
SC17-04

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Reporting examples :
Problem area definition based on quality:
SC17-05 SC17-06

SC17-01

SC17-03

SC17-02 SC17-07

SC17-08

SC17-09
SC17-04

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Reporting examples :
Drive test statistics:

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Reporting examples :
Drive test statistics:

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Reporting examples :
Drive test statistics:

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Drive Testing Results and Optimisation
Cases

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Problem from live network: Overshooting
No antenna optimization possible due to co-location with
GSM. Overshooting and dragging the call. Dropped due
to bad Ec/No

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Problem from live network: Network problem /
Synchronization problem
Measurement Report being sent many times but no
response from network. Dropped due to bad Ec/No.

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Problem from live network: UE Problem.
Good RSCP and Ec/Io. UE suddenly dropped the call and
went into Idle Mode. After going into idle mode, Master
Information Block was showing the PLMN was from
another network.

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Problem from live network: IMSI Detach from the network.
Good RSCP and Ec/Io. Sudden IMSI DETACH
INDICATION by the network and RRC Connection
Release Complete.

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Problem from live network: Missing neighbours 1/2

3
4 No external neighbours defined.

5
6

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Problem from live network: Missing neighbours 2/2

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Optimization experiences
Influence network with RF Design and
subsequent antenna changes
Parameter changes are mainly to suit needs of
network
Unlike GSM, parameters are rarely used to
influence system
everything is co-channel therefore, if signal is present,
cannot choose whether to use it or not
Optimizing power allocation to the various
channels is crucial
Pilot Pollution elimination is of great essential
Terminal problems

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Optimization scenario in NIMS PrOptima

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Optimization Process

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