‘130722, 933 PM LTE carer aggregation Long Term Evolution Homepage ‘About Me Long Term Evolution Contact Me LTE Carrier Aggregation LTE is specified in 3GPP release 8 and 9. LTE advanced is specified in 3GPP release 10. The main difference between them is, cartier aggregation has been introduced in LTE Advanced. Also the number of antennas supported by MIMO has been increased to 8 in LTE ‘Advanced. 1, Carrier Aggregation Carrier aggregation (CA) is used in LTE-Advanced in order to increase the bandwidth, and thereby increasing the bitrate, Hence it will, support higher data rate compared to non-CA device. It is applied for both TDD and FDD (DL. Speeds up to 1 Gbps and UL Speeds up 10 S00Mbps). Each aggregated cartier is referred to as @ component cartier, CC. The component carrier can have a bandwidth of 1.4, 3,5, 10, 15 or 20 ME and a maximum of 5 component carriers can be aggregated, hence the maximum aggregated bandwidth is 100 MHz. In FDD the ‘number of aggregated carriers can be different in DL and UL. However, the number of UL component carriers is always equal to or lower than the number of DL component carriers, The individual component carriers ean also be of different bandwidths. For TDD the number of CCs as well as the bandwidths of each CC will normally be the same for DL and UL. = Component Carrier (CC) v LTE UE tax 5 6c 1000 —— 1.1 Types of CA 1. Intra-band contiguous - The component carriers belong to the same operating frequency band. This might not always be possible, due to operator frequency allocation scenarios. E.g. 3C, 7C, 38C 2. Intra-band non-contiguous - The component carriers belong to the same operating frequency band, but have gaps, in between so that they don’t overlap. E.g. 3A-3A, 7A-7A, 3. Inter-band non-contiguous ~ The component carriers belong to different operating frequency bands so they have gaps in between. E.g. 3A-7A, TA-20A, 3A-38A. Intra-band, contiguous Frequency Intra-band, non-contiguous hitpssiwwu.gmobiltech.comicarier- aggregation 16‘30722, 933 PM LTE carer aggregation a e Bande Inter-band, non: contiguout 1.2 Carrier Aggregation - Secondary Cells (SCell) In CA the UE is camped to only one cell (PCell) called the Primary serving cell, served by the Primary component carrier (PCC), ‘The other component carriers are all referred to as Secondary component carriers (SCO), served by the Secondary serving cells (SCelt), The SCC’s are added and removed as required, while the PCC is only changed at handover, Frequency Frequency If the UE is configured with one or more SCells, the eNodeB may activate and deactivate the configured SCells, Activation/Deactivation does not apply to PCell. When 2 CC’s are combined itis called 2 Carrier Aggregation (2CA). Similarly ‘we can combine 3CC, 4CC and SCC and are called as 3CA, 4CA and SCA respectively. Below diagram shows the throughput ‘based up on number of component carriers when combined together. K a 3 Carrier Aggregation \ Carver Aggremated | astapipe | \ IE / ‘A typical use case of activation of the SCell would be when there is a need of more data to delivered to the UE in the downlink, the network can activate several secondary CCs to maximize downlink throughput, Another use case could be that if the PCell is fully loaded, the SCell can be activated and the data transfer can be scheduled only on the SCell (Load balancing). The network ‘can deactivate the SCell when there is no more data to be delivered to the UE or the channel quality of the SCell turning to be bad. Carrier Aggregated data pipe ‘SCell Activation is done via MAC Control Element whereas the deactivation mechanism is either by using MAC control element or by the expiry of the SCellDeactivationTimer. 1.3 CA Bandwidth Class It indicates a combination of maximum ATBC (Aggregated Transmission Bandwidth Configuration) and maximum number of Component Carriers (CC) CCA Bandwicth | Aggregated Transmission Banduwicth Number of contiguous Class cont Componenet Carrers NA,egg $ 100 1 hitpssiwwu.4gmobiltech.comicarier- aggregation 216‘30722, 033 PM LTE carer aggregation 8 25 19.8 MHz "NOTE: (can pute ine FLOOR MATH(20/20.14ABS20-20))04)0" recy Excel and shove you 198, Which means for Intra-band contiguous the Channel Spacing should be a multiple of 300 KHz and equal to (or) less than ‘Nominal Channel Spacing, Channel Spacing < Nominal Channel Spacing Channel Spacing = (BW14BW2)2).. 