Full Text 01

Institutionen fr systemteknik
Department of Electrical Engineering

Examensarbete
Optimization of Random Access in 3G Long Term
Evolution
Examensarbete utfrt i Reglerteknik
vid Tekniska hgskolan i Linkping
av
Filip Andrn
LiTH-ISY-EX--09/4318--SE
Linkping 2009
Department of Electrical Engineering Linkpings tekniska hgskola
Linkpings universitet Linkpings universitet
SE-581 83 Linkping, Sweden 581 83 Linkping
Optimization of Random Access in 3G Long Term
Evolution
Examensarbete utfrt i Reglerteknik
vid Tekniska hgskolan i Linkping
av
Filip Andrn
Handledare: Patrik Axelsson
isy, Linkpings universitet
Mehdi Amirijoo
Ericsson Research, Ericsson AB
Examinator: Fredrik Gunnarsson
isy, Linkpings universitet
Linkping, 28 September, 2009
Avdelning, Institution
Division, Department
Division of Automatic Control
Department of Electrical Engineering
Linkpings universitet
SE-581 83 Linkping, Sweden
Datum
Date
2009-09-28
Sprk
Language
Svenska/Swedish
Engelska/English
Rapporttyp
Report category
Licentiatavhandling
Examensarbete
C-uppsats
D-uppsats
vrig rapport
URL fr elektronisk version

http://www.control.isy.liu.se
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-20957
ISBN
ISRN
Serietitel och serienummer
Title of series, numbering
ISSN
Titel
Title
Optimering av Random Access i 3G Long Term Evolution
Optimization of Random Access in 3G Long Term Evolution
Frfattare
Author
Filip Andrn
Sammanfattning
Abstract
Before a mobile can commence services it needs to have access to a base station.
The access method is often referred to as random access (RA). One way to mea-
sure the performance of the RA procedure is the access delay (AD) of the mobiles,
where AD is the time from which a mobile wants to start a RA attempt until it
has received access.
There are dierent approaches to optimize the RA procedure. Manual optimiza-
tion is possible but costly. Automated optimization is preferable because of the
lower costs and the possibility to change conguration fast in the base station
when the operational conditions change. This thesis focuses on automated opti-
mization of the RA procedure with regard to AD.
A controllability and observability study of AD is rst presented in this thesis.
The controllability study shows that AD can be controlled by a number of RA
parameters, whereas the observability study show that AD cannot always be cor-
rectly observed. The next part of this thesis presents a controller synthesis, where
three dierent controllers are presented to control a specied percentile of AD. It is
shown, through experiments, that the controllers derived can be used to optimize
the RA procedure with regard to AD.
Nyckelord
Keywords Random Access, LTE, Optimization, Access Delay, Backo, Control
Abstract
Before a mobile can commence services it needs to have access to a base station.
The access method is often referred to as random access (RA). One way to mea-
sure the performance of the RA procedure is the access delay (AD) of the mobiles,
where AD is the time from which a mobile wants to start a RA attempt until it
has received access.
There are dierent approaches to optimize the RA procedure. Manual optimiza-
tion is possible but costly. Automated optimization is preferable because of the
lower costs and the possibility to change conguration fast in the base station when
the operational conditions change. This thesis focuses on automated optimization
of the RA procedure with regard to AD.
A controllability and observability study of AD is rst presented in this thesis.
The controllability study shows that AD can be controlled by a number of RA
parameters, whereas the observability study show that AD cannot always be cor-
rectly observed. The next part of this thesis presents a controller synthesis, where
three dierent controllers are presented to control a specied percentile of AD. It is
shown, through experiments, that the controllers derived can be used to optimize
the RA procedure with regard to AD.
Sammanfattning
Innan en mobil vill anvnda sig av mjliga tjnster mste den f access till en
basstation. Accessmetoden brukar kallas fr random access (RA). Ett stt att m-
ta prestandan av RA proceduren r den access delay (AD) som mobilerna fr, dr
AD r tiden frn att en mobil vill brja RA proceduren tills den ftt access.
Det nns era ansatser till att optimera RA proceduren. Manuell optimering r
mjlig men kostsam. Automatiserad optimering r att fredra p grund av de lgre
kostnaderna och mjligheten att snabbt ndra instllningarna i basstationen vid
ndrade frutsttningar under krning. Den hr uppsatsen fokuserar p automa-
tiserad optimering av RA proceduren med avseende p AD.
Frst presenteras en studie i huruvida AD r styr- och observerbart. Styrbar-
hetsstudien visar att AD kan styras med ett antal RA-parametrar, medan obser-
verbarhetsstudien visar att AD inte alltid kan observeras korrekt. Nsta del av
rapporten presenterar en regulatorsyntes, dr tre olika regulatorer presenteras fr
v
vi
att reglera en specicerad percentil av AD. Genom experiment visas att de fram-
tagna regulatorerna kan anvndas fr att optimera RA proceduren med avseende
p AD.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervisor Mehdi Amirijoo at Ericsson for all his help and
good answers to every question I had. I would also like to thank my supervisor
Patrik Axelsson at the Department of Electrical Engineering (ISY) for his help
and support throughout the thesis. Thanks also goes to Fredrik Gunnarsson at
Ericsson for support and guidance and to Ove Linnell, also at Ericsson, for the
opportunity to write this thesis.
A nal thanks goes to my girlfriend Susanne who supported me all the way, from
the beginning until the end of this thesis.
