Air Interface

Numerology

LTE

Time duration for one frame (One radio frame, One system frame) is 10 ms. This means that we have
100 radio frame per second.

Let’s look at the frame structure:

 Some of high level description you can get from this figure would be
 Number of subframe in one frame is 10
 Number of slots in one subframe is 2. This means that we have 20 slots within one frame.
 And one slot is made up of 7 small blocks called ‘symbol’.

The frame structures for LTE differ between the Time Division Duplex, TDD and the Frequency Division
Duplex, FDD modes as there are different requirements on segregating the transmitted data

There are two types of LTE frame structure:

1. Type 1:   used for the LTE FDD mode systems.

2. Type 2:   used for the LTE TDD systems.

Type 1: FDD Frame Structure

As LTE FDD is full duplex system, means both the downlink and uplink transmission happens at the same
time at different frequencies.

Type 2: TDD Frame Structure

In TDD, the transmission is divided into time domain, means at one moment of time either downlink
subframe is transmitted or uplink.
As one can see in above image, one frame is divided into 10 subframes (1ms each), and that subframe
can be either downlink, uplink or special subframe.

Now the question comes, who decides the sequence of these subframes. That has been defined by
3GPP with the name TDD Frame Configurations. There are fixed patterns of these configurations and
network operator has to choose out of these defined patters. There are total 7 TDD configurations as
shown below:

And there comes a Special subframe which comes when there is transition from downlink subframe to
uplink subframe. It has three parts –  DwPTS(Downlink Pilot Time Slot),GP (Guard Period) and UpPTS
(Uplink Pilot Time Slot) and all of these have configurable lengths, which depends upon Special subframe
configuration.

Special subframe configuration as shown below:

GPis used to control the switching between the UL and DL transmission. Switching between transmission
directions has a small hardware delay for both UE and eNodeB and needs to be compensated by GP. GP
has to be large enough to cover the propagation delay of DL interferes. Its length determines the
maximum supportable cell size.

NR
In LTE, there is only type of numerology or subcarrier spacing (15 KHz), whereas in NR, multiple types
of subcarrier spacing are available e.g 5G NR supports subcarrier spacing of 15, 30, 60, 120 and 240
KHz. As you see in below picture, each numerology is labeled as a parameter (u, mu in Greek). The
numerology (u = 0) represents subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz which is same as LTE. And as you see in the
second column the subcarrier spacing other than 15KHz, for 5G NR.

5G NR Numerology varies from 0 to 4 indicating different types of Subcarrier spacing from 15 KHz to 240
KHz

1RE(Resource Element) = 1SCS*1Symbol

One RE can accommodate a single modulation symbol, single Resource element could be used to
transmit single QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM or 256QAM modulation symbol. A QPSK symbol represents
2 bits of information whereas 256QAM symbol represents 8 bits of information.

A combination of numerologies can be used within the duration of a single symbol, eg the
subcarrier spacings of 15 and 30 kHz can be combined when generating the air-interface
waveform. 3GPP has specified which numerologies can be used within each operating band. This
means that only specific numerology combinations are permitted, eg the 15 and 30 kHz subcarrier
spacings can be combined, but the 15 and 120 kHz subcarrier spacings
Numerologies 0 and 1 (15/30 KHz) can be used only in FR1 (Frequency Range 1 – sub 6 GHz)

Numerology 2 (60 KHz) can be used in both Frequency ranges FR1 and FR2.

Numerology 3 (120 KHz) can be used only in FR2 (> 24.5 GHz)

Why different Numerologies are required?

At high level, we can say that 5G NR have cover a very wide range of   frequency e.g, sub 3 Ghz, sub 6
Ghz and mmWave over 25 Ghz and each frequency range have its own characteristics in term
of propagation delay, Doppler etc. So, it is hard to support the complete frequency range with single
numerology (SCS) without sacrificing too much of efficiency or performance.
The symbol durations above include the impact of the cycle prefix The precise cyclic prefix duration
depends upon the symbol number: There are two symbols within each subframe which have a long cyclic
prefix. This approach has been adopted to ensure that a slot and symbol boundary always coincides with
a subframe boundary, there is an integer number of slots and symbols within a subframe.

