New Measurements with CDMA Field Test Equipment

by Ray Chadwick Berkeley Varitronics Systems, Inc. Introduction Berkeley Varitronics Systems has developed three CDMA Pilot PN scanners that are currently being used to diagnose and remediate problems in CDMA networks. This article presents some of the problems that have been found and diagnosed with pilot scanners. Other potential problems in CDMA networks are addressed, and CDMA Field tools capable of diagnosing these potential problems are introduced. These tools are under development, have capabilities in addition to pilot scanning and are suitable for both real time analysis or post-processing. Review of the Pilot Channel Each CDMA Base Station (BS) transmits a pilot code to aid the handset with demodulation and to measure BS strength. The pilot code is a pseudo random sequence, the same for each BS, but a PN sequence offset is assigned to each BS. Remember that a PN sequence with an offset in time is nearly orthogonal to the original PN sequence [1]. This is the principle that allows a CDMA mobile to distinguish between multiple BSs that transmit on the same frequency. This is the same principle that PN scanners use to scan for offsets of the pilot PN code. Each offset detected is a different time shift of the PN code and is the result of a direct transmission path or a multipath. Figure 1 depicts the relationship between BS PN offset and GPS time.

Figure 1: CDMA Time Offsets Ec/Io is the CDMA specific measurement of choice for the forward link. This is the ratio of the energy of the pilot signal being measured to the total power in the channel. The total power in the channel includes the pilot channel being measured, all channels from all BSs and noise. Figure 2 is a screen shot of a Super Eagle PN Scanner. Note that the PN scanner is measuring two different RF frequencies. In this CDMA network, there are 2 CDMA channels 1.25 MHz apart. The Y-axis is the strength of the pilot in dB and the X-axis is the PN Offset.

Figure 2: Super Eagle Display of Ec/Io vs. PN Offset

A Pilot Scanner in the CDMA Network The primary function of the pilot scanner is to measure and report the Ec/Io and PN Offset of all pilots detected. This may sound like a trivial task, but requires a bit of processing. For the Super Eagle example, shown in figure 2, the PN scanner searches for: 512 BS PN Offsets X 64 chips per Offset X 2 Oversamples per chip or 65,535 pilots for each scan of each frequency! Fortunately, the pilot signals represent a lot of information about the CDMA system. The pilots can be analyzed to detect: Areas with no pilots or only weak pilots will have no dominant server. Pilot coverage from neighboring BSs should overlap in fringe areas to accommodate hand-off. However, the overlap should not be excessive or have a large number of BS in the same overlap. Each BS that has significant power in the overlap area will raise Io, decrease Ec/Io and capacity and/or quality will suffer. This phenomenon is known as pilot pollution. Searching for a pilot signal requires a significant amount of processing. To reduce the processing time that a mobile requires to find and maintain a list of neighboring BSs, the BS sends the mobile a neighbor list message. Pilot scanners can verify that a neighbor list of a particular BS does indeed contain its neighbors. This may seem trivial, but geography and RF shadowing can make distant BS signals stronger or close BS signals weak.