vii
Contents
Abbreviations xiii
List of Symbols xv
1 Introduction 1
1.1 3G Long Term Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Description of the Random Access Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.1 Random Access Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.2 Broadcasted Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.3 Correlation of Received Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.4 Backo Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Optimization of the Random Access Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 Previous Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 Problem Formulation 11
2.1 Access Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Backo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3 Controller Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3.1 Sampling Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3.2 Control Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Simulator 15
3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Simulator Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2.1 Changing of Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2.2 Manage UEs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2.3 Modelling of PUSCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2.4 Modelling of the Random Access Procedure . . . . . . . . . 17
3.2.5 The End of the Loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3 Denition of Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.1 Timing Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.2 Conguration Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.3.3 Backo Indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.4 Random Access Attempt Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
ix
x Contents
4 Access Delay 23
4.1 Introduction to Access Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2 Controllability of Access Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.1 Experiment: Eects of Varying PRACH Conguration and
RACH Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.2.2 Experiment: Eects of Varying Power Control Parameters . 28
4.2.3 Experiment: Eects of Varying PUSCH Load . . . . . . . . 31
4.2.4 Controllability Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.3 Observability of Access Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.3.1 Observer Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.3.2 Penalty Estimator 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.5 Access Delay Observer Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.3.6 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying PRACH Conguration
and RACH Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.3.7 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying Power Control Parameters 45
4.3.8 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying PUSCH Load . . . . . . 49
4.3.9 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying RACH Load and P
0_RACH
53
4.3.10 Observability Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5 Backo 57
5.1 Introduction to Backo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2 Eects of Backo on Access Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.1 Inclusion of Backo in Observers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.2 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying RACH Load . . . . . . . 58
5.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6 Sampling Period 63
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.2 Experiment: Accuracy of Sampled Access
Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7 Control Structures 67
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7.2 Denition of Control Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7.3 Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
7.3.1 Modelling with regard to P
0_RACH
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
7.3.2 Modelling with regard to
RACH
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
7.3.3 Modelling with regard to PRACH Conguration . . . . . . 72
7.3.4 Modelling Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
7.4 Description of Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
7.4.1 I-Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
7.4.2 Double-Percentile Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Contents xi
7.4.3 Mid-Range Controller 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
7.4.4 Mid-Range Controller 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.4.5 PUSCH Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
7.5 Controller Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
7.5.1 Simulation Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.5.2 Experiment: Double-Percentile Controller . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.5.3 Experiment: Mid-Range Controller 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
7.5.4 Experiment: Mid-Range Controller 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
8 Summary and Future Work 95
8.1 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Bibliography 99
Abbreviations
3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Program
AD Access Delay
AP Access Probability
CDF Cumulative Distribution Function
CI Condence Interval
CP Contention Probability
CyP Cyclic Prex
DMP Detection Miss Probability
DP Detection Probability
eNB Base Station
eNodeB Base Station
ISD Inter-Site Distance
KPM Key Performance Metric
LTE Long Term Evolution
PRACH Physical Random Access Channel
PUSCH Physical Uplink Shared Channel
RA Random Access
RACH Random Access Channel
RB Resource Block
RMSE Root Mean Squared Error
SIR Signal-to-Interference Ratio
SON Self-Organizing Networks
UE User Equipment/Mobile
xiii
List of Symbols
Symbol Description Page
M Maximum number of allowed attempts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
P
max
Maximum allowed UE transmission power [dBW] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
PL Path loss [dB] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
P
0_RACH
Wanted received power level at rst attempt [dBW] . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
RACH
Power ramping step [dB] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
N Number of sent preambles/number of attempts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Preamble
Power oset in RACH power control [dB] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
B Backo parameter [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
AD Access delay [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
AP Access probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Load
RACH
Mean preamble arrival intesity [preambles/s/cell] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Load
PUSCH Ratio of number of scheduled RBs and total number of RBs . . . . 17
T
confP
Conguration period [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
DMP Detection miss probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
CP Contention probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
nSent Number of sent preambles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
nDetect Number of detected preambles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
nAccess Number of accessed UEs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
0
First attempt delay [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1
Detection delay [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
2
Detection miss delay [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3
Random access nished delay [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4
Contention resolution failed delay [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
T
respW
RA response window size (ra-ResponseWindowSize) [ms] . . . . . . . 38
T
contW
Contention resolution timer (mac-ContentionResolution-
Timer) [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
T
next
Time after a waiting window until next RA opportunity [ms] . . . 38
t
raResp
RA response time vector [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
t
ra
Time of RA opportunity in eNB [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
t
raResp
Time of RA response in eNB [ms] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
t
raCont
Time of RA contention resolution response in eNB [ms] . . . . . . . . . 39
CI Condence Interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
q Time shift operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
xv
xvi List of Symbols
Prediction error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
V
N
Model validity parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
s Complex number in the Laplace domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
K
I
Integral gain, tuning parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
K
ff
Feed-forward gain, tuning parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
r
AD
Reference for access delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
T
r
Rise time in step response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
A
M
Overshoot in step response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Chapter 1
Introduction
Random access is the method used by mobiles to access a base station in a mobile
system. This thesis will focus on how this access procedure in the 3G Long Term
Evolution (LTE) can be optimized. The standardization of LTE is organized by
the 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) and some of the design targets
for LTE are for example [11]:
Higher bit rates
Lower latency
Lower complexity
One way to increase the performance and lower the complexity is to introduce more
Self-Organizing Network (SON) functionality. This is also the case in 3GPPs work
on LTE [6]. The denition of SON is however quite wide, but three of its central
parts are self-conguration, self-optimization and self-healing, where this thesis
will concentrate mainly on the second one, namely self-optimzation.
A self-optimizing system continuously adapts its parameters to meet a given per-
formance specication. This is illustrated in Figure 1.1. The disturbance could
for example be interference caused by the surrounding base stations. If the in-
terference is increased the base station can inform its mobiles to use a higher
transmission power to compensate for the higher interference and thus keeping
the same bit rate. One part of LTE that could benet from self-optimization is
the random access procedure.
1.1 3G Long Term Evolution
To get some overview of which parts of LTE that are addressed in this thesis, this
section contains some information about LTE. For more information refer to the
standardization documents produced by 3GPP [7].
Communication over LTE is divided into dierent channels. These channels can
1
2 Introduction
Controller
Base
Station
-
Disturbance
Bit rate
Measuered/
estimated bit rate
Figure 1.1. A simple system with a controller that compensates for the disturbance.
also be divided into uplink and downlink channels. A transmission is sent uplink
if it travels from the mobile or user equipment (UE) to the base station (eNB) and
downlink if it is sent from the base station to the mobile. In this thesis we are
mostly interested in the physical channels and the transport channels used in the
uplink. The signal processing is done in the physical channels and the transport
channels are used to transport blocks of information to the control channels also
called the logical channels. This can be seen in Figure 1.2, where the channels of
interest are lled with grey. The random access channel (RACH) is a transport
channel even if it is dedicated to control the random access procedure. Its coun-
terpart among the physical channels is called the physical random access channel
(PRACH). The physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) is the physical channel
to handle the uplink data trac between the eNB and the UEs. In Figure 1.2
ve other channels are inlcuded for completeness. They are not important for
the accomplishment of this thesis and are therefore not explained here. For more
detailed information refer to [3].
Logical
channels
Transport
channels
Physical
channels
PRACH PUSCH PUCCH
RACH UL-SCH
CCCH DTCH DCCH
Figure 1.2. Uplink channel mapping.
The physical uplink structure in LTE is divided into a time-frequency structure.
This is visualized in Figure 1.3. As can be seen, there are so-called random access
(RA) opportunities at the edge of the frequency band and they are always six
resource blocks (RBs) wide. One RB is 180 kHz and the total channel bandwith
1.2 Description of the Random Access Procedure 3
can vary between 6 RBs to 110 RBs, i.e., from roughly 1 MHz to around 20 Mhz.
