DEVELOPMIENT OF CELLULAR REPEATER SYSTEM WITH MULTIPLE RADIO ECHO SUPPRESSER

Toshiyuki Maeyama, Takashi Inoue

KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc., 2-1-15, Ohara, Kamifukuoka-shi, Saitama, 356-8502, Japan, maeyama@kddilabs.jp

Abstract - We designed a cellular repeater system with a function of suppressing radio echoes tha.t occur between antennas set in the direction of base station and mobile stations. The designed system can automatically detect and suppress radio echoes due to reflected waves from surrounding structures as well as that due to direct antenna coupling. Based on the designed system, we developed a 2GHz band repeater applicable to the cdma:2000 system, and we confirmed through field trials that the repeater can operate at a gain of more than 80 dB when antennas set in the direction of a base station and mobile stations are mounted on the same pole, when a multiple radio echo suppresser is activated.
Keywords - Cellular repeater, Radio echo suppresser, Multipath radio echo, CDMA

performance evaluation results through field trials with the prototype system are also described. 11. THEORY OF RADIO ECHO SUPPRESSION To suppress radio echoes, the discrimination of radio echoes and the desired wave coming from a base station is necessary. In this study, radio echoes are discriminated using the correlation characteristics of the spread code in a CDMA signal. That is, the correlation of radio echoes and a desired wave is lowered by giving one or more chip delay to a signal, when relaying by a repeater. And radio echoes are detected using that property. Suppression of a radio echo is realized by generating and adding the suppression signal which serves as an opposite phase with the same variation as the interference signal. The theory of radio echo suppression is explained below. Figure 1 shows the basic block diagram of the repeater with a radio echo suppresser. When the desired wave D(t), which comes from a base station, and a radio echo U(t) are received by the repeater, the received signal R(t) is expressed as, R(t) = D(t) U ( t ) (1) Since the radio echo U(t) is originated from the output signal C(t) with the propagation delay d and the coupling coefficient k, U(t) is expressed as follows,

I. INTRODUCTION In recent years, cellular communications systems have been strongly required to provide a seamless service, and therefore, the design and coordination of the service coverage has become a very important issue. For IMT-2000 services using the 2-GHz band, the construction of service coverage equivalent to that of conventional services using the 800-MHz band is very difficult. This is because the propagation loss of the 2-GHz band is much larger than that of the 800-MHz band, and as a result, a huge capital investment is required when all the service areas are covered by base stations. One of the candidates to cover the service area with a low capital investment, especially in the initial stage of a new service introduction, is a repeater which relays a radio signal between a base station and a mobile station. Although repeaters have been used for indoor service coverage such as inside buildings, underground levels and tunnels, very few repeaters have been employed for open areas so far because of radio echoes that might occur when transmitting and receiving antennas are located closely to each other. To extensively employ repeaters for use in open area coverage, it is necessary to develop a radio echo mitigation technique that works on the condition that transmitting and receiving antennas are located closely to each other. We have been studying the radio echo suppression technique for the CDMA based cellular repeater system. In this paper, we describe the theory of radio echo suppression and the prototype repeater system with multiple radio echo suppresser that we designed. In addition, the

U ( t )= k . C(t - d)

(2)

When a delay unit inserted at the input of the amplifier with gain g , has the time delay 7,the output signal of the repeater C(t) is expressed as C(t)= g .R'(t - z) (3) where R'(t) indicates the signal after the suppression given by

R'(t)= R(t) + S ( t )

(4)

The radio echo suppresser generates a suppression signal S(t) by multiplexing the signal C'(t), which is extracted at the output of the delay unit in a radio echo suppresser, with the suppression factor M, as follows,

S(t)=M, C ( t )

(5)

Since M, is given by accumulating ,U".,:the product of the oblivion factor and the correlation coefficient between the signals R '(t) and C'(t), M,, is expressed by

M,

= Mn-, +, . U . Nn-,

(6)

N,, is defined by the following equation,

0-7803-8523-3/04/$20.0002004 IEEE.