20 MH7 then the SCC is calculated as, = PCC EARFCN + 19.8 * 10 = 39000 + 198 = 39198 SCC EARFCN=39198, Frequency=2354,8, Bandwidth=20 MHz, ‘The Nominal Channel Spacing is 19.8 MHz (2335 - 2354.8) which is less than or equal to Channel Spacing of 19.8 MHz. Only when this condition is satisfied itis treated as Intra-band contiguous. For intra-band non-contiguous carrier aggregation the channel spacing between two E-UTRA component carriers in different sub-blocks shall be larger than the nominal channel spacing. (ie) The combination is considered as 40A-40A, Channel Spacing > Nominal Channel Spacing ‘The same method, but let’s say for 2CA band 7C with 10 and 20 MHz bandwidth and PCC EARFCN=3100, ‘Nominal Channel Spacing = FLOOR MATH{(10+20-0.1*ABS(10-20))/0.6)*0.3 hitpssiwwu.gmobiltech.comicarier- aggregation a6‘130722, 933 PM LTE carer aggregation = 144 Miz SCC EARFCN = 3100+14.4*10 = 3244 ‘Similarly for bandwidth 10 + 10 Nominal Channel Spacing = 9.9MHz; For bandwidth 10~ 5 Nominal Channel Spacing = 7.2MHz; For bandwidth 5 +5 Nominal Channel Spacing = 4.8MHz; L$ Difference between Primary Cell and Secondary Cell (PCell vs SCel) Difference between PCell and SCell PCell SCell ‘Always have both Uplink and Downlink | Always have DL when activated but may or may not have UL, PCell is always activated SCeil has to be activated or deactivated using MAC-CE UE initially registers to PCell and hence it [UE does not require acquiring System hhas to read the system information and | Information and decoding Paging from paging SCell. For SCell System Information is passed to UE while adding the SCell. During Radio Link Failure, the PCell is not | During Radio Link Failure, the SCell is released, released first before initiating RRC Connection Re-establishment procedure. 2. Understanding the CA Downlink Band Combinations from UE Capability Lets have a look at how the LTE downlink CA band combinations are retrieved from the "UE Capability Information” message. The list fof downlink CA band combinations supported by the UE are mentioned under the IF “supportedBandCombination-r10”. The element “bandEUTRA-T10” mentions the LTE bands and the element “ca-BandwidthClassDL-r10” mentions the Aggregated Transmission Bandwidth Combination a, b or cin downlink In Carrier Aggregation downlink there is only one PCell(Serving cell) but can contain any number of SCell's(Neighboring cell). In downlink CA combination there will only be one LTE band with both the elements "ca-BandwidthClassDL-r10" and "ca- BandwidthClassUL-10". This will always be the PCell and the other bands will be the SCell(s) In the below figure, there are some examples of how to find the 2CA and 3CA band combinations in downlink. When you understand 2CA & 3CA then you will easily understand how to find 4CA & SCA combinations from the UF capability, In the below figure you will see some examples of 2CA band combinations. The supported 2 CA downlink band combinations are 3a- a, 3c and 3a-3a, Band 7a . eerBandwAdeNGLasxETEID 2, SacI 2, eos on pi-e10 eerBandwAdeNGLasxETEID 2, ‘Band 32(0owntink oniy) ie ease hitpsuiwwugmobiltech.comicarier- aggregation 46‘130722, 933 PM 2CA: 30-7a (interband) PCell-38 Sell: 7a 2CA: 3¢(Intraband contiguous) PCell-3a SCell-3a 2CA: 32.38 (Intraband non-contiguous} PCell-3e SCell-38 LTE carter aggregation SEREOTRASESO 2, In the below figure you will see some examples of 3CA band combinations. The supported 3 CA downlink band combinations are 32- 7a-20a and 30-7a, 3CA: 3a-7a-20a 3a SCell's-7a and 20a 3CA: 3c-7a SCel's -3aand 7a catandwidchelaaa0i-ri0 a, supporveamue-capabili ‘ESRaEUNRASEDD 3, bandParanoteravi~ ca-Bandwidchcla: caBandwidchelaseni=ri0 a, support ean ‘ESRSEUEEASEDD 7, bandParaneteraDi-z2 BasididehClat Peall- 38 “panaeueaaszi0 3, bendFerenctessUi-s10 bandParaneteraDi-z1 Biei0 ewouayera ewotayera winri0 a twotayers 3. Understanding the CA Uplink Band Combinations from UE Capability UL CA combines two or more component carriers, transmitted from & UE to the wireless base station, dramatically increasing the speed with which a user can upload content and files. As of now there is only 2 carrier aggregation (2CA) in uplink. Therefore in Carrier ‘Agsregation uplink there is only one PCell(Serving cell) and only one SCell(Neighboring cel), hitpssiwwu.4gmobiltech.comicarier-aggragation 56‘30722, 933 PM LTE carter aggregation Lets have a look at how the LTE uplink CA band combinations are retrieved from the "UE Capability Information" message. The list of uplink CA band combinations supported by the UE are mentioned under the IE “supportedBandCombination-r10”. The clement “bandEUTRA-r10” mentions the LTE bands and the clement “‘ce-BandwidthClassUL-r10” mentions the Aggregated Transmission Bandwidth Combination a, b or ¢ in uplink. In link CA combination both LTE bands will contain the elements "ca-BandwidthClassDL-r10" and "ca-BandwidthClassUL-r10". In this case the PCell and SCell can be any(However the UE selects its PCell and SCell based up on the priority set by the network operator), In the below figure you will see some examples of 2CA band combinations. The supported 2 CA uplink band combinations are 3¢ and 32-20a/208-3a, acca ESET 2A Uplink: 3 (ntraband contiguous) oy fuo-Satametarspi-210 a bandfecancters0l-r10 ‘areneters0i-r10 o 2CA Uplink: 33-209 or 200-3 nterband) DandParanaters01-110 (Catt2Mo-Paranetersv-r10 casBandvidencLassUL=r10:0 (0) o SupporteqMiMD-capabilityBL-r fourtayers (1) wotayers (1) egotayers (0) hitpsshwww-gmobiltech comicari-aggregation 6