Another thing to notice in Figure 1.3 is the minimum time scale of 1 ms, which is
also called a subframe. The next level in time is called a radio frame and consists
of 10 subframes. More information about the time-frequency structure of LTE can
be found in [3] and [1].
frequency
time
1 ms
1

R
B
PRACH
PUSCH
Figure 1.3. Time-frequency structure of the uplink in LTE.
1.2 Description of the Random Access Procedure
When a UE wants to execute a service, for example make a voice call, it rst
requires to have access to the network. To get access, the UE has to do a random
access procedure. Before starting with the random access procedure the UE scans
the surrounding cells to locate its best cell. The eNB associated with the cell is
broadcasting information needed by the UE to connect. For example the eNB
tells the UE when it can try to connect and what power it should use. It is also
the parameters in the broadcasted information that can be used to optimize the
random access procedure. Therefore, to get a better understanding of when and
where the broadcasted information is used and what eects it may have if it is
changed, this section contains a short description of the random access procedure
and its dierent parts.
The procedure described here is the random access procedure in LTE as it has been
specied by 3GPP. More information and details on the random access procedure
can be found in [11], [3], [1], [4] and [2].
1.2.1 Random Access Procedure
The random access procedure can be divided into four steps, as shown in Figure 1.4
and explained below.
1. Random Access Preamble
The UE transmits a random access preamble, which is a simple ID, to the
base station at a random access opportunity. The preamble is randomly
selected from 64 available. The preambles are explained in more detail in
Section 1.2.2.
4 Introduction
UE eNB
Random Access Preamble
Random Access Response
Scheduled Transmission
Contention Resolution
1.
2.
3.
4.
Figure 1.4. The steps of the random access procedure in LTE.
2. Random Access Response
In this step the eNB answers each one of the UEs, whos preamble was de-
tected in step 1. The answer contains among other things the same preamble
that the detected UE sent. The detection of the preambles and more infor-
mation about what the answer contains can be found in Section 1.2.3.
3. Scheduled Transmission
If a UE receives a RA response in step 2 containing a preamble that matches
its own preamble sent in step 1, the UE transmits its unique identity to the
eNB. This unique identity makes it possible for the eNB to separete UEs
who have sent the same preamble. If a UE does not receive its own preamble
in this step it has to declare this random access attempt unsuccessful and
start over from step 1.
4. Contention Resolution
The eNB once again responds, but this time with the unique identity of the
UE, received in step 3. This means that UEs who have chosen the same
preamble may all have come this far, but only one of them will receive its
own unique identity in the contention resolution response. The other UEs
who do not receive their identity have to declare this random access attempt
unsuccessful and start over from step 1.
If a UE exceeds the maximum number of allowed RA attempts, denoted M, the
whole random access procedure is declared as failed. After this the UE can for
example try to access another cell.
Contention Free Random Access
In some situations it is necessary that the delay during the random access proce-
dure is as small as possible. This can for example be during a handover, i.e., a
UE moves from one cell to another. In these situations a so-called contention free
random access procedure is used. In this procedure the cell reserves a preamble
for the UE. A reserved preamble can only be used by the UE it was assigned to
and hence steps 3 and 4 in the non-contention free random access are not needed.
1.2.2 Broadcasted Information
The eNB broadcasts information that is needed by the UE to perform a random
access attempt. In this thesis, only the parameters in the broadcasted informa-
tion that are important for the random access procedure will be discussed. The
important parameters that are broadcasted can be found in [5] and are listed as
follows:
Set of preambles that can be used for non-contention free random access
Random access opportunity slots
Preamble transmission power
In the following sections these parameters will be presented in a bit more detail.
Random Access Preambles
Each cell must provide 64 preambles that can be used by the UEs as a temporary
ID [1]. The preambles are derived from so called root sequences and the one used
in LTE is the Zado-Chu sequence [1]. A Zado-Chu sequence has low correlation
with other Zado-Chu sequences which suppresses the interference with other UEs.
The preambles are then derived from the Zado-Chu sequence by cyclically shifting
the sequence. This has the eect that all preambles derived from the same Zado-
Chu sequence are orthogonal to each other. In smaller cells it is possible to derive
all of the 64 preambles from one root sequence, but larger cells need more than
one root sequence.
Some of the preambles are dedicated for so called contention free random access.
In normal random access the UEs choose one of the provided preambles randomly.
During a contention free random access on the other hand, a UE is given a unique
preamble that it can use. This means that there is no risk of another UE choosing
the same preamble and thus there is no contention.
PRACH Conguration
The PRACH conguration tells the UE which format the preamble has and in
which subframes there are random access opportunities [1]. There are four dierent
preamble formats, see Figure 1.5. The Cyclic Prex (CyP) is needed to compensate
for any transmitting delays and is simply the last part of the preamble copied and
prexed the preamble. For the longer formats (Format 2 and Format 3) the RA
sequence is repeated. This enables a higher received energy without increasing the
transmission power.
6 Introduction
RA sequence CyP
time
TX
103 s 800 s
a) Format 0
RA sequence CyP
time
TX
684 s 800 s
b) Format 1
RA sequence RA sequence CyP
time
TX
203 s 1600 s
c) Format 2
RA sequence CyP
TX
684 s
d) Format 3
RA sequence
time
1600 s
Figure 1.5. Preamble format in LTE.
Recall from Section 1.1 that the random access opportunities in LTE are reserved
in resource blocks. The PRACH conguration tells the UE where these RBs are
located in every radio frame, see Figure 1.3. The dierent congurations oer an
access period between 1 ms and 20 ms. For more detail on what congurations are
available see [1].
Transmission Power
The RACH transmission power for the UE is set according to [4] and is expressed
as
P
RACH
= min{P
max
, P
0_RACH
+PL + (N 1)
RACH
+
Preamble
} (1.1)
where P
max
is the maximum power allowed for the UE and PL is the estimated
path loss. The parameter P
0_RACH
is broadcasted by the eNB and represents
the wanted received power level at rst attempt. The parameter
RACH
is also
broadcasted by the eNB and represents the power ramping step. The parame-
ter P
0_RACH
can vary between -150 dBW and -120 dBW in steps of 2 dBW and
RACH
can vary between 0 dB and 6 dB in steps of 2 dB. The number of preamble
transmission attempts is given by N. This means that the UE will increase its
transmission power with
RACH
for every attempt. The last parameter
Preamble
is an oset based on the preamble format. This oset is zero for the formats 0 and
1 and is -3 dB for formats 2 and 3, see Section 1.2.2 and [4].
1.2.3 Correlation of Received Signals
After the UEs have sent their preambles to the base station in step 1 of the ran-
dom access procedure, see Section 1.2.1, the eNB correlates the received signal in
each random access opportunity slot with all possible preambles. If a preamble is
detected the eNB will signal the same preamble back together with timing adjust-
ment information, a temporary mobile identity and an uplink resource allocation.