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n+m

lim(Mn + k e g ) = ( )

(12)

N,

J[

n-l)T

1R(i)I2dt. n-l)T lC(t)ldt

(7)

Therefore, S(t) is converged on -U (t) by making the value of lpl a sufficiently small value.

where T and XY indicates the correlation period and the respectively. complex conjugate of X, Since C(t) is detected via two delay units, C(t) is expressed by the following equation: C ( t )= R(t - z - d ) (8) Moreover, the following equation is derived by using Equations (1) through (4): (9) Since the delay unit with time delay 7 greater than a chip period is employed, we can assume that the correlation between D(t) and R(t - 7- d)is very low. Thus, Equation (7) is simplified as
*

111. MULTIPLE RADIO ECHO SUPPRESSER The radio echo suppresser was implemented in a digital signal processor based on the above mentioned theory. The block diagram of a multiple radio echo suppresser (MRES) is shown in Fig. 2 . The MRES employs multiple RESs that suppress the multiple radio echoes. The radio echo searcher observes radio echoes and monitors the state of RESs. When a radio echo is detected, it activates a RES in the idle state, and conversely, when a RES loses a radio echo, it deactivates the RES into the idle state. When MRES is implemented in a digital signal processor, the impact of the time delay resolution due to the sampling rate of the processor on the performance of the radio echo suppression should be considered, because the suppression performance will be degraded when the time delays of the suppression signal deviate from that of the radio echo. Figure 3 shows the frequency offset vs. the suppression performance with single/dual RES( s) being activated. The horizontal axis indicates the frequency offset from the carrier frequency handled by the repeater. In the simulation, the deviation of the time delays of the RESs from that of the radio echo is taken into account. In the single RES case, which adjusts the RES to the delay timing of the minimum deviation, the suppression performance of 9 ds within the 2MHz band was attained. In the dual RESs case, which adjust the RESs to the delay timings of first and second minimum deviation, the suppression performance of 25 dB within the 2-MHz band was attained. This means that the assignment of dual RES to a single radio echo is very effective.

R(t)= D(t) + (k g

+ Mn)R(t- z - d )

N, =K,(M, + k . g )
where

(10)

From Equations (6) and (lo),

M , = (1 + Mn-1W n - I + W n 1 g Mn + k g = (1 f IUKn-I)(Mn-l +k g )
*
a..

= p + I U K +

+k%)

(11)

Therefore, if - l / K n < p < 0 is satisfied for all n, the following equation is derived.

Fig. 1 Basic block diagram of the repeater with RES.

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-9
-13

iL -11

Dual RBSs

5 6 1 Offset frequency [MHzI

10

Fig. 3 Frequency characteristic of radio echo suppressing.

Fig. 5 Photo of the DSP board.

I I I
__________I

I I

C. Multiple radio echo suppression unit A multiple radio suppression (MRES) unit was implemented on a DSP board which employs a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), and a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) for core modules, and the A/D and D/A converters for the interface modules with the radio unit. The DSP board is shown in Fig. 5. The prototype repeater employs two DSP boards of A4 size for forward link and reverse link, respectively. The RES's, the level monitor, the output level controller, the monitoring function, and the delay circuit are implemented on the FPGA chip, because high-speed serial processing is required for them. The various control functions in which the high-speed serial processing is not required are implemented on the DSP chip. The level monitor detects the input level of MRES and the signal level after suppression, and informs them of the DSP chip. When the DSP chip detects the symptom of an oscillation from the signal level, it immediately reduces the output level of the repeater so as to avoid the oscillation. A radio echo searcher searches the radio echoes by sweeping the time delay of the delay unit. When a new radio echo is detected, the searcher activates a RES in the idle state. The radio echo searcher also monitors the contribution of the active RES's, and deactivates a RES into the idle state when its contribution to the radio echo suppression is low.
An A/D converter changes the signal of intermediate frequency into a digital signal by a sampling frequency (50 MHz). A D/A converter changes the digital signal into the signal of intermediate frequency. The DSP collects various information from the FPGA chip, and generates various control signals. For example, the correlation computing element of each RES is supervised periodically, and the activationldeactivation of a RES for each radio echo is controlled. The assignment and the release of RES's are automatically performed according to variation of the radio echo delay profile due to conditions such as the construction of new buildings or the tilt angle coordination of sector antennas. The specification of a DSP board is summarized in Table 2.

