Calculation of Peak Rate of LTE System

2021-02-13 mscbsc
We often hear that "LTE network can reach peak rates of 100M,
150M, 300M, and LTE-A can even reach 1Gbps", etc., but what
factors affect the achievement of these rates and how to calculate?
In order to better To learn peak rate calculation, we can read together
with the following questions:
1. In the LTE system, what factors affect the peak rate?
2. In the FDD-LTE system, what are the uplink and downlink peak
rates of Cat3 and Cat4?
3 , In the TD-LTE system, taking the time slot ratio of 3:1 and the
special subframe ratio of 10:2:2 as an example, what is the peak rate
of the uplink and downlink of Cat3 and Cat4?
3. LTE-A (LTE Advanced) requires What technologies are needed to
achieve the target peak rate of 1Gbps?

1. Duplex mode - FDD, TDD

FDD-LTE is frequency division duplex, that is, uplink and downlink use
different frequencies for transmission; while TD-LTE uses time division
duplex, uplink and downlink share frequencies and use different time
slots send.
Therefore, if the same bandwidth and the same terminal type are
used, FDD-LTE can achieve a higher peak rate.
2. Carrier bandwidth
The LTE network uses different frequency resources such as 5MHz,
10MHz, 15MHz, and 20MHz, and the peak rates that can be achieved
are different.
3. The business requirements of uplink/downlink
and uplink are not as good as that of downlink. Therefore, the principle
of "higher downlink rate and lower uplink rate" is also considered in
the system design, and the actual effect is the same.
4. The UE capability level
is the influence of the terminal type. Cat3 and Cat4 are common
terminal types. In the FDD-LTE system, the peak downlink rate can
reach 100Mbps and 150Mbps respectively, and the uplink can only
support the modulation method of up to 16QAM, and the highest
uplink rate 50Mbps.
5. Uplink and downlink time slot allocation, special subframe
allocation in the TD-LTE system
Different uplink and downlink time slot allocation and special time slot
allocation will affect the peak rate level in the TD-LTE system.
There are 1:3 and 2:2 for uplink and downlink time slot ratios, and
3:9:2 and 10:2:2 for special time slot ratios. Considering increasing the
downlink rate as much as possible, the most commonly used
configuration at home and abroad is DL:UL=3:1, and the special time
slot ratio is 10:2:2.
6. Number of antennas, MIMO configuration
Cat4 supports 2*2MIMO, supports up to dual-stream spatial
multiplexing, and the downlink peak rate can reach 150Mbps; Cat5
supports 4*4MIMO, supports up to four layers of spatial multiplexing,
and the downlink peak rate can reach 300Mbps.
7.
When calculating the peak rate of control channel overhead, the
system overhead, that is, the proportion of control channel
resources, should also be considered. In practical systems, the
control channel overhead fluctuates within a level of 20-30%.
In short, there are many factors that affect the so-called "peak rate",
so when referring to the peak rate, it is necessary to explain the rate
achieved under what standard, how much bandwidth is used, what
terminal, what direction, and what configuration.

Two methods are generally used to calculate the peak rate:

the first method is to start from the microscopic physical resources,
and calculate how much bit traffic is transmitted within a certain time
(usually using a TTI or a wireless frame) to obtain the rate;
the other method is to directly check a certain The maximum transport
block that the UE type can transmit in one TTI (1ms for LTE system),
and the rate is obtained.
The following takes FDD-LTE as an example to give examples of the
two methods respectively.

[Method 1]
First give the calculation result:
In the case of 20MHz bandwidth, within one TTI, the highest rate that
can be calculated is:
total rate = ,

The rate of the traffic channel=201.6*75%≈150Mbps

Digital meaning:
6: The highest downlink modulation mode is 64QAM, and 1 symbol
contains 6bit information;
2 and 7: The TTI of the LTE system is 1 subframe (with a duration of
1ms), including 2 In the conventional CP, one time slot contains 7
symbols; therefore: in a TTI, in the case of a single antenna, a
subcarrier downlink transmits data at most 6 × 7 × 2 bits;
2: 2 × 2 MIMO is used in the downlink, Two layers of space division
multiplexing, two streams can transmit two channels of data;
1200 : 20MHz bandwidth contains 1200 subcarriers (100 RBs, each
RB contains 12 subcarriers)
75%: The downlink system overhead generally takes 25% (the
downlink overhead includes RS signal (2/21),
PDCCH/PCFICH/PHICH (4/21), SCH, BCH, etc.), that is, the ratio of
the downlink effective transmission data rate is 75%.
If it is a TD-LTE system, the time slot ratio and special time slot ratio
of uplink and downlink should also be considered, which affects the
proportion of downlink traffic to the total traffic.
For example, in the case of the time slot ratio of 3:1/special subframe
ratio of 10:2:2: in
a radio frame, each subframe is DSUDD DSUDD in sequence, where
D is the downlink subframe and U is the uplink subframe. Each
subframe contains 2 time slots with a total of 14 symbols, S is a
special subframe, and the configuration of 10:2:2 means that DwPTS
(Downlink Pilot TimeSlot), GP (Guard Period) and UpPTS (Uplink Pilot
TimeSlot) each occupy 10 , 2 and 2 symbols. Then the equivalent
proportion of all downlink symbols in one TTI is
(6*14+2*10)/14*10=74%. If the 75% control channel overhead is also
roughly considered, then the TD-LTE system is in 3: Under the
configuration of 1/10:2:2, the peak downlink rate can reach:
201.6*75%*74%≈112Mbps
Other time slot ratios and special subframe ratios can be calculated by
referring to this method. [Method 2] This method is very simple and
intuitive, as shown in the following table, the first column is the
terminal type 1~8 (commonly used 3, 4)