The timing adjustment allows the UE to start its transmissions in time for the
signal to arrive at the eNB exactly at the beginning of the designated time-slot.
The timing adjustment is therefore necessary and is derived from the estimated
round trip time wich can be seen in Figure 1.6. All the UEs that sent a preamble
in step 1 of the random access procedure will listen for a response containing their
preamble and read the information that it contains.
Correlation
Detection threshold Preamble
Noise and interference
Time
Round trip time
estimation
Figure 1.6. Correlation of a random access preamble with round trip time estimation.
1.2.4 Backo Parameter
If the random access attempt of a UE fails, either because the preamble sent by
the UE was not detected by the eNB or the UE lost the contention resolution,
the UE has to start the process over again. To avoid contention and overload, the
eNB can signal the UEs that they have to wait a certain time before they try to
connect again. The parameter that controls this is called the backo parameter
(B) and is signaled by the eNB in the random access response. The actual time
the UE should backo is chosen uniformly by the UE in the interval [0, B]. As
mentioned, the backo parameter is sent in the RA response, but all RA responses
can however be read by all UEs who sent a preamble in step 1 of the random access
procedure. This means that also a UE that did not get a random access response
with its own preamble, i.e., was not detected, can receive the backo parameter
and use it.
8 Introduction
1.3 Optimization of the Random Access
Procedure
As explained in Section 1.2 there are many parameters that aect the RACH per-
formance. In a normal case, all of these parameters have to be set by an operator.
In order to get the best performance possible these parameters have to be chosen
according to the individual conditions of each cell. There are dierent approaches
to set the RACH parameters. One of them is to use one set of parameters for all
the base stations in a network. This may however lead to settings that are not
optimal for cells where the conditions dier a lot from the average case. Another
way to nd the RACH parameters is to do extensive simulations for each cell. The
simulations are however time consuming and costly. Therefore self-optimization
of the random access procedure has great potential. For the RACH process there
are many parameters that can be used, see Section 1.2.2. Dierent approaches
are to tune the transmission power of the UE and thus increasing the probability
of a UE getting access, or to change the RA opportunity period to decrease the
probability of contention.
1.4 Previous Work
There is previous work done on SON as described in the following text. A study on
how the RACH interferes with the uplink trac channel in WCDMA systems and
how to optimize the RACH parameters in order to maximize the uplink capacity
is done by S. Kim et al. in [12]. By analyzing the retransmission probabilities
of a preamble, they could estimate the interference level caused by RACH on the
uplink trac channel. From this they could nd a wanted signal-to-interference
ratio (SIR) to maximize the uplink capacity. This thesis is however focused on
the performance of the RACH process and not so much on the performance of the
uplink channel. In [16], the RACH performance with regard to access delay (AD),
i.e., how long it takes for a UE to get access, and random access success ratio is
studied for a WCDMA system. They show that if the target SIR is set correctly
the AD and the RA success ratio can be optimized. No theory on how to control
the RACH process is however presented. Another dierence from this thesis is
that in both [12] and [16] a WCDMA system is studied, whereas in this thesis we
study LTE.
A beginning study of self-optimization of the random access procedure in LTE has
been done recently by M. Amirijoo et al. and is presented in [9]. They present
results and suggestions on how to alter the RACH performance using a number of
the broadcasted parameters, for example P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. The performance
specication model used in the investigations was the access probability (AP),
i.e., the probability that a UE requires access. The target AP was specied as
the wanted AP for a certain attempt N. An example specied of a performance
specication could be
AP
1
= 0.80, AP
3
= 0.99
1.4 Previous Work 9
which means that the operator is satised with 80% of the UEs getting access
in their rst attempt and 99% of the UEs having access after their third at-
tempt. Their investigations show that it is possible to change the AP by altering
P
0_RACH
,
RACH
and the PRACH conguration. This thesis is in some cases a
continuation of the report by M. Amirijoo et al., but with a focus on access delay
instead of access probability.
Access delay is regarded as an important characteristic parameter, when one wants
to evaluate the performance of the random access procedure. There are dierent
ways to estimate the AD. Some of them are presented in [17] and [13] where
they derive the total average AD from the detection probability (DP), i.e., the
probability that the preamble sent by a UE is detected by the eNB. Their calcu-
lations however, depend on how the delay of the UE is distributed in time. The
probability that the AD is lower than a certain number of time slots is derived in
[10] by estimating the collision probability. A collision occurs when two or more
UEs send their preamble in the same time-frequency slot. The problem with [17],
[13] and [10] is that their results are based on another system structure than the
LTE structure. One of the main assumptions in this thesis is that the number of
attempts needed by the UE to get access is known. It would therefore be more
convenient to base an estimation of AD on the number of attempts.
Chapter 2
Problem Formulation
As explained in Chapter 1 there are many ways to increase the performance of
the random access procedure, for example by changing the wanted received power
level P
0_RACH
or power ramping step
RACH
, see Section 1.2.2. The system
itself is highly nonlinear with many cross connections between parameters. For
example, access delay can the be changed by altering the PRACH conguration
but this would also mean that the number of RBs assigned to PUSCH would
change at the same time. The work that has been done before, see Section 1.4,
mostly investigates how dierent RACH parameters aect the access probability.
The goal of this thesis is to see how well the random access procedure can be
optimized with regard to access delay. This will be done by continuing the work
that has been done before and extend it to include more parameters of the random
access procedure. The work can be divided into the following steps
1. Access Delay:
A controllability and observability study of AD.
2. Backo Parameter:
How does dierent values on the backo parameter aect the observability
of AD.
3. Controller Synthesis:
The goal here is to collect the previous results and combine them into one
or more controllers. This step can itself be divided into two steps:
Sampling period: A study on how dierent sampling periods aect the
reliability of the AD measurements.
Controller Structure: Look at dierent controller structures and study
their advantages and disadvantages.
2.1 Access Delay
In previous work, AP has been used in a performance specication and from this
some of the RACH parameters have been set accordingly. See section 1.4 for more
11
12 Problem Formulation
details. When these parameters are combined in dierent ways, the total AD will
vary. For example, it has been shown in [9] that a higher P
0_RACH
decreases the
number of attempts needed by a UE to get access. This would require a shorter
AD than for more attempts. Due to the importance of fast access times it would
be desirable to be able to specify the desired performance of the RA procedure by
means of using AD in a performance specication for the system. To be able to
use AD in a performance specication model for the system it has to be evaluated
how AD is aected by the dierent parameters of the random access procedure.
