Ch08 - Radio-Interface Architecture (P2)

Principle of Modern Communications
Ming Jiang
WWW.SYSU.EDU.CN
Chapter 8: Radio-Interface Architecture
(Part 2)
Ming Jiang
WWW.SYSU.EDU.CN
• Overall system architecture

• Radio protocol architecture
• Packet-data convergence protocol
• Radio-link control
• Medium-access control
• Physical layer
• Control-plane protocols
Ming Jiang
Medium Access Control
• The MAC layer handles logical-channel multiplexing, HARQ

retransmissions, and UL/DL scheduling
• Also responsible for multiplexing/demultiplexing data across
multiple component carriers if carrier aggregation (CA) is used
MAC provides services to RLC in the form of logical channels

• A logical channel is defined by the type of information it carries
• Generally classified as
• Control channels  for transmission of control and configuration
information needed by the LTE system
• Traffic channels  for transmission of user data
WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 4

Logical Channel Types (1/3)
Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH)

• used for transmission of system information from the
network to all terminals in a cell
• Prior to accessing the system, a terminal needs to acquire the
system information to find out
• How the system is configured
• How to behave properly within a cell
Paging Control Channel (PCCH)

• For paging of terminals whose location on a cell level is not
known to the network
• The paging message therefore needs to be transmitted in
multiple cells
Common Control Channel (CCCH)

• For transmission of control information in conjunction with
random access

Dedicated Control Channel (DCCH)

• For transmission of control information to/from a terminal
• This channel is used for individual configuration of terminals
such as different handover messages
Dedicated Traffic Channel (DTCH)

• For transmission of user data to/from a terminal
• Used for transmission of all UL and non-MBSFN DL user data
Multicast Traffic Channel (MTCH)

• For DL transmission of MBMS services across multiple cells
Multicast Control Channel (MCCH)

• For transmission of control information required for reception
of the MTCH

Single-Cell Multicast Traffic Channel (SC-MTCH)

• For DL transmission of MBMS in a single cell (e.g., NB-IoT scenario)
Single-Cell Multicast Control Channel (SC-MCCH)

• For transmission of control information for single-cell MTCH
reception
Sidelink Broadcast Control Channel (SBCCH)

• For sidelink synchronization
Sidelink Traffic Channel (STCH)

• For sidelink communication
Sidelink: the link for direct device-to-device (D2D)

communication, different from the UL and DL for
communication between a device and an eNB

Transport Channels
• From the PHY layer, the MAC layer uses services in the form of
transport channels
• A transport channel is defined by how and with what
characteristics the information is transmitted over the radio
interface
• Data on a transport channel is organized into transport blocks

• In the absence of spatial multiplexing
• In each Transmission Time Interval (TTI), at most one transport
block of dynamic size is transmitted over the radio interface to/from
a terminal
• In the case of spatial multiplexing
• There can be up to two transport blocks per TTI

Transport Format
A Transport Format (TF) is associated with each transport

block
• Specifying how the transport block is to be transmitted
• The transport format includes information about
• Transport block size (TBS)
• Modulation-and-coding scheme (MCS)
• Antenna mapping
• By varying the transport format, the MAC layer can thus realize
different data rates
• Rate control is also known as transport-format selection

Transport Channel Types (1/3)
Broadcast Channel (BCH)

• Has a fixed transport format provided by the specifications
• For transmission of parts of the BCCH system information
• More specifically, the Master Information Block (MIB)
Paging Channel (PCH)

• Transmits paging information from the PCCH logical channel
• Supports discontinuous reception (DRX) to allow battery
power saving at the terminal by waking up to receive the
PCH only at predefined time instants
Multicast Channel (MCH)

• To support MBMS
• Characterized by a semi-static TF and semi-static scheduling
• In the case of multi-cell transmission using MBSFN
• The scheduling and TF configuration is coordinated among the
transmission points involved in the MBSFN transmission

Downlink Shared Channel (DL-SCH)

• The main transport channel used for DL data transmissions
• Supports key LTE features such as
• Dynamic rate adaptation and CDS in time/frequency domains
• HARQ with soft combining
• Spatial multiplexing
• DRX to reduce terminal power consumption while still
providing an always-on experience
• Transmitting the parts of the BCCH system information not
mapped to the BCH
• There can be multiple DL-SCHs in a cell
• One per terminal scheduled in this TTI, more for CA
• One DL-SCH in some subframes carries system information
• For CA, a terminal may receive multiple DL-SCHs, one per
component carrier (CC)
Uplink Shared Channel (UL-SCH)