PN scanners excel at measuring pilot signals in areas where the pilots change rapidly. Hills or buildings create RF shadows. Consider a mobile traveling from a valley up a hill and then down to another valley. The mobile may see three completely different BS pilot sets. A set in the first valley, another at the top of the hill and finally a third in the second valley. The mobile may be required to conduct two hand-offs quickly. Careful selection and verification of neighbor lists may be necessary in these areas. Carriers are adding additional CDMA capacity at a second or even third RF frequency. A single calibrated Super Eagle pilot scanner (figure 2) contains enough processing power to measure multiple CDMA RF channels several times per second. Sync and Page Channels The pilot channel is the lowest level channel in CDMA. It is not modulated by any data. The next step-up is the Sync Channel. This channel is modulated with a Walsh code; this keeps it orthogonal to the pilot and other channels. It is then modulated with sync channel data. The sync channel message provides the mobile with more synchronization information and parameters. The message also contains the PN Offset of the transmitting BS. CDMA mobiles rely on relative timing to search and locate other BSs. A mobile does not have a GPS receiver and derives its timing reference from a BS. For example, if a mobile s active BS is 10 and the mobile is searching for BS 11, the mobile will delay its search by 64 chips relative to when the pilot for BS 10 was received and center its search for BS 11 there. A search window defines the size of the search. The time at which a mobile receives a pilot signal is very important. Consider figure 4. BS1 and BS2 have the same PN offset. Since they have the same PN offset, they would typically be located distant from one another in the reuse pattern of the CDMA system. The mobile is located close to BS2, but is between BS1 and BS2. If the difference between the propagation times T1 and T2 is less than the half the search window, the mobile could confuse BS1 s pilot as multipath from BS2. Normally BS1 s pilot signal would be very low and not create a problem, but geography and RF shadowing can attenuate BS2 s signal so that it is near the level of BS1 s. This is a simple example of pilot aliasing [2]. Pilot aliasing does not necessarily have to occur with BSs of the same PN offset.

BS1 T1 P2 P1 T2

BS2

T1-T2 Search Window Cen tered on P2 T1 -T2 > 1/ 2 SRCH_WIN_ A or P1's Ec/Io must be very low.
Figure 3: PN alias A CDMA tool that can demodulate any BS sync channel with significant Ec/Io and measure pilot Ec/Io can easily detect PN aliasing. This capability has been developed in the Hummingbird hand-held PN scanner. Page Channel This channel is modulated with another Walsh code; which keeps it orthogonal to the pilot, sync and other channels. It is then modulated with Page channel data. The page channel message provides the mobile with system parameters and paging information. The system parameters of interest are listed below: SRCH_WIN_A The search window (in chips) that the mobile uses to track Active and Candidate Pilots. The window is centered around the earliest arriving usable signal. The window should be large enough to find multipaths, but small enough to not degrade searcher performance. SRCH_WIN_N is the search window that the mobile uses to track the neighbor pilots. The window is usually larger than SRCH_WIN_A because of the greater distance between the mobile and the neighboring BSs. Neighbor List contains a list of neighboring PN Offsets. These parameters effect the following Pilot Sets maintained by the mobile: Active Set Contains the pilots of those sectors that are actively communicating with the mobile on traffic channels. Candidate Set Contains pilots whose Ec/Io is above the pilot detection threshold (T_ADD).

Neighbor Set Contains those pilots that are in the mobile s current serving sector. The neighbor set is initialized by the serving base station. Pilots may also enter this set when they are dropped from the active or candidate set. Pilot scanners that search for all possible pilots excel at verifying search window sizes and neighbor lists. The pilot scanner can verify that pilots with significant power do not fall outside the search windows and verify that the search window is not too small. It can also detect that there are pilots with significant power near the extremes of search windows verifying that the search windows are not too big. Figure 4 illustrates the concept of a properly sized search window. SRCH_WIN_A should be large enough for the mobile to capture useable multipath and as small as possible to minimize the mobile s search processing.

1,000m / (244m/chip) = 4.1 chips 2,000m / (244 m/chip) = 8.2 chips

P2 1km BS P1 t 4.1 chips 1km P1 P2

1 km

SRCH_WIN_ A

Figure 4: SRCH_WIN_A is large enough to capture path 1 and 2. Conclusion Pilot PN scanning is conceptually simple, but very powerful when measuring or verifying CDMA coverage. Future CDMA tools will maintain the powerful PN scanning capability, and be integrated with many of the features described here to enable real-time detection and debugging or to reduce the amount of number crunching and processes when post-processing drive data. Powerful PN scanning is being integrated with: multicarrier support, sync and page channel demodulation, real-time search window verification, neighbor list verification and pilot aliasing detection.

References [1] Chadwick, Ray and Groome, W.C. Andrew, CDMA Forward Link Coverage Field Testing (Part 1 and Part 2), Microwave Product Digest, July/August, 1998. [2] Yang, Samuel C., CDMA RF System Engineering, Artech House, Inc., 1998.