DUP: Duplexer, LNA: Low Noise Amplifier, DC: Down Converter, BPF: Band Path Filter, UC: Up Converter, HPA: Hi Power Amplifier Fig. 4 Block diagram of cellular repeater system with MRES units. PROTOTYPE SYSTEM A. Architecture We designed a prototype repeater with high power and high gain for use in open areas for the 2-GHz band cdma2000 system. The main specifications and the block diagram of the prototype repeater are shown in Table 1 and Fig. 4, respectively. Table 1 Specification of repeater Frequency
1925- 1929 MHz

2115-2117.5 MHz (FonvardLink) -4 dBm (Reverse Link) 37 dBm (Forward Link) (Reverse Link, Forward Link) -70 dBm (Reverse Link) -40 dBm (Forwardl Link)

Low IF

5MHZ

B. Radio unit
The radio unit was built by reconstructing a conventional repeater which does not implement a radio echo suppresser. To connect the radio unit with the multiple radio echo suppression unit, frequency converters, which convert radio frequencies (RFs) to low intermediate frequency (IF), are attached. Moreover, band pass filters are implemented at the input/output of the low IF signals for a reduction of the spurious emission.

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Sampling frequency

50 MHz (IUD Converter) 200 MHz (D/A Converter)

I I

FPGAchip DSP chip Size of circuit board Number of RES circuits

I
I

Xilinx Vertex11Pro 6000 Hitachi SH4 A4 (300 mm X 2 10 mm)

10

I
I

station is usually around 1 km in commercial cellular systems, the transmit power from the experimental base station was adjusted so that the received level at the experimental repeater station was the same value as that for the commercial system. The repeater station reradiated the signal from one sector antenna towards a mobile station located in the service area of the repeater station. There were four structures present, which might significantly reflect the radio waves from the repeater station, such as an elevator machine room, a large sign and so forth. The distance of these structures from the repeater antenna pole was around 80 m. B. Evaluation o f radio echo suppression An MRES unit has the function of observing the delay profile of radio echoes. Figure 7 shows an example of the delay profile at the output of the MFES unit. The thick line shows the result in the condition whereby RESS are activated, and the thin line shows the result in the condition whereby RESs are inactivated. In the condition whereby RESS are inactivated, radio echoes are observed around the time delay of 3 ps. In the condition whereby RESs are activated, on the other hand, no radio echoes are observed. From the figure, we can estimate that the suppression ability of the radio echoes was more than 14 dB. The oblivion factor in a RES was set up at 1/32 in this experiment. C. Evaluation o f achievable relay gain To evaluate the achievable relay gain, the signal quality should be maintained. Thus, the waveform quality p of the signal at the output of the repeater was evaluated. For the cdma2000 1xEV-DO system[3], the value of ps of the transmit signals in the forward link and the reverse link were to be no less than 0.91 and 0.94, respectively. For the evaluation, the forward link 16 QAM signal with a data rate of 2.46 Mbps was used for the p evaluation. To measure a wave quality with sufficient accuracy, a single carrier was radiated from the base station. When an MRES unit was inactive, the achievable relay gain of a repeater was 64 dE! at which p was maintained at 0.95 or more. When the MRES unit was activated in automatic operation mode, the achievable relay gain of a repeater was more than 80 dB at which p was maintained at more than 0.95. In addition, the number of RES circuits activated for the suppression of radio echoes in this experiment was 7. Figure 8 shows the frequency spectra of the output signals that were observed when a repeater relayed two carriers arriving from a base station. Figure 8(a) displays the observation result of the frequency spectrum, when the MRES unit was inactivated with the achievable relay gain of 64 dl3. Figure 8(b) shows a frequency spectrum, when the relay gain was increased at 76 dJ3 and the MRES unit was still inactivated. The occurrence of the oscillation due to radio echoes was observed in this case. The spectrum wave at the time of operating a MRES unit and setting a relay gain to 80 dB is shown in Fig. 8 (c).