This evaluation process can be divided into several steps including
1. Study the controllability of AD by studying how AD is aected by the dif-
ferent parameters. This can for example be power control and PRACH
conguration.
2. Study the observability of AD. This can be done by nding and studying
dierent ways to measure or observe the AD, either by using measurements
from the UE or by using estimates in the eNB.
If AD can not be controlled by changing parameters it is not possible to use AD
in a performance specication. If there are no good ways of observing the AD
only using known parameters in the eNB it has to be assumed that the UEs can
provide measurements of their AD to the base station.
2.2 Backo
As described in Section 1.2.4 the eNB can force the UE to wait a certain time
before it tries to connect again. An example of a backo time chosen by the UE
can be seen in Figure 2.1. The maximum length of the backo time is signaled to
the UE by the eNB with the backo parameter B. One possible scenario is that
the backo only is activated when there is an overload in the system. Therefore it
would be interesting to study how the observations of AD are aected by dierent
values on B, during dierent conditions of the system. If the AD observers cannot
be upgraded to accurately estimate an eventual backo it would mean that the
eNB is depending on AD reports from the UEs.
RA RA RA
Backoff time Attempt 1 ends Attempt 2 starts
RA
Figure 2.1. Backo example. When attempt 1 ends the UE have to wait the backo
time before it can start attempt 2.
2.3 Controller Synthesis
The synthesis can be split up in dierent parts. When having the possibility to
use dierent parameters to control a system it is important to combine them in a
2.3 Controller Synthesis 13
most ecient way, for example if they have dierent working areas or if they should
be changed with dierent intervals. A study on how the reliability of measured
percentiles and the average of AD are aected by dierent sampling periods will
then be carried out. After this, dierent controller structures will be studied and
their performance evaluated.
2.3.1 Sampling Period
The choice of sampling period can have a great eect on how reliable the measured
percentiles and the average of AD are. The longer the sampling period is the
more data, to base the measurement on, has been collected since the last sample.
This suggests that the measurement of AD will be better the longer the sampling
period is, assuming a stationary condition. The question however is how much
better the measurements get and how to handle the trade-o between reliability
of measurements and the speed of the control. It would therefore be interesting
to study dierent sampling periods and see how accuracy at dierent percentiles
of AD is varied with dierent sampling periods.
2.3.2 Control Structures
When designing controllers for dierent systems it is often necessary to use more
than one controller. For example if a system consists of many parts it can be
dicult and sometimes impossible to design one controller for the whole system.
One way to combine the controllers for a system, that is widely used, is to design
controllers for dierent parts of the system separately, i.e., the dierent controllers
does not know of each others existence. An example of this is an industrial robot.
Here every joint of the robot is controlled separately from the others, and the
motions from the other joints are seen as disturbances.
Controller1 System1 Controller2 System2
-
Figure 2.2. A cascade controller.
Sometimes it can however be advantageous to combine the controllers at hand to a
more complex structure. It can for example be that the controllers work at dierent
speeds or that they have dierent working points. A so called cascade controller has
nested control loops working at dierent speeds. This kind of controller can be seen
in Figure 2.2. Instead of letting the controllers disturb each other, one can let them
take part of each others information and thus creating a better controller. This is
for example done in so called feed-forward control, see Figure 2.3. Because of the
many parameters that aect the random access procedure it may be advantageous
to use a control structure where the controllers for the dierent parameters are
14 Problem Formulation
combined. When evaluating controllers it is important to have key performance
metrics (KPMs) dened that can measure the performance of the system. One
common way to do this is by performing a step response. From this the speed and
the accuracy of the controller under extreme conditions can easily be measured.
Controller System
Controller
Measured
disturbance
-
Figure 2.3. A feed-forward control system.
Chapter 3
Simulator
3.1 Overview
The simulator has been developed in Matlab and is based on the Astrid simulator,
developed at Ericsson. It simulates a network with a number of cells and UEs
interacting with each other. The simulator is dynamic in time and it assumes
a synchronized network, which means that each subframe starts exactly at the
same point in time for all cells. During the time of this thesis the simulator has
been increased in detail and new features have been added. Below is however the
description of the simulator as it was at the end of the thesis.
3.2 Simulator Loop
The main loop of the simulator consists of a number of steps. An overview of these
steps can be seen in Figure 3.1.
Change
Parameters
Manage UEs Process PUSCH
Perform RA Process RACH Collect Results
Controller
Start
Figure 3.1. The main simulator loop.
15
16 Simulator
When all the steps in the loop have been executed one subframe has ended. That
is, the simulator has a granularity of 1 ms. Each of the steps are explained in more
detail below.
3.2.1 Changing of Parameters
In the rst step of the loop, Change Parameters seen in Figure 3.1, eventual
parameters are changed. For example the PUSCH load or the RACH load can be
changed during a simulation, in order to simulate an increase in incoming UEs.
3.2.2 Manage UEs
In the step Manage UEs in Figure 3.1, the creation, deletion and the managing of
UEs take place. The UEs are created following a Poisson process, where the mean
arrival intensity, denoted Load
RACH
, is set with the unit preambles/s/cell. After
a UE has been created it follows a state machine that is seen in Figure 3.2.
unDetected
waitingRA-
Response
waitingRA-
ContRes
hasAccess
waiting-
Backoff
Start
Figure 3.2. The state machine of a UE in the simulator.
When a UE is created it is in state unDetected. The transition from state un-
Detected to state waitingRAResponse occurs when the UE sends its preamble to
the eNB. When the UE gets a RA response from the eNB the UE is transfered to
state waitingRAContRes. If no RA response is received when the UE is in state
waitingRAResponse, or if no contention resolution response is received when the
UE is in state waitingRAContRes it is transfered to state waitingBacko. When
the backo time is over the UE is transfered back to state unDetected. Note that a
backo of zero can be used and in this case the state waitingBacko is skipped. If
a UE gains access, it is transfered from state waitingRAContRes to state hasAccess
and is after that deleted.
3.2.3 Modelling of PUSCH
Since the focus of this thesis is to analyse the random access procedure in LTE,
PUSCH is modelled as simply as possible. This means that only the parts of
3.2 Simulator Loop 17
PUSCH that are important enough are included in the simulator. The interference
from PUSCH on the PRACH impacts the preamble detection probability. Another
important aspect is the number of needed resource blocks for PUSCH. This aects
what PRACH conguration is possible to use, since a short opportunity period
will have the aect that more RBs are used for RA and can thus not be used for
PUSCH. These two parts of the PUSCH are included in the simulator and the
calculations are done in step Process PUSCH in Figure 3.1.
Both the interference from PUSCH and the number of RBs needed by PUSCH are
depending on the PUSCH load. The PUSCH load is dened as below.