• The UL counterpart to the DL-SCH

Sidelink Shared Channel (SL-SCH)

• The transport channel used for sidelink communication
Sidelink Broadcast Channel (SL-BCH)

• The transpotation channel used for sidelink synchronization
Sidelink Discovery Channel (SL-DCH)

• The transpotation channel used in the sidelink discovery
process
Random-Access Channel (RACH)

• Defined as a transport channel but does not carry transport
blocks
• Furthermore, the introduction of NB-IoT in Release 13

resulted in a set of channels optimized for narrowband
operations

Logical-Transport Channel Mapping: DL
• DL channel
mapping

Logical-Transport Channel Mapping: UL
• UL channel
mapping

MAC Header and SDU Multiplexing (1/2)
• To support priority handling, multiple logical channels

(each has its own RLC entity) can be multiplexed into one
transport channel by MAC
• At the receiver, the MAC layer handles the corresponding
demultiplexing and forwards the RLC PDUs to their
respective RLC entity for in-sequence delivery

MAC Header and SDU Multiplexing (2/2)
• In the MAC header, each RLC PDU has a sub-header containing

• The identity of the logical channel (LCID) - indicates the originated
the RLC PDU and its length
• A flag indicating whether this is the last sub-header or not
• One or more RLC PDUs with MAC header can be padded to meet
the scheduled TBS, and form one TB which is forwarded to PHY

MAC Control Elements
• MAC can also insert the so-called MAC control elements (MCE)
into the TBs to be transmitted over the transport channels
• An MCE is used for inband control signaling, e.g.:
• Timing advance (TA) commands
• Random-access response (RAR)
• Control elements are identified with reserved values in the LCID
field, where the LCID value indicates the type of control
information
• The length field in the sub-header is removed for control
elements with a fixed length

MAC for CA
• The MAC multiplexing functionality also handles multiple

component carriers (CC) in the case of carrier aggregation (CA)
• Independent processing of the CCs in the PHY layer, incl. control
signaling, scheduling, and HARQ retransmissions
• CA is mainly seen in MAC and invisible to RLC and PDCP
• Logical channels incl. any MCEs are multiplexed to form one (two in
the case of spatial multiplexing) transport block(s) per CC
• Each CC has its own HARQ entity

Scheduling
• MAC controls the assignment of UL and DL resources in terms of

so-called resource block pairs
• A resource-block pair corresponds to a time-frequency unit
of 1 ms x 180 kHz
• Dynamic scheduling
• The eNB takes a scheduling decision in each 1 ms interval
and sends scheduling information to the selected set of
terminals
• Semi-persistent scheduling (SPS)
• A semi-static scheduling pattern is signaled in advance to
reduce the control-signaling overhead
• UL and DL scheduling are separated in LTE

• UL and DL scheduling decisions can be taken independently

DL Scheduling
• DL scheduler is responsible for

• Dynamically controlling which
terminal(s) to transmit to
• For each of these terminals, the
set of resource blocks upon
which the terminal's DL-SCH
should be transmitted
• The eNB controls

• Transport-format selection (selection of TBS,
MCS and antenna mapping)
• Downlink • Logical-channel multiplexing for DL
transmissions
• Since the scheduler controls the data rate, RLC
segmentation and MAC multiplexing will also be
affected by scheduling decisions

UL Scheduling
• Uplink
• UL scheduler serves a similar
purpose as DL scheduler
• The UL scheduling decision is
taken per terminal and not per
radio bearer
• Although the eNB scheduler
controls the payload of a
scheduled terminal, the terminal
is still responsible for selecting
radio bearer(s)
• The eNB scheduler controls the transport format

• The terminal controls the logical-channel multiplexing
according to predefined rules

Channel Dependent Scheduling
• DL CDS is supported through DL CSI

• Reported by the terminal to the eNB
• Reflecting the instantaneous DL channel quality in TD/FD and
information necessary to determine the appropriate antenna
processing in the case of spatial multiplexing
• UL CDS is supported by the CSI based on a sounding reference

signal (SRS)
• Which is transmitted from each terminal for the eNB to estimate
the UL channel quality
• To facilitate UL scheduling decisions, terminals can transmit
buffer-status information to eNB using a MAC message
• This information can only be transmitted, if the terminal has been
given a valid scheduling grant
• Without an UL scheduling grant, the terminal sends an indicator to
request for UL resources via some UL L1/L2 control-signaling

