RACH PROCEDURE

CELL RADIUS OPTIMIZATION EXAMPLE

Cell Radius Limited by Prach

Parameters Issue Analysis

1 Description
During the drive test in a project, find some place with not too bad
coverage (RSRP=-106 dBm) but the UE cannot random access
successfully.
2 Analysis
2.1 Random Access Failure
This snapshot show that the UE RSRP is about -105 dBm, and UE send Random Access Request(MSG1)
for many times but do not receive the response from the network. This cause the random access failure.
In this case we notice that the UE location is about 10.2 km from the site Sparta (and other surrounding
sites)
2.1 Prach Parameters Analysis

The cell access radius is determined by the Prach Parameter (Ncs). This parameter name in OMM
is “Ncs Used to Generate Prach Preamble(Ncs)”and its short name is ncs. Here is the relationship
between ncs and the cell radius. Currently the the whole network ncs configuration is 10, that
is 9.8 km for the access radius. So this random access failure case is caused by the Prach
configuration.

# of root # of root
sequence sequence
needed needed
High
per cell per cell
Speed Ncs (≥ Cell Radius Not High Cell Radius
120km/h) (km) Num_u SpeedNcs (km)(<120km/h) Num_u
Ncs configuration
0 15 1.08 2 0 118.93 64

1 18 1.51 2 13 0.79 1

2 22 2.08 2 15 1.08 2

3 26 2.65 2 18 1.51 2

4 32 3.51 3 22 2.08 2

5 38 4.37 3 26 2.65 2

6 46 5.51 4 32 3.51 3

7 55 6.8 5 38 4.37 3

8 68 8.66 6 46 5.51 4

9 82 10.66 7 59 7.37 5

10 100 13.23 8 76 9.8 6

11 128 17.23 11 93 12.23 8

12 158 21.52 13 119 15.95 10

13 202 27.81 16 167 22.82 13

14 237 32.82 22 279 38.84 22

15 - - - 419 58.86 32

Solution
3 Optimization Suggestion
3.1 Ncs optimization

According to the DTC network, ncs=12 (corresponding cell radius is 15.95 km) is more
reasonable. So we suggest optimizing the ncs from 10 to 12.

3.2 Other Prach parameters re-planning

According to table Table 1 ncs configuration, when ncs is changed, the number of root sequence
needed per cell will change. That means the root sequence parameters need optimization too. The
corresponding parameters in OMM are “Logical Root Sequence Start Number Used to Generate Prach
Preamble” with short namerootSequenceIndex and “Transmission time configuration of random access
preamble” with short name Prach Configuration Index. It is necessary to re-plan
the rootSequenceIndex for each cell.

**---**--**
The 64 preambles are not implicitly communicated to the UEs by the eNodeB but rather, the UE is
informed about the process of how to generate them via parameters broadcast in SIB2. These
parameters are:

a) RootConfigurationIndex

In LTE, there are 838 root Zadoff-Chu sequences available for preambles. The length of each root
sequence is 839. RootConfigurationIndex, informs the UE via SIB2 which sequence is to be used.

b) ZeroCorrelationZoneConfig.

One root sequence can generate several preambles by cyclic shift. One or more root sequences are
needed to generate all preambles in a cell. The UE starts with the broadcasted root index and applies
cyclic shifts to generate preambles. ZeroCorrelationZoneConfig points to a table where the cyclic shift is
obtained from.

The smaller the cyclic shift, the more preambles can be generated from a root sequence. Hence, the
number of sequences needed to generate the 64 preambles in a given cell is:

# of rows = ceiling (64 / (integer (sequence length/cyclic shift)))

For example, if the rootsequence index is 300 and the cyclic shift is 119, then, the number of rows
needed to generate the 64 preambles in a cell is:

# of rows = ceiling(64 /(integer(839/119))) = 10

This means, that if we allocated rootsequenceindex 300 to cell X, then cell Y must have
rootsequenceindex 310 and cell Y must have rootsequenceindex 320 as shown in the picture below.

Each cell, then must have a different RootSequenceIndex to avoid the reception of false preambles in
adjacent eNodeBs and the planning could be linked (if desired) to the PCI planning. See figure below.

Cell Size Configuration in RACH

(II) – Cyclic Shift
Hongyan
 21 Dec 2010 4:56 PM

 1

We have discussed the preamble format configuration vs. the maximum cell radius during the random access

procedure. For example, Preamble Format 0 supports a maximum cell radius of 14.5 km. Another random
access parameter that affects the cell size is the cyclic shift. Let's look at it now.

The random access preamble is generated using Zadoff-Chu sequences; there are multiple root Z-C

sequences used in LTE. From each root sequence, multiple preambles can be obtained by applying different
cyclic shifts. This cyclic shift also determines the maximum radius of the cell.

The cyclic shift, Ncs, is defined in 3GPP TS 36.211, section 5.7. (Note that the unrestricted set is for normal
speed cells, and the restricted set is for high mobility cells.)