Denition 3.1 PUSCH Load
The PUSCH load, denoted Load
PUSCH
is dened as the ratio between the number
of scheduled RBs for PUSCH, denoted nScheduled, and the number of available
RBs, denoted nTotal, i.e.,
Load
PUSCH
=
nScheduled
nTotal
.
The PUSCH load is randomized according to a normal distribution with a mean
that can be changed in the simulator and a standard deviation set to 0.05.
3.2.4 Modelling of the Random Access Procedure
The steps Perform RA and Process RACH in Figure 3.1 can be described together
as the modelling of the random access procedure in the simulator. To be able to
run simulations with regard to AD, the detail level of the random access procedure
needs to be high. Therefore the best way to model the random access procedure
is to include each step of the random access procedure in the simulator. However
due to the high complexity this would lead to, only three steps are included into
the simulator, see Figure 3.3.
UE eNB
Random Access Preamble
Random Access Response
Contention Resolution
1.
2.
3.
Figure 3.3. Description of how the random access procedure is modelled in the simula-
tor.
18 Simulator
A UE transmits a preamble in step 1. In step 2 the eNB answers the UEs whos
preambles were detected. If there is no contention the detected UEs from step 2
will get access in step 3. If there is contention the UEs that will be given access
are chosen randomly in step 3. This means that step 3 of the real random access
procedure, described in Section 1.2, is not modelled in the simulator. This step
is a complex process, since a more detailed model of how the uplink user data is
scheduled and where there are free RBs to use for RA needs to be included in the
simulator. The relative gain from modelling it in the simulator is also low and
it is therefore not included. The time between step 2 and step 3 in the real RA
procedure is also a timing factor that cannot be aected by any of the broadcasted
parameters from the eNB. This means that leaving this step out of the simulator
is reasonable.
In case of a failed access attempt the UE has to wait a certain time before it can
connect again. This waiting time is usually called the backo time. To be able to
run experiments when the system is tested with regard to this backo time this is
also modelled in the simulator.
3.2.5 The End of the Loop
In the step Collect Results in Figure 3.1 the needed data is sampled and stored in
data structures. Thus the analyses can be done after the simulation is nished.
The last step of the simulation loop is the step Controller. Here the control of the
system takes place. Since the synthesis of a control system for the random access
procedure is part of this thesis, this step will be explained more in detail later on
in the thesis.
3.3 Denition of Parameters
There are a number of parameters that aect the access delay. Some of them are
of a greater interest because with their help it is possible to control the AD. What
eects these parameters have on AD will be discussed in the Chapter 4, but some of
the denitions will be addressed here. There are also some other parameters that
will not be used for controlling AD in this thesis, but their denition however, will
be discussed in this section. All of these parameters are included in the simulator
and can be set to wanted values before the simulation starts.
3.3.1 Timing Factors
There are three major timing factors that aect the access delay of one attempt.
To get a good modelling of the AD these timing factors are also included in the
simulator. The rst timing factor is the time a UE waits for a RA response
after it has sent its preamble. This timing factor is controlled by the parameter
ra-responseWindowsSize, [4] which is broadcasted to the UE by the eNB. This
window starts 2 ms, see [2], after preamble is sent and during this window the
3.3 Denition of Parameters 19
UE waits for a RA response. The second timing factor is the time a UE have
to wait after the received RA response until it can send its unique identity. This
timing factor is controlled by the scheduler in the eNB and tells the UE in the
RA response in which subframe it can send its unique identity. Depending on the
load and other factors this timing factor is hard to predict, but according to [2]
the unique identity can be sent no sooner than 6 ms after the RA response. Thus
this timing factor is set to 5 ms in the simulator. The third factor is the time a
UE waits for a contention resolution response after it has sent its unique identity
and is controlled by the parameter mac-ContentionResolutionTimer, [4] which is
broadcasted to the UE by the eNB. The values of ra-ResponseWindowsSize and
mac-ContentionResolutionTimer are seen in Table 3.1 and [5].
Table 3.1. Values of ra-responseWindowsSize and mac-ContentionResolutionTimer.
Parameter Time (subframes)
ra-ResponseWindowsSize 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10
mac-ContentionResolutionTimer 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56 and 64
These two parameters, ra-ResponseWindowsSize and mac-ContentionResolution-
Timer, can be set in the simulator to aect how long the random access procedure
takes for a UE.
3.3.2 Conguration Period
The PRACH conguration is described in Section 1.2.2. Each PRACH congu-
ration is associated with a period of time between the RA opportunities and this
time is important for the simulator. The period of time is called conguration
period, denoted with T
confP
and is measured in subframes. The PRACH congu-
rations with corresponding conguration period are seen in Table 3.2, where they
have been grouped by conguration period.
Table 3.2. PRACH congurations with corresponding conguration period.
PRACH Conguration System Frame number T
confP
(subframes)
{0, 1, 2} Even 20
{3, 4, 5} Any 10
{6, 7, 8} Any 5
{9, 10, 11} Any 3.333
{12, 13} Any 2
{14} Any 1
As can be seen the period for congurations {9, 10, 11} is not an integer. Because
these congurations do not have a constant period, the conguration period calcu-
lated is the mean conguration period. The RA opportunities for congurations
20 Simulator
{9, 10, 11} are limited to three subframes per radio frame. Therefore between
the last subframe in one radio frame to the rst subframe in the next radio frame
there are 4 ms. See [1] for more information about the PRACH congurations.
3.3.3 Backo Indicator
When it comes to backo there is only one parameter that aects how long the UEs
wait until they can try again. This is the backo parameter, which is indicated by
an index sent from the eNB to the UE. These backo indicators have been dened
in [4] and can be seen in Table 3.3.
Table 3.3. Backo parameter values as dened in [4].
Indicator/index Backo parameter, B (ms)
0 0
1 10
2 20
3 30
4 40
5 60
6 80
7 120
8 160
9 240
10 320
11 480
12 960
The actual time the UE waits is called the backo time and is dened as below.
Denition 3.2 Backo Time
The backo time is dened as the time a UE waits after a random access attempt
has been declared unsuccessful until the UE is free to try again. The backo time
is chosen uniformly by the UE in the interval [0, B].
3.4 Random Access Attempt Example
To conclude some of the information in this chapter an example will be given.
This shows the dierent states of the UE and where the timing factors come in to
the picture. In Figure 3.4 a time axes is shown with the important events marked.
The numbered events in the gure represent the steps a UE would go through
if it would get access in one attempt. The steps are the same as described
3.4 Random Access Attempt Example 21
0 9 9 9 9 9
1.
ra-ResponseWindowSize = 5
mac-ContentionResolutionTimer = 24
B = 10
2. 3.
