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The Need For Tower Mounted Amplifiers: Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
The Need For Tower Mounted Amplifiers: Instituto de Telecomunicações, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
Introduction
Network planning in GSM systems is moving towards re-engineering, that means the actual
problems, in developed countries, are due to overloaded networks and hot-spots. The reduction of
costs in the implementation of this type of solutions is a must that should be considered before
any attempt to its implementation is decided. This is one of the reasons why Tower Mounted
Amplifiers, TMA, are proliferating in nowadays wireless systems. They are used in both GSM
and UMTS to provide a balanced system design, allowing mobile operators to place an equal
amount of receiving and transmitting sites [1]. TMAs also enable base stations to receive mobile
signals more clearly in a wider coverage area than they could otherwise achieve [2]. This will
allow mobile network operators to achieve the greatest possible coverage allowing less base
stations and therefore limiting costs.
Although TMAs emerge as an all benefit solution we must take into account the presence of
interferences. We will focus specifically on the impact of nonlinear distortion in TMAs in the
overall performance of GSM systems.
The goal of any radio engineer when deciding to use a TMA is due to its improvement in the
overall sensitivity of the system. Sensitivity gives us an indication on the robustness of a receiver
in capturing a weak signal affecting directly the range of the system, and also on how immune to
noise it will be. In fact if we look at expression (1), the sensitivity can be understandable as the
minimum input power needed in order to get a suitable Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) at the output
of our receiver. That is the reason why sensitivity is based on the receiver noise figure, the
minimum required signal-to-noise ratio for detection, and the thermal noise of the system [3],
expression (1).
S i ,min = NF + n0 + SNR (dBm) (1)
• Si,min – sensitivity
• NF – noise figure of the receiver
• SNR – required output signal to noise ratio (usually related to the acceptable bit
error rate)
• n0 – thermal noise power of the receiver, n0=KTB, where K – Boltzman constant,
T – temperature and B – Bandwidth of the system.
Since, in expression (1) the temperature is imposed by the habitat where the TMA will be
installed, B is the GSM bandwidth, 200 KHz, K is a constant, and SNR is imposed by the
modulation technique, the only free parameter is NF.
NF is called Noise Figure, and in a certain sense gives an idea of the SNR degradation when
the signal traverses the receiver. One possible mathematical definition is expressed in equation
(2).
SNRi
NF = (2)
SNRo
In a cascade of noisy blocks the overall equivalent NF is given by expression (3).
NF2 − 1 NF3 − 1 NFi − 1
NFT = NF1 + + + ... + (3)
G1 G1G2 G1G2 ...Gi −1
A closer look at expression (3) allows us to gather some important information. For instance
the noise figure of the first block will impose the minimum noise figure of the system1, another
important conclusion is on the gain of the first components, the higher the gain the higher the
desensitization of the next blocks.
TMA Sensitivity
Figure 1, presents a basic receiving implementation that will be used to see those different
impacts of each sub-system.
1
Remember that NF is always positive and higher, or equal, to 1, by definition.
Figure 1 – Basic Receiver
As can be seen in (4), cable losses are the dominant factor in the system’s noise figure, thus it
is the major limiting factor to receiver’s sensitivity.
Therefore, the idea is to desensitize the cable noise figure, and in order to achieve that
manufacturers provided TMAs. A schematic TMA system is presented on figure 2. The TMA
sub-system is placed near the antenna and in a certain way is similar to the well known LNB that
was used for several years in the television satellite receivers; the main difference is that now no
translation of frequency is needed.
Figure 2 – TMA Schematics
To evaluate the impact of introducing a TMA let us make some simple calculations.
For GSM case we typically have:
• n0 = -121 dBm
• Si,min = -105 dBm
• SNR = 9 dB (typical value)
7
Using equation (1), NF is calculated to be 7 dB ( F = 10 10
= 5 ).
If the system was designed in order to have a 7dB of Noise Figure, then a cable will degrade
severely the overall system, and considering a cable of 3dB losses, we will have:
5 −1
FT = 2 + = 10 ⇒ NFT = 10dB (4)
0.5
5.6 km MS
BTS
TMA
8.9 km MS
BTS
The main conclusion here is that just by adding a TMA we improved our coverage by 63 %.
Despite TMA benefits are important, in terms of sensitivity improvement, it can change to a
very bad design decision if the presence of interferences [3] is not accounted for. In our case we
will look to the specific case of the nonlinear distortion generated at the TMA itself.
Since in GSM there are several operators, and for each operator, due to capacity problems,
there can be several emitting and receiving channels, it is quite obvious that this kind of distortion
could have some impact in the performance of our system, since two different carriers will
generate other two that can fall exactly over our signal.
In the second case, the result is even more disastrous, since an interferer can be so strong that
our signal will be destroyed [6].
Figure 5 - Desensitization
In both cases, if the interferer signal is strong enough it will degrade our signal so drastically
that it can be blocked, in fact in the World War II, this was one of the electronic war technologies,
called jamming.
Recalling again figure 2, where the TMA internal configuration was presented, and
considering that the isolation between the Tx and Rx is high in the duplexer to prevent that the Tx
signal passes throw the Rx filter and cause any nonlinear distortion, we will study the impact in
our system when it receives two different Rx signals, a desired signal and an interference signal.
This interference can be from the same, or another, operator, but mainly we will consider it from
a different operator, because otherwise using some form of power control we could minimize the
interference.
Mobile A
GSM
Desired
Signal
Mobile B
TMA
GSM
Interference
Signal
The first study that will be made is to calculate the values of out-of-band power needed to
degrade the useful signal, considering that a 9dB SNR as to be achieved. We will use the
following typical TMA values:
• n0 = -121 dBm
• SNR = 9 dB
• IP3 = 25 dBm (typical value of a TMA amplifier)
The system is only useful when the nonlinear distortion generated by the interference is 9dB
below the sensitivity or higher, therefore, for the worst case, we have at the amplifier’s output a
minimum interferer signal power of:
PINT = G + S i − SNR (7)
2
In this case a filter should be provided, in order to attenuate the near operators.
0
10
-1
10
-2
BER
10
-3
10
-4
10
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Interference Signal Power (dBm)
We can see that the curve will quickly tend to 100 % BER. Since in the GSM case we
typically allow a maximum BER of 0.2 % to guarantee receiver quality [8], we find that the
maximum interferer power allowed would be approximately -14 dBm at the input of our TMA
This kind of powers can easily be found in urban environment were we have a high density of
BTS and so of TMAs is available, mainly in hot-spot situations as commercial malls or garages.
Concluding, though TMA boosts our system performance, in the presence of strong interferer
signals it can be easily blocked. In these situations we should opt for subbanded TMAs which
allow us to attenuate the interferer power and so the impact of nonlinear distortions.
References
[1] Ira Wiesenfeld, “Testing tower top amplifiers”, Mobile Radio Technology, May 1, 2003.
[3] MAXIM, “Improving Receiver Sensitivity with External LNA”, APP 1836, December 27,
2002.
[4] Theodore S. Rappaport, “Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice”, Prentice
Hall, New Jersey, 1996
[6] José Carlos Pedro and Nuno Borges de Carvalho, “Intermodulation Distortion in
Microwave and Wireless Circuits”, Artech House Publishers: Norwood, August 2003.
[8] ETSI TS 100 910 v8.9.0 (2001-04), “Digital Cellular Telecommunications System (Phase
2+); Radio Transmission and Reception”, ETSI