The second column is the maximum number of transport block bits

transmitted in a TTI, then the peak rate is equal to the maximum
transport block size/transmission time interval. Taking Cat3 and Cat4
as examples, the peak throughput rates are 102048/0.001=102Mbps
and 150752/0.001 respectively. =150Mbps. Because Cat5 can use
4*4 high-order MIMO, 4-layer space division multiplexing transmits
299552bit in one TTI, so it can reach the downlink peak rate of
300Mbps.
In the FDD-LTE system, the calculation can stop here. The TD-LTE
system needs to multiply the ratio according to the time slot
ratio/special subframe ratio. The downlink peak throughput rates of
Cat3 and Cat4 are 75Mbps and 111Mbps respectively.
Super verbose:
1. Because the maximum transmission block of Cat3 is 102048, the
peak rate in FDD-LTE can only reach 100Mbps.
2. The calculation of control channel overhead is affected by factors
such as RS signal, PDCCH/PCFICH/PHICH, SCH, BCH, etc. The first
two parts account for a relatively high proportion (2/21 and 14/21
respectively), and SCH and BCH account for a small proportion (two
The sum is less than 1%), space is limited, sorry for not giving a
detailed introduction.
3. The calculation of the peak rate of TD-LTE is calculated according
to 1 TTI (1ms). The idea may be a bit confusing. If the time is
considered as a wireless frame of 10ms, the calculation will be more
intuitive. Within 10ms, there are Several downlink subframes are
multiplied by the number of bits transmitted in each subframe or the
size of the transmission block. Although the result is the same, it is
better to use the calculation method of 10ms for the radio frame, and
you can try to calculate it yourself.

[Method 1]
First give the calculation result:
In the case of 20MHz bandwidth, within one TTI, the highest rate that
can be calculated is:
total rate =                            
digital meaning:
4: The highest uplink modulation mode is 16QAM, and 1 symbol
contains 4 bits of information;
2 and 7 : The TTI of the LTE system is 1 subframe (with a duration of
1ms), including 2 time slots. Under the conventional CP, 1 time slot
includes 7 symbols; therefore: in a TTI, in the case of a single
antenna, a subcarrier uplink The maximum transmission data is
4×7×2bit;
96*12 : 20MHz bandwidth has a total of 100 RBs. Assuming that
PUCCH occupies 2 RBs, the number of uplink RBs should follow the
principle of "2/3/5", so PUSCH uses up to 96 RBs. Each RB contains
12 subcarriers;
79%: The system overhead is generally taken as 25% (1/7 of the RS
consumption and 1/14 of the SRS consumption), that is, the ratio of
the uplink effective transmission data rate is 79%.

【Method Two】

 Directly using the maximum transmission block to calculate, it can be

seen that the upstream peak rate of Cat3 and Cat4 is 51Mbps (the
highest modulation mode is 16QAM), and the upstream peak rate of
Cat5 can reach 75Mbps (the highest modulation mode is 64QAM).
In the TD-LTE system, as in the downlink, take the configuration of the
time slot ratio 3:1/special subframe ratio 10:2:2 as an example:
DSUDD DSUDD. The proportion of all uplink symbols is
(2*14+2*2)/14*10=21.4%. At this time, the peak uplink rate of the TD-
LTE system can reach: 51Mbps*21.4%=10.5Mbps
Super verbose:
1. Uplink overhead There are also many different versions of the
calculation, such as whether to consider PUCCH, SRS, whether to
consider PRACH (PRACH is sent every 20ms, accounting for 5% of
the time, PUSCH is sent every ms, accounting for 95% of the time),
and the application of the number of RBs (Whether to follow the
principle of 2/3/5), considering different factors, the deviation of the
calculation result will not be very large according to the actual
requirements of the operator.
2. The uplink and downlink of TD-LTE are the same. It will be more
intuitive to calculate with 10ms wireless frame as the time unit.

From the perspective of the laws of various extremes and standards of

wireless networks, the most effective and direct way to increase the
peak rate is to increase the frequency spectrum, that is, use
"bandwidth" to exchange "rate".
This method is inevitably adopted on the road of LTE development to
LTE-A, and carrier aggregation, Carrier Aggregation, or CA for short,
is introduced.
CA aggregates adjacent, or non-adjacent, or different frequency
bands within the same frequency band to increase the peak rate in a
manner similar to "multi-carrier".
Each carrier has a maximum bandwidth of 20MHz, and can be up to 5
carriers, so a maximum of 100MHz of spectrum can be utilized, so
that CA can provide 300~750Mbps (2X2 MIMO) or >1Gbps (4X4
MIMO) peak throughput in a 40~100MHz bandwidth Rate.
The rate of 1Gbps cannot be achieved by CA alone, and it also
depends on high-order MIMO (or MIMO enhancement). The protocol
proposes downlink 4x4MIMO, 8x8 MIMO and uplink 2x4 MIMO, 4x4
MIMO and other modes to achieve the following levels of peak rates:
DL: 300 ~ 600 Mbps(4x4 MIMO, 8x8 MIMO) in 20MHz, or >1Gbps
(4x4 MIMO) with CA.
UL: 150 ~ 300 Mbps(2x4 MIMO, 4x4 MIMO) in 20MHz , or >1Gbps
(4x4 MIMO) with CA
but High-order MIMO in LTE-A, similar to the evolution route of
HSPA+ network to 2*2MIMO, requires hardware upgrades, and the
network changes are relatively large, which is not as convenient as
CA application, so it may take a long time to realize.