Figure 3.4. Example of how the RA procedure can take place. 1. Send preamble. 2.
RA response. 3. Contention resolution.
in Figure 3.3. In the gure the timing factors ra-ResponseWindowSize, mac-
ContentionResolutionTimer and B can also be seen. They are placed where
they aect the AD in the random access procedure. The second timing factor
from Section 3.3.1, modelled as 5 subframes, is seen from step 2 until the mac-
contentionResolutionTimer starts. The two subframes before ra-ResponseWindowSize
starts, is a standardized waiting time before the UE starts to listen for a RA re-
sponse. More information can be found in [4]. It can also be noted that one of
PRACH congurations {6, 7, 8} have been used (actually PRACH conguration
6, see [1]). Some of the subframes are marked with a number (0 or 9) which
represents their position in their radio frame.
Chapter 4
Access Delay
4.1 Introduction to Access Delay
A key factor when a systems performance is measured is the speed of the system.
This can for example be the bit rate of a mobile network, but in the case of the
random access procedure in LTE the speed can dened as the time it takes for a
UE to get access. This measurement of speed is called access delay and can be
dened as follows.
Denition 4.1 Access Delay
The access delay, denoted AD
i
of a UE i is the time in ms from when the UE
wants to start the random access procedure until the time the UE has access. Let
t
s
be the time when the UE wants to start the random access procedure and let t
a
be the time when the UE has been granted access by the eNB. The access delay
can then be calculated as
AD
i
= t
a
t
s
.
To optimize the performance of the random access procedure one important pa-
rameter to look at is therefore the access delay. One way to optimize the RA
procedure is to tune its parameters to follow a target AD. To be able to do this
AD needs to be controllable and observable. If this is the case it would be possible
to use AD in a performance specication model. This chapter will focus on the
controllability and observability of access delay. First the controllability will be
studied and after that the observability of AD will be studied. In the end there
will be a conclusion of the chapter, summarizing the results and discussions of the
chapter.
4.2 Controllability of Access Delay
The controllability of a system is an important analysis. It tells us which param-
eters we can use to control the system and how well the system can be controlled.
This can be done theoretically, but the complexity of the RACH system would
23
24 Access Delay
make a theoretical analysis unpractical. The controllability of AD has instead
been investigated by performing a number of experiments where dierent param-
eters of the RACH process has been altered and the metrics of interest collected.
The parameters investigated below are the power control parameters P
0_RACH
and
RACH
and the PRACH conguration. Furthermore, the load on the system
is investigated by studying the RACH load and the PUSCH load. The two window
parameters ra-ResponseWindowSize and mac-ContentionResolutionTimer are not
studied here since they are more seen as parameters to control the load of the eNB.
This is outside the scope of this thesis. To evaluate the results dierent percentiles
of AD are studied. In a list of measured ADs, the p-th percentile is the AD below
which p percent of the observations may be found. In a cumulative distribution
function (CDF) of AD the p-th percentile is the value of AD when the CDF is p
percent.
It should be noted that the results below only apply to the conditions and assump-
tions made in the simulator. This means that the same experiments run on a real
system could generate dierent results.
4.2.1 Experiment: Eects of Varying PRACH Congura-
tion and RACH Load
The goal of this experiment is to study how AD is aected by dierent PRACH
congurations and dierent RACH loads and to see to what extent AD can be
controlled by PRACH conguration. The outline of this experiment is given in
Table 4.1. It can be noted that P
0_RACH
is set to -120 dBW. The reason for this is
to get as high detection probability of the preambles as possible, i.e., the majority
of the preambles sent from UEs will be detected at the rst attempt. Thus we
minimize the eects of detection miss on AD and can see how the RACH load and
the PRACH conguration aects the AD.
Table 4.1. Setup of PRACH conguration and RACH load experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
100, 300, 500, 700, 900 preambles/s/cell
RACH Format 0
PRACH Conguration
{0, 1, 2}, {3, 4, 5}, {6, 7, 8}, {9, 10, 11},
{12 ,13} ,{14}
P
0_RACH
-120 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 8
ra-ResponseWindowSize 5 subframes
mac-ContentionResolutionTimer 24 subframes
Simulation Time 100 s
Inter-site Distance 500 m
4.2 Controllability of Access Delay 25
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
RACH
= 100 preambles/s/cell
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
RACH
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
RACH
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
RACH
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
RACH
Access Delay (ms)

Config 0,1,2
Config 3,4,5
Config 6,7,8
Config 14
Figure 4.1. CDF as a function of AD for dierent PRACH congurations and RACH
loads.
For each RACH load and PRACH conguration one simulation of 100 s was run.
At the end of each simulation the CDF of AD was derived. These CDFs are shown
in Figure 4.1. We can see that the CDFs for congurations {6, 7, 8} until {14} are
very similar, also between dierent RACH loads. The reason for the somewhat
strange shape of the CDFs is that the number of needed attempts changes. In Fig-
ure 4.2 the CDF as a function of sent preambles for Load
RACH
= 900 and PRACH
conguration {0, 1, 2} is given. It can be seen that the changes in number of sent
preambles coincides with the sharp changes in the corresponding CDF of the AD.
This is for example seen at around 50 ms in the CDF of AD where the derivative
of the CDF decreases. This decrease in derivative coincides with the change from
1 sent preambles to 2 sent preambles in Figure 4.2.
26 Access Delay
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0.85
0.9
0.95
1
CDF(Sent Preambles); Load
RACH
Sent Preambles

Config 0,1,2
Figure 4.2. CDF as a function of sent preambles for PRACH congurations {0, 1, 2}
and Load
RACH
= 900.
From the CDFs in Figure 4.1, the AD for each combination of RACH load and
PRACH conguration at dierent percentiles is derived. This is given in Fig-
ure 4.3. When the period time between the RA opportunities decreases, i.e., the
conguration number increases, the AD is also decreased. The AD between dif-
ferent RACH loads is increased as the load is increased. This is however more
noticeable for the higher percentiles. As we noted from the CDFs there is also
here in general small dierence between PRACH congurations {6, 7, 8} until
{14} for all RACH loads, except for the 99th percentile. The small changes in
AD between the congurations is connected with the small changes in period time
between the congurations. The largest change in period time is 10 ms from con-
gurations {0, 1, 2} to {3, 4, 5} and it is also there the largest change in AD is.
The conclusion from this experiment is that AD can be controlled by the PRACH
conguration. Altering the conguration leads in general to small changes in AD,
but this is also something that changes depending on which percentile one stud-
ies. The use of PRACH conguration when controlling AD is therefore depending
on how the performance specication is set. For example if the RACH load is
700 and the performance specication is stated as P(AD < 60) = 0.99. This is
the same as when the 99th percentile for Load
RACH
= 700 in Figure 4.3 has a
value under 60 ms, which occurs for congurations {9, 10, 11}, {12, 13} and {14}.