HARQ with Soft Combining (1/2)
• The HARQ protocol is part of MAC, while soft combining is

handled by PHY
• HARQ is not applicable for all types of traffic
• For example, broadcast transmissions (same information is intended
for multiple terminals) typically do not rely on HARQ
• Hence, HARQ is only supported for the DL-SCH and the UL-SCH,
although its usage is optional

HARQ with Soft Combining (2/2)
HARQ protocol uses multiple parallel stop-and-wait processes

• Upon reception of a TB, the receiver makes a decoding attempt
and informs the transmitter through an ACK/NACK
• The receiver must know to which HARQ process a received
acknowledgement is associated
• Using the timing of the acknowledgement
• In the case of TDD operation
• The time relation b/w the reception of data in a certain HARQ
process and the transmission of the acknowledgement is also
affected by the UL/DL allocation

HARQ Processes (1/4)
• Using multiple parallel HARQ processes for each user can result
in HARQed data being out of sequence
• For example, transport block 5 in the figure was successfully
decoded before transport block 1, which required retransmissions
• In-sequence delivery of data is therefore ensured by the RLC layer

• HARQ retransmissions are handled independently per CC in the

case of CA, which may result in out-of-sequence delivery in a
similar way as within one CC
• Thus, the same reordering mechanism in the RLC is also used to
handle in-sequence delivery across multiple component carriers

• DL retransmissions may occur at any time after the initial

transmission
• The protocol is asynchronous
• An explicit HARQ process number is used to indicate which process
is being addressed
• In an asynchronous HARQ protocol, the retransmissions are in
principle scheduled similarly to the initial transmissions

• Uplink retransmissions are based on a synchronous protocol

• The retransmission occurs at a predefined time after the initial
transmission
• The process number can be implicitly derived
• In a synchronous HARQ protocol, the time instant for the
retransmissions is fixed once the initial transmission has been
scheduled, which must be accounted for in scheduling operation
• However, note that the scheduler knows from the HARQ entity in
the eNB whether a terminal will perform a retransmission or not

HARQ vs. RLC Retransmissions (1/2)
• The HARQ mechanism will rapidly correct transmission errors

due to noise or unpredictable channel variations
• RLC is also capable of requesting retransmissions, which at first
sight may seem unnecessary
• However, the reason for having two retransmission mechanisms
on top of each other can be seen in the feedback signaling
• HARQ provides fast retransmissions, but due to errors in the
feedback, the residual error rate may be too high for TCP
performance requirements
• RLC retransmission ensures (almost) error-free data delivery but
slower retransmissions than the HARQ protocol

HARQ vs. RLC Retransmissions (2/2)
• The combination of HARQ and RLC provides an attractive

combination of small round-trip time and reliable data delivery
• Furthermore, as the RLC and HARQ are located in the same
node, tight interaction b/w the two is possible


• Physical layer
Ming Jiang
Physical Layer (1/2)
• PHY provides services to MAC in the form of transport channels

• (U)DL data transmission  (U)DL-SCH
• At most one or two (in the case of spatial multiplexing) transport
blocks per TTI on a (U)DL-SCH
• In the case of CA, there is one (U)DL-SCH per component carrier
as seen by the terminal

Physical Layer (2/2)
• A physical channel corresponds to the set of time-frequency

resources used for transmission of a particular transport channel
• Each transport channel is mapped to a corresponding physical
channel
• Some physical channels have no corresponding transport
channel, e.g., L1/L2 control channels
• Downlink control information (DCI) provides the terminal with
information for proper reception and decoding of DL data
• Uplink control information (UCI) provides the scheduler and the
HARQ protocol with information about the situation at the terminal

DL Physical Channel Types (1/3)
Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH)

• Main physical channel used for unicast data transmission
• Also for transmission of paging information
Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH)

• Carries part of the system information
• Required by the terminal in order to access the network
Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH)

• For MBSFN transmissions
Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH)

• For DL control information
• Scheduling decisions required for reception of PDSCH
• Scheduling grants enabling transmission on the PUSCH

Relay Physical Downlink Control Channel (R-PDCCH)

• Introduced in LTE Release 10
• Carries L1/L2 control signaling on donor-eNB-to-relay link
Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel (EPDCCH)