Laboratories

Fig. 6 Configuration of the field trial system.

1:

10

0 :

on
0

05

15

25 Delavb=cI

35

45

Fig. 7 Delay profile of radio echoes. IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT

A. Outdoor experiment system

To investigate the feasibility of the prototype repeater, a field trial system was constructed. Figure 6 illustrates the configuration of the field trial system. The base station and the repeater station were mounted on the roof of KDDI R&D Laboratories. The distance between both stations was around 100 m. The antennas for the repeater station were attached to the same post. From the base station, a cdma2000 1xEV-D0[3] signal was radiated toward the repeater station from a flat antenna, and the signal was received by the other flat antenna of the repeater station. Since the distance between a base station and repeater

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Log

Atten 5 dB

10 dB/

(Forward Link);

VAvs

i
I

r+vo&*-cd \
I

:;

100

AA

Center 2.117 GHz #Res BH 10 kHz

xVBW 100 kHz

Span 5 MHz Sweep 50.16 ms (401 pts)

(a) Repeater gain=64 dB (without MRES)

Ref -8.9 dBm *Peak
Log

Atten 5 dB

(Forward Link)

V. CONCLUSION We designed a cellular repeater system with a function of suppressing multiple radio echoes which occur between antennas set in the direction of base station and mobile stations. The designed system can automatically detect and suppress the radio echoes due to reflected waves from surrounding structures as well as that due to direct coupling between transmitting and receiving antennas. Based on the designed system, we developed a prototype repeater applicable to the cdma2000 system in the 2-GHz band. Field trials with the prototype repeater were conducted, confirming that the repeater can operate at the gain of more than 80 dE3 on condition that antennas set in the direction of the base station and mobile station are mounted on the same pole, when a multiple radio echo suppresser is activated. The achievable relay gain was improved by more than 16 dB through the activation of an MRES unit. AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

18 dB/

i
/

Center 2.117 GHz *Res B W 18 kHr

JBW 168 kHz

Span 5 MHz Sweep 56.16 rns (461 pts)

(b) Repeater gain=75 dB (without MRES)

Ref -8.9 dBm *Peak
Log

The authors would like to thank Mr. Tohru ASAMI, President and CEO of KDDI R&D Laboratories, for his encouragement, and Dr. Hideyuki SHINONAGA, Executive Director, Mr. Yoshio TAKEUCHI, Group Leader of KDDI R&D Laboratories for their encouragement. We also give our sincere thanks to Dr. Hisato IWAI, head of lst Laboratory, for his helpful discussions and comments on this work. We would like to express sincere gratitude to Mr. Hiroshi YAMADA, Mr. Masayuki NAKANO and Mr. Toshikazu YOKAI, Group Leader of KDDI, for their cooperation in the field experiment. REFERENCES
[i]

Atten 5 dB

18

(Forward Link)
~jlAFWv~+<~

dB/

Center 2.117 GHz *Res B W IQ kHr

M U 100 kHz

%an 5 MHr Sweep %.16 ms (401 pts)

(c) Repeater gain=80 dE3 (with IMRES) Fig. 8 Frequency spectra at the output alf the repeater. The observed spectra in Fig.8(c) are clean compared to those of Fig. 8(b), even though the higher relay gain was set up. As a result, the achievable relay gain was improved by the MRES unit. more than 16 dB owing to the activation o-

Toshiyuki Maeyama, Takashi Inoue, Kazutaka Kamimura, Tom Yamato, Development of CDMA Repeater with Echo Canceller, TECHNICAL REPORT OF IEICE, RCS2001-293, pp.65-70, March 2002. [2] Toshiyuki Maeyama, Takashi Inoue, Kazutaka Kamimura, Ryuji Satake, Hideyuki Shinonaga, Characteristic of cdma repeater with echo canceller on cdma2000 lx system, TETCE Society Conference, B-5105, Sept. 2002. [3] 3GPP2 , cdma2000 High Rate Packet Data Air Interface Specification, C.SO024, Ver.4.0, Oct. 2002.

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