Performance Evaluation of TDL Channels for
Downlink 5G MIMO Systems
Gordana-Raluca Barb
Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications
”Politehnica” University of Timisoara
Timisoara, Romania
gordana.barb@student.upt.ro
Abstract—This work evaluates the performance of downlink
single-user 5G MIMO systems for modulation schemes 16QAM,
64QAM and 256QAM, using the TDL channel model. It analyzes
the three profiles of the TDL channel that are designated for
NLOS propagation (TDL A, TDL B and TDL C). The
parameters studied are BER and throughput for a certain
range of SNIR. Link-level simulation results show how different
channel models impact the system performance and are valuable
to be used in the design of 5G systems.
Index Terms—Mobile communication systems, 5G, TDL chan-
nel model, throughput, BER
I. I NTRODUCTION
5G is the next mobile generation expected to be
commercially available by 2020. When compared to the
fourth generation, the targeted goals for 5G are: up to 1000
times higher data volumes, up to 10-100 times increased
linked active users, up to 100 times higher data rates, up
to 5 times reduced end-to-end latency for mission critical
communication and up to 10 times more battery life for
machine type communication [1]. Moreover, there are three
major use-cases proposed for 5G: extreme mobile broadband,
ultra-reliable and low latency communication and massive
machine communication [2].
These objectives can be accomplished through a series
of new techniques applied at all levels of the network. At
the physical layer several solutions are considered in order
to replace the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) modulation format, along with its multiple-access
strategy orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA) [3]. Even though OFDM has been a viable
solution for mobile broadband applications, there are major
limitations that prevent it from being employed in 5G.
The new applications to be supported by the 5G network
require larger values of spectral efficiency based on new
modulation and coding schemes, a new frame structure and
flexible waveforms. According to 3GPP, the standardization
process has been successfully finished [4]. The standardization
body has released a technical report on different channel
models for possible use for 5G, using frequencies from 0.5
978-1-7281-3896-1
Marius Otesteanu, Georgeta Budura, Cornel Balint
Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications
”Politehnica” University of Timisoara
Timisoara, Romania
marius.otesteanu@upt.ro
GHz up to 100 GHz, in order to assist in modeling and to
evaluate how physical layer techniques perform while using
appropriate channel models. For link-level simulations, the
technical report states two different channel models: Clustered
Delay Line (CDL) and Tapped Delay Line (TDL) models.
Both these channels have different profiles that are constructed
for both Line-of-Sight (LOS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS).
The purpose of our work is to evaluate the performance of
physical layer in terms of throughput and BER using the TDL
channel model and different Modulation and Coding Scheme
(MCS) index values. The significant contributions of this
paper include simulations results on how to apply the channel
model to evaluate 5G system performance in terms of user
throughput and Bit Error Rate (BER). The simulations carried
show how different profiles impact system performance. The
experiments are conducted in a multi-stream system and
focused on how the modulation order and target code rate
influence the throughput and BER.
The paper is organized as follows, Section II presents
the system model used for the simulations and Section III
describes the simulation parameters and analyzes the results
obtained. Finally, Section IV delivers the conclusions of this
paper.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
The channel model adopted for this work is the TDL model.
There are, in total, 5 TDL models or profiles. TDL-A, TDL-B
and TDL-C are designed for NLOS environments, while TDL-
D and TDL-E are designed for LOS scenarios. The channel
impulse response of the multipath TDL model with N number
of taps is given by [5]

N
h(t, τ ) = ak (t)δ(τ − τk ) (1)
k=1
where ak (t) is the overall amplitude at the τk delay for the
kth tap. Each tap’s Doppler spectrum can be described by a
Jakes spectrum form, being the maximum Doppler shift (fD )
defined by
| ν̄ |
fD = (2)
λ0
 In addition, for this work, a delay scaling factor of 32 ns is
introduced, in order to simulate an indoor office environment
with normal-delay profile. Hence, the RMS delay spread
values of the TDL model are scaled in delay, which can be
obtained by [6]
τn,scaled = τn,model · DSdesired , (3)
where τn,model is the normalized delay value for the nth
cluster of the TDL model, DSdesired is the desired delay
spread and τn,scaled is the new delay value of the nth cluster.
The TDL channel model is described for Single-Input-
Single-Output (SISO) systems, although there is the possibility
to extend it to Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) link-
level simulations. In order to do so, a correlation matrix can
be applied to achieve the TDL extension [7].
Profiles TDL-A and TDL-B have 23 taps, while TDL-C has
24. All three models follow Rayleigh distribution. To remark
that for TDL-A, the power ranges between -29.7 and 0 dB,
reaching 0 dB at tap number 2, with a normalized delay of
0.3819. For TDL-B, the power ranges between -12.2 and 0
dB, reaching the latter at the first tap, with a corresponding
normalized delay of 0. Lastly, for TDL-C, the power ranges
between 0 and -22.8 dB, and is 0 dB at the sixth tap, with a
normalized delay of 0.6366 [6].
Fig. 1. MCS index table 2 for PDSCH. Source: 3GPP TS 38.214 version
15.2.0 Release 15 [8].
Figure 1 depicts the MCS index mapping table used in
the Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH). There are
27 different MCS index values that can dictate the data rate
of the established connection. The second column displays
the associated modulation order. From 0 to 4 MCS index,
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the modulation type is QPSK, from 5 to 10, the modulation
is 16QAM, from 11 to 19, the modulation is 64QAM and
from 20 to 27 the modulation is 256QAM. The higher the
modulation type, the higher the data rate, which can be
observed on the third column, where the target code rate
increases with the MCS index. Furthermore, the last column
represents the spectral efficiency. The attainable values are
going be smaller than the ones depicted in the table, due to
overhead (around 25%) and reference signals. To note that
the fourth generation uses up to 64QAM modulation, but
256QAM is envisioned to be used in 5G systems.