• Introduced in LTE Release 11
• Essentially serves the same purpose as PDCCH, but allows for
transmission of the control information in a more flexible way
MTC physical downlink control channel (MPDCCH)

• Introduced in Release 13
• As part of the improved support for massive machine-type
communication (MTC)
• It is a variant of the EPDCCH

Physical Hybrid-ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH)

• Transmits HARQ ACK/NACKs to the terminal on whether an
UL transport block should be retransmitted or not
Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH)

• Provides the terminals with information necessary to decode
the set of PDCCHs
• Only one PCFICH per component carrier

UL Physical Channel Types (1/2)
Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH)

• The UL counterpart to the PDSCH
• At most one PUSCH per UL component carrier per terminal
Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH)

• Used by the terminal to send HARQ ACK/NACKs , indicating
to the eNB whether the DL transport block(s) was
successfully received or not
• To send channel-state reports aiding DL CDS
• For requesting resources to transmit UL data
• At most one PUCCH per terminal
Physical Random-Access Channel (PRACH)

• Used for random access

UL Physical Channel Types (2/2)
Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH)

• The sidelink counterpart to the PUSCH
Physical Sidelink Control Channel (PSCCH)

• Used by the terminal to send sidelink-related control
information
Physical Sidelink Discovery Channel (PSDCH)

• Used for sidelink discovery
Physical Sidelink Broadcast Channel (PSBCH)

• Used to convey basic sidelink-related information between
devices

Transport-Physical Channel Mapping: DL
• DL channel
mapping

Transport-Physical Channel Mapping: UL
• UL channel
mapping


• Physical layer
Ming Jiang
Control-Plane Protocols
Control-plane (CP) protocols

• Mainly responsible for connection setup, mobility, and
security
• Control messages transmitted from the network to the
terminals can originate from
• The MME, located in the core network
• The RRC, located in the eNB
NAS control-plane functionality

• Handled by the MME
• Includes EPS bearer management, authentication, security,
and different idle-mode procedures, e.g. paging
• Also responsible for assigning an IP address to a terminal

RAN Procedures Handled by RRC (1/3)
RRC messages are transmitted

to the terminal via signalling
radio bears (SRB)
RRC Procedures
• Broadcast of system information necessary for the terminal
to be able to communicate with a cell
• Transmission of paging messages originating from the MME
to notify the terminal about incoming connection requests
• Paging is used in the RRC_IDLE state when the terminal is not
connected to a particular cell
• Indicates system-information updates, e.g. for public warning

RRC Procedures (Contd.)

• Connection management, including setting up bearers and
mobility within LTE
• Includes establishing an RRC context, i.e. configuring the
parameters for communication b/w the terminal and RAN
• Mobility functions such as cell (re)selection
• Measurement configuration and reporting
• Handling of UE capabilities
• When connection is established, the terminal will announce its
capabilities (not all terminals can support all LTE functionality)

Further Remarks
• RRC messages are transmitted via SRBs using the same set
of protocol layers (PDCP, RLC, MAC, and PHY) as described in
previous slides
• The SRB is mapped to the CCCH during establishment of
connection and, once a connection is established, to the
DCCH
• Control-plane and user-plane data can be multiplexed in the
MAC layer and transmitted to the device in the same TTI
• The aforementioned MAC control elements (i.e. control
plane data) can also be used for control of radio resources in
some specific cases
• Where low latency is more important than ciphering, integrity
protection, and reliable transfer  not to use PDCP

State Machines: RRC_CINNECTED (1/3)
RRC_CONNECTED
• Means an RRC context is established
• The parameters necessary for communication b/w the
terminal and RAN are known to both entities
• The cell to which the device belongs, is known
• An identity of the device, the cell radio network temporary
identifier (C-RNTI), used for signaling purposes between the
device and the network, has been configured

RRC_CONNECTED
• RRC_CONNECTED is intended for data transfer to/from the
device
• But discontinuous reception (DRX) can be configured in order
to reduce device power consumption
• Since there is an RRC context established in the eNB in
RRC_CONNECTED, leaving DRX and starting to receive/transmit
data is relatively fast (as no connection setup with its
associated signaling is needed)

RRC_CONNECTED
• Two substates (IN_SYNC, OUT_OF_SYNC) indicate whether UL
is synchronized to the network or not
• LTE uses an orthogonal FDMA/TDMA based UL  necessary
to synchronize UL transmissions from different UEs
• Ensure they arrive at the eNB at (about) the same time