When using Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), the symbols belonging to the downlink carrier are used for
Base Station transmissions, while the symbols, belonging to the uplink carrier are used for UE
transmissions
When using Supplemental Downlink (SDL) carrier, all symbols are used for Base Station transmissions.
Similarly, when using a Supplemental Uplink (SUL) carrier, all symbols are used for UE transmissions

When using Time Division Duplex (TDD), one subset of symbols is used for Base Station transmissions,
while another subset is used for UE transmissions. A third subset is used for transceiver switching and
guarding.

In the case of 5G, SIBI is also used to broadcast an uplink-downlink configuration, but in this case the
configuration is not constrained to a pattern specified by 3GPP. Instead, the Base Station is able to
specify its own pattern with an uplink-downlink switching period which can be as short as 0.5 ms. 5G also
provides scope for dynamically adjusting the uplink-downlink configuration broadcast in SIB1 using either
RRC signalling or layer 1 signalling on the PDCCH. The PDCCH signalling is based upon a set of 56
standardised slot formats within 3GPP TS 38.213

The precise time resolution for 5G depends upon the numerology because the symbol duration depends
upon subcarrier spacing in the case of the 120 kHz subcarrier spacing, symbols have durations of either
8.9 or 9.4 us. When using such a high time resolution it is likely that multiple symbols must be allocated to
the guard period to accommodate transceiver switching and impact of the propagation delay

TDD slot formats are normally illustrated with a guard period when switching from downlink in uplink, but
without guard period when switching from uplink to downlink.

In reality, neither the UE not the Base Station experience the timing pattern as above. The combination of
propagation delay and Timing Advance lead to different timing patterns at the UE and Base Station. The
timing experienced by the UE and Base Station is given below. This figure illustrates that the guard period
must be long enough to accommodate the round trip propagation delay, plus the UE transceiver switching
delay plus the Base Station transceiver switching delay.

The downlink transmissions are received by the UE after the propagation channel delay. The UE then
takes some time to switch its transceiver from receive to transmit. This switching delay is typically
assumed to be 20us. The UE subsequently starts its uplink transmissions according to the Timing
Advance instructions received from the Base Station. The Base Station provides Timing Advance
commands in each UE to ensure that all uplink transmissions are received with equal timing, UE which
are close to the Base Station will have a small Timing Advance, while UE which are far from the Base
Station will have a large Timing .Uplink transmissions are received by the Base Stations after the
propagation channel delay The Base Station also requires some transceiver switching time between
reception on the uplink and transmission on the downlink. Similar to the UE, this switching time is typically
assumed to be 20us

5G supports dynamic TDD which allows a rapid reconfiguration of symbols between the uplink and
downlink. This allows the Base Station to adjust the uplink and downlink resources according to short
term requirements. Neighboring cells can reconfigure their symbols between uplink and downlink without
co-ordination. This means that one cell may be transmitting in the downlink while a neighboring cell may
be receiving in the uplink. This scenario may lead to cross link interference.

The two main options for configuring UL/DL transmission:

1. UE monitors PDCCH for UL/DL resource allocation and simply follows this.
2. Base station provides the UE with a specific UL/DL transmission pattern. This pattern can be
configured using a combination of RRC or L1 signaling.

Slot configuration via RRC consists of two parts. First part is configured by the IE tdd-UL-DL-

ConfigurationCommon(can be part of SIB1) which provides all the UEs in the cell with cell-specific DL/UL

pattern.

The second part is configured by the IE tdd-UL-DL-ConfigurationDedicated via dedicated RRC signalling.

This UE specific configuration further modifies/allocates the unallocated (flexible) slots and symbols

by tdd-UL-DL-ConfigurationCommon.

The slot configuration using RRC is done in cell-specific and UE-specific manner. The resulting slot

configuration may have some more flexible slots/symbols left unallocated.

By making use of layer1 signalling, the remaining (if any) flexible symbols can dynamically be

reconfigured. PDCCH DCI format 2_0 whose CRC is scrambled with SFI-RNTI is used for this purpose. 
Slot Formats:

Release 15 version of 38.213 has defined 56 slot formats (Table 11.1.1-1) each of which is a predefined

pattern of downlink/flexible/uplink symbols during one slot. 

When slot format is set to 255, the UE should not use the above table to determine the slot format.

Instead, the slot format is determined based on configuration given by tdd-UL-DL-ConfigurationCommon,

or tdd-UL- DL-ConfigurationDedicated or from the received scheduling grants/assignments