Table 5.7.2-2: for preamble generation (preamble formats 0-3).

How is the cyclic shift related to cell radius? As shown in Figure 1, assume that there are 2 UEs, UE1 at the

cell edge and UE2 close to the eNB. The cyclic shift used by UE1 is 0 and the cyclic shift used by UE2 is Ncs.
At the eNB, the observed cyclic shift of UE1 will not be 0 but some value x because of the transmission
delay. As long as x is less than Ncs, the auto-correlation between the shifted x and shifted Ncs (as perceived

by the eNB) will be zero, and the eNB will be able to distinguish between the accesses from UE1 and UE2
(This is one of the nice properties of Z-C sequences). So, the maximum cell radius is limited by the cyclic shift.

Figure 1: Cyclic shift vs. Cell Radius

Now, let's calculate the maximum supported cell radius by a cyclic shift, Ncs. Based on 3GPP, the preamble
sequence length is 839 and spans 800 milliseconds.
[Exercise time: Please fill the blanks.]

Getting back to the basics, why is a cyclic shift needed? The cyclic shift can be used to expand the preamble

capacity. There are a total of 838 Zadoff-Chu sequences defined in LTE, and the default setting for the number

of preambles in each sector is 64. For areas covered with a large number of small cells, if the preamble

capacity is limited, preamble interference may cause more collisions and longer random access delay. A small

Ncs value generates more preambles, which extend the preamble reuse distance and mitigate the

interference. However, the cyclic shift cannot be configured smaller than expected cell radius, since that will
block random accesses from the cell edge and may cause drops during handovers.

[Answers: Ncs = 13: 0.96, Ncs = 46: 5.68]

TRANSMISSION MODES FOR PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH)

Is used for downlink transmission of data. PDSCH is configured with one of the following
transmission modes indicating a particular antenna technique. The choice of transmission mode
may depend on the instantaneous radio channel conditions and may be adapted semi-statically
[6].

1) Transmission Mode 1- Using of a single antenna at eNodeB

2) Transmission Mode 2- Transmit Diversity (TxD)

3) Transmission Mode 3- SU-MIMO Spatial Multiplexing: Open-Loop

4) Transmission Mode 4- SU-MIMO Spatial Multiplexing: Closed-Loop

5) Transmission Mode 5- MU-MIMO Spatial Multiplexing

6) Transmission Mode 6- Beamforming using Closed-Loop Rank-1 Precoding: It can also be seen as
a special case of SU-MIMO Spatial Multiplexing.

7) Transmission Mode 7- Beamforming using UE-Specific Reference Signals

PDSCH transmission scheme assumed for CQI reference resource - Rel 13 >
preambleInitialReceivedTargetPower
PRACH preamble power considerations in LTE
Unlike UMTS, the PRACH in LTE is used only for the transmission of random access
preambles. These are used when the UE wants to access the system from RRC idle, as
part of the RRC re-establishment procedure following a radio link failure, during
handover or when it finds itself out of sync.

As part of the PRACH procedure the UE needs to determine the power to use for the
transmission of the preamble and for this it looks at SIB2 for the
preambleInitialReceivedTargetPower IE. As shown from the extract above (taken from
a live network) this is expressed in the dBm and in this specific case it is set to -
104dBm. So this is the expected power level of the PRACH preamble when it reaches
the eNodeB.

What is also broadcasted is the reference signal power, which in our case is set to
18dBm. Based on this and a current measurement of the RSRP, the UE can determine
the pathloss. Once it knows the pathloss it can then determine how much power it
needs to allocate the PRACH preamble to reach the enodeB at -104dBm.

So lets say that the UE measures an RSRP of -80dBm. Based on the broadcasted
reference signal power it can calculate the pathloss, PL = 18 - (-80) = 98dB. This
means that for a preamble to reach the eNodeB at -104dBm it needs to be transmitted
at PPRACH= -104 + 98 = -6dBm. That is fine.
But what happens if we consider other values of RSRP? For example cell edge? Cell
edge can be determined by the value of the qRxLevMin. Looking at SIB1 from the
same network we can see that this is set to -128dBm (IE x 2).

So at an RSRP of -128dBm the pathloss is PL = 18 - (-126) = 144dB. So the UE needs

to transmit the preamble at PPRACH = -104 + 144 = 40dBm. Is this ok? Actually no, as
LTE UEs are only capable of transmitting at a maximum power of 23dBm. Does this
mean the UE does not even go through the PRACH procedure? No, but it will be limited
to transmitting at 23dBm meaning that the preamble will reach the eNodeB at -
121dBm, which means that the probability of a successful detection is very low.

In actual fact based on this network we can say that anywhere in the cell where the
RSRP is below -109dBm will lead to a power limited PRACH attempt and a lower
probability of detection. This is something to think about next time your LTE signal
strength is low and your phone seems unresponsive..