Air Interface & Planning Solutions

LTE Architecture & Modes

LTE Frame Structure & Overhead Overview

Differences between LTE , 2G & 3G Coverage

LTE Radio Resource Management.

4RX & 4TX Impact on Coverage/Capacity

Performance and Interference

LTE Architecture
Modes in LTE

The basic principle for TDD is to use the same frequency band for
transmission and reception but to alternate the transmission
direction time (UL or DL).

Like FDD, TDD supports bandwidths from 1.4MHz up to 20 MHz but

depending on the frequency band, the number of supported
bandwidths may be less than the full range.

Since the bandwidth is shared between UL and DL and the

maximum bandwidth is 20MHz the maximum data rates are
lower in TDD than in FDD mode.

The TDD system could be implemented on an unpaired band while

the FDD system always requires a pair of bands with some
separation between UL and Dl for the duplex separation.

In FDD UE implementation requires a duplex filter for the separation

of UL and DL. The filter is not required for the TDD mode. The
complexity of the duplex filter is increasing when the UL and DL
frequency bands are in close proximity.

In TDD mode since the UL and DL share the same frequency band
the signals in these 2 transmission directions can interfere to each
other. For uncoordinated deployment (not synchronized) on the
same frequency band, the devices connected to cells with different
timing and/or different UL/DL allocation may cause blocking of other
users.
In TDD Mode the base stations need to be synchronized to
each other at frame level in the same coverage area to
avoid this interference.
 OFDMA & SCFDMA

The basic idea for the OFDM Signal is to transmits hundreds or even
thousands of separately modulated radio signals using orthogonal
subcarriers spread across a wideband channel
OFDM Benefits and Challenges
*Good performance in Frequency Selective fading channels
*Low complexity of baseband receiver
*Supporting various modulation Schemes BPSK,QPSK,16QAM,64QAM.
*Compatibility with advanced receiver and antenna technologies.
*The high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the transmitter
signal.
 OFDMA & SCFDMA

One of the major drawbacks of an OFDMA system is, that the

transformation of a complex symbol mapped sequence (e.g.
BPSK, QPSK, etc.) onto a small set of subcarriers produces time
sequences that have high PAPR (Peak-to-Average Power Ratio).

PAPR is the ratio between the maximum power and the averaged
power.

This results in requirements for expensive transmission

amplifiers and furthermore lead to high power consumption.
Both effects are -particularly on terminal side- unwanted.

In order to reduce the PAPR a variant of OFDMA is used. It is

called SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
Access). SC-FDMA works according to the following mechanism,
described for the associated transmitter structure.

The most obvious difference between the two schemes is that

OFDMA transmits the four QPSK data symbols in parallel, one per
subcarrier, while SC-FDMA transmits the four QPSK data symbols
in series at four times the rate, with each data symbol occupying
N x 15 kHz bandwidth.

Visually, the OFDMA signal is clearly multi-carrier and the SC-

FDMA signal looks more like single-carrier, which explains the
SC in its name. Note that OFDMA and SC-FDMA symbol lengths
OFDMA & SCFDMA
LTE Frame Structure & Overhead Overview
LTE Frame Structure & Overhead Overview
LTE Frame Structure & Overhead Overview

Downlink Frame Structure

10ms Radio frame

2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10

1ms Subframe SSS

PSS
0.5ms = 1 slot
checking for SSS
Normal CP at 2 possible positions
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 CP length

1 2 3 4 5 6
Extended CP
Short cyclic prefix:

5.21 s 1563 m

Long cyclic prefix: *1 OFDM Symbol

= 66.7 micro sec
16.67 s 5000 m
= Data

= Cyclic prefix Copy

LTE Frame Structure & Overhead Overview

Downlink Frame Structure

Frequency
SSS

PSS

PBCH

PCFICH

PHICH

PDCCH

Reference signals

PDSCH UE1

PDSCH UE2 Time