III. S IMULATION PARAMETERS & R ESULTS
In this section, we present the scenario utilized and the
link-level simulation results. A downlink single-user MIMO
system with 1 Base Sation (BS) and 1 Mobile Station (MS) in
a NLOS environment is considered. The BS is equipped with
4 transmitter antennas and the MS is equipped with 4 receiver
antennas, moving at a speed of 3 km/h. A carrier frequency
of 3.5 GHz is selected, with a bandwidth of 100 MHz. The
duplex mode used is Time Division Duplexing (TDD) and the
number of Physical Resource Blocks (PRB) allocated is 256.
Figure 2 summarizes the defined parameters.
Fig. 2. List of parameters adopted for the simulations.
In order to perform the simulations we used Nokia’s
link-level simulator. The MS, on the receiver side, makes
use of the Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) algorithm,
hence, real channel estimation is utilized in the defined
scenario. Moreover, a Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI) is
added to the simulation.
The performance of the system is analyzed by comparing
different channel models: TDL-A, TDL-B and TDL-C. We
use different MCS index values and modulation schemes. In
particular, for 16QAM we use the MCS index values of 5 and
9, for 64QAM we use MCS index values of 13 and 17, and
lastly for 256QAM we use MCS values of 25 and 27. The
results are evaluated in terms of BER and throughput. For
16QAM, a Signal-to-Noise-Plus-Interference Ratio (SNIR)
range of [-10,8] dB is considered, for 64QAM the SNIR ranges
between [2,20] dB and for 256QAM the SNIR range is [12,28]
dB.
 Fig. 3. BER and throughput results for MCS index values of 5,9 (16QAM modulation), 13,17 (64QAM modulation) and 25,27 (256QAM modulation).
Figures 3 depicts the BER and throughput performance
of the three channel profiles while using 16QAM, 64QAM
and 256QAM modulation. It is possible to conclude that the
performance of the system is better when we use 256QAM
modulation scheme and the MCS index value is 27, the
maximum value possible. We can also observe that, even
though higher MCS values lead to higher throughputs, the
required SNIR also increases, which is an expected behavior.
The maximum throughput reached for 16QAM is 165,960
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Mbits/s, with an MCS index of 9. For 64QAM modulation,
the maximum throughput is increased by 131%, reaching up
to 383,720 Mbits/s, with MCS index of 17. For 256QAM,
the increase is of 35% when compared to 64QAM, with
a maximum throughput of 516,560 Mbits/s . We evaluated
that in poorer condition scenarios, the channel profile that
performs better is the TDL A, since the required SNIR in
order to achieve better throughput values or to minimize
BER, is smaller, out of the three profiles. Consequently,
 when comparing the three channel profile models, simulation
results show that the profile that achieves a better overall
performance, independently of the MCS index value and
modulation scheme chosen, is the TDL A model, followed
by TDL B and lastly TDL C. Specifically, we can observe
that for MCS index of 9 (16QAM modulation), TDL B
reaches the maximum throughput of 165,960 Mbits/s with a
SNIR of 2 dB more when compared to TDL A. For TDL C,
the difference is even higher, needing 7 dB more to reach the
same maximum throughput. For MCS index of 17 (64QAM
modulation), the maximum throughput of 309,920 Mbits/s
is reached by TDL B with 2 dB after TDL A, while for
TDL C a difference of 8 dB is observed, in comparison with
TDL A. Finally, for 256QAM and MCS index of 27, TDL B
reaches the maximum throughput of 516,560 Mbits/s 2 dB
after TDL A, while TDL C is not able to reach it within the
specified SNIR range.
In addition, for 256QAM modulation, the profile TDL C
requires very good conditions (higher SNIR values) in order
to reach the maximum throughput and minimize BER. Figure
3 shows that for MCS index of 27, which is the maximum
MCS index value possible for 256QAM modulation, the
maximum throughput is not achieved when using TDL C.
Consequently, a higher SINR range is necessary to minimize
BER and reach the maximum throughput for this channel
profile.
The last observation on the three channel profiles is that,
as seen in figure 3, for lower target code rates, the resulting
curves for TDL A and TDL B are positioned close together,
while for TDL C are more distant.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper we analyzed the performance, in terms of
BER and throughput, of a downlink single-user MIMO system
envisioned for 5G using the three TDL profiles designed for
NLOS. Link-level simulation results showed that TDL A is
the profile model with a better overall performance, followed
by TDL B and lastly TDL C. The maximum throughput
achieved using 16QAM modulation is 165,960 Mbits/s, with
MCS index of 9, while for 64QAM modulation an increase of
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131% is observed, with a maximum throughput of 383,720
Mbits/s. For 256QAM, the increase when compared to
64QAM is of 35%, achieving up to 516,560 Mbits/s. The
theoretical increase on data rate from 16QAM to 64QAM is 4
times more, although in our case the increase is approximately
2.3 times. This is an expected result, since the simulated
scenario is designed for a NLOS environment and real channel
estimation is used. Additionally, for 16QAM and 64QAM,
the throughput would be higher if MCS index value of 10
and 19 was selected, respectively. There is also the presence
of overhead, reference signals and data retransmissions.
As future work, it could be important to study the perfor-
mance of the channel profiles dedicated for LOS environments,
TDL D and TDL E, in order to better understand the channel
behavior for these scenarios.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was developed using Nokia’s 5G simulator.
Hence, the authors wish to acknowledge the support given
by Nokia.
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