How to Achieve UL Synchronisation
UL Synchronisation Procedure
eNB measures the arrival time of

Restore UL transmissions
each active UE's transmissions
eNB sends timing-correction UE performs random-access to

commands in the DL restore UL synchronization
UL is synchronized UL declares nonsynchronized
UL transmission of user data and UL synchronization not

L1/L2 control signaling guaranteed
No UL transmission in a time
Timing alignment not possible
window

State Machines: RRC_IDLE (1/2)
RRC_IDLE
• No RRC context in the RAN
• UE does not belong to a specific cell
• No data transfer may take place
• UE sleeps most of the time in order to reduce battery
consumption
• UL synchronization is NOT maintained
• The only UL transmission activity that may take place is random
access  to move to state RRC_CONNECTED

State Machines: RRC_IDLE (2/2)
RRC_IDLE
• When moving to RRC_CONNECTED
• The RRC context needs to be established in both the RAN and
the UE
• Compared to leaving DRX, this takes a somewhat longer time
• In the DL, UE in RRC_IDLE periodically wake up in order to
receive paging messages, if any, from the network

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Acknowledgements and References
Some contents in this PPT are based on the book:

• Erik Dahlman，Stefan Parkvall，Johan Skold，《4G: LTE/LTE-Advanced
for Mobile Broadband》（英文第二版），2013年12月，ISBN：978-
0124199859
• Arunabha Ghosh，Jun Zhang，Jeffrey G. Andrews，Rias Muhamed，《
Fundamentals of LTE》，Prentice Hall，2010年9月，ISBN：978-
0137033119
References
• （瑞典）达尔曼等著，堵久辉、缪庆育等译，《4G移动通信技术权威指南：
LTE与LTE-Advanced》，人民邮电出版社，ISBN：9787115324702
• 元泉，《LTE轻松进阶》，电子工业出版社，2012年4月，ISBN：
9787121165504
• 杨峰义，《LTE/LTE-Advanced 无线宽带技术》，人民邮电出版，2012年7月
，ISBN：9787115281807

Ch08 - Radio-Interface Architecture (P2)

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Principle of Modern Communications

• Overall system architecture

• The MAC layer handles logical-channel multiplexing, HARQ

MAC provides services to RLC in the form of logical channels

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 4

Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH)

Paging Control Channel (PCCH)

Common Control Channel (CCCH)

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 5

Dedicated Control Channel (DCCH)

Dedicated Traffic Channel (DTCH)

Multicast Traffic Channel (MTCH)

Multicast Control Channel (MCCH)

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 6

Single-Cell Multicast Traffic Channel (SC-MTCH)

Single-Cell Multicast Control Channel (SC-MCCH)

Sidelink Broadcast Control Channel (SBCCH)

Sidelink Traffic Channel (STCH)

Sidelink: the link for direct device-to-device (D2D)

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 7

• Data on a transport channel is organized into transport blocks

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 8

A Transport Format (TF) is associated with each transport

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 9

Broadcast Channel (BCH)

Paging Channel (PCH)

Multicast Channel (MCH)

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 10

Downlink Shared Channel (DL-SCH)

Uplink Shared Channel (UL-SCH)

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 11

Sidelink Shared Channel (SL-SCH)

Sidelink Broadcast Channel (SL-BCH)

Sidelink Discovery Channel (SL-DCH)

Random-Access Channel (RACH)

• Furthermore, the introduction of NB-IoT in Release 13

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 12

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 13

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 14

• To support priority handling, multiple logical channels

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 15

• In the MAC header, each RLC PDU has a sub-header containing

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 16

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 17

• The MAC multiplexing functionality also handles multiple

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 18

• MAC controls the assignment of UL and DL resources in terms of

• UL and DL scheduling are separated in LTE

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 19

• DL scheduler is responsible for

• The eNB controls

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 20

• The eNB scheduler controls the transport format

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 21

• DL CDS is supported through DL CSI

• UL CDS is supported by the CSI based on a sounding reference

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 22

• The HARQ protocol is part of MAC, while soft combining is

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 23

HARQ protocol uses multiple parallel stop-and-wait processes

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 24

WCOMMS.COM PRINCIPLE OF MODERN COMMUNICATIONS 25

• HARQ retransmissions are handled independently per CC in the