If the performance specication, for the same RACH load, on the other hand is
stated as P(AD < 60) = 0.90, the 90th percentile should have a value under 60
ms. With this specication all congurations except conguration {0, 1, 2} can be
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
RACH
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
PRACHConfiguration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
RACH
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
PRACHConfiguration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
RACH
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
PRACHConfiguration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
RACH
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
PRACHConfiguration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
RACH
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
PRACHConfiguration

50th percentile
80th percentile
90th percentile
99th percentile
Figure 4.3. AD as a function of PRACH conguration and RACH load for dierent
percentiles.
used. That is, the eects from changing the conguration highly depends on which
percentile we are interested in. If the eects from changing the conguration are
high, the PRACH conguration can to a higher extent be used to control the AD.
One must however keep in mind that the PRACH conguration also eects the
amount of resource blocks assigned to PUSCH. The amount of resources needed
for PUSCH must therefore also be kept in mind when using the conguration to
control the access delay.
28 Access Delay
4.2.2 Experiment: Eects of Varying Power Control Param-
eters
The goal of this experiment is to study the eects of P
0_RACH
and
RACH
on AD
and to show between which limits it is possible to control AD using these power
control parameters. The outline of this experiment is shown in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2. Setup of power control experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
100 preambles/s/cell
RACH Format 0
PRACH Conguration {9, 10, 11}
P
0_RACH
-120, -125, -130, -135, -140, -145, -150 dBW
RACH
0, 2, 4, 6 dB
M 50
For each P
0_RACH
and
RACH
one simulation of 100 s was run. At the end of each
simulation the CDF of AD was derived. These CDFs are shown in Figure 4.4. In
general a smal ratio of UEs have a high AD, above 75 ms, when P
0_RACH
increases.
However the dierence between the CDFs for dierent P
0_RACH
decreases when
RACH
increases. In the case of P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW and
RACH
= 0 dB
the ratio of UEs never getting access was too high, i.e., there were too many UEs
needing more then the maximum number of allowed attempts, which normally is
eight. Thus the maximum number of allowed attempts, M, was increased to 50 in
this experiment.
From the CDFs in Figure 4.4, the AD for each combination of P
0_RACH
and
RACH
at dierent percentiles is derived. This is shown in Figure 4.5. In gen-
eral AD decreases nonlinearly for increasing P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. However for
higher P
0_RACH
, above -130 dBW, there is a small dierence in AD for all
RACH
.
The reason for the small dierences in AD when P
0_RACH
is high, is that the AP
is highly increased when P
0_RACH
is increased and thus leading to a lower prob-
ability of a UE needing more than one attempt. The greatest reason for long
access delays is many attempts. In the simulations where P
0_RACH
130 dBW,
almost all of the UEs only need one attempt to get access and therefore we also
have a very small change in AD between these simulations. This corresponds well
to the results in [9], where a very high DP for P
0_RACH
130 dBW is obtained.
The number of attempts needed for
RACH
= 0 can be seen in Figure 4.6. When
compared to the corresponding CDF of AD it is clear that the number of attempts
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD);
RACH
= 0 dB
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150 200
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD);
RACH
= 2 dB
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150 200
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD);
RACH
= 4 dB
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150 200
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD);
RACH
= 6 dB
Access Delay (ms)

P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 135 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
Figure 4.4. CDF as a function of AD for dierent P
0_RACH
and
RACH
.
has a great eect on the AD.
The conclusion of this experiment is that it is possible to control AD using
P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. Both parameters P
0_RACH
and
RACH
make it possible
to decrease AD by decreasing the number of attempts needed by the UEs to get
access. When only one RA attempt is needed, neither P
0_RACH
nor
RACH
can
be used to decrease AD. One way of using the parameters P
0_RACH
and
RACH
could be to control the AD on a higher level, that is use P
0_RACH
and
RACH
to
decrease the number of attempts needed for the UEs to get access.
30 Access Delay
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
0
100
200
300
400
500
RACH
= 0 dB
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
RACH
= 2 dB
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
RACH
= 4 dB
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
RACH
= 6 dB
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)

50th percentile
80th percentile
90th percentile
99th percentile
Figure 4.5. AD as a function of P
0_RACH
and
RACH
for dierent percentiles.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
CDF(Sent Preambles);
RACH
= 0 dB
Sent Preambles

P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
Figure 4.6. CDF as a function of sent preambles for
RACH
= 0 dB and dierent
P
0_RACH
.
4.2.3 Experiment: Eects of Varying PUSCH Load
The goal of this experiment is to study the eects of P
0_RACH
and PUSCH load
on AD. The PUSCH load has a direct eect on the inter-cell interference on RACH
and it is therefore interesting to study the impact of this. The outline of this ex-
periment is given in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3. Setup of PUSCH load experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0
Load
RACH
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -130, -140, -150 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 8
In Figure 4.7 the CDFs from this experiment can be seen. In general the AD is
negatively aected when the PUSCH load is increased, however for P
0_RACH

130 dBW there are minor dierences to the CDFs when the PUSCH load is
changed. This suggest that it is possible to reduce the negative eects a high
PUSCH load has on the AD.
How AD is aected by P
0_RACH
and the PUSCH load can also be seen in Fig-
ure 4.8. Access Delay is plotted for dierent percentiles, as a function of P
0_RACH
and PUSCH load. It can be seen that AD is nonlinearly decreased as P
0_RACH
is increased. The maximum value for AD is increased as the PUSCH load is in-
creased. It is also here possible to see that using a P
0_RACH
higher than -130 dBW
minimizes the eects that a high PUSCH interference has on AD.
The conclusion of this experiment is that AD is highly aected by the PUSCH
load. The experiment show however also that it is possible to counteract these
eects by choosing a high enough P
0_RACH
, i.e., -130 dBW and higher.
32 Access Delay
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
PUSCH
= 0.0
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
PUSCH
= 0.2
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
PUSCH
= 0.4
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
PUSCH
= 0.6
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
PUSCH
= 0.8
Access Delay (ms)
0 50 100 150
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
CDF(AD); Load
PUSCH
= 1
Access Delay (ms)

P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
Figure 4.7. CDF as a function of AD for dierent P
0_RACH
and PUSCH loads.
150 140 130 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
PUSCH
= 0.0
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 140 130 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
PUSCH
= 0.2
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 140 130 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
PUSCH
= 0.4
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 140 130 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
PUSCH
= 0.6
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 140 130 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
PUSCH
= 0.8
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 140 130 120
20
40
60
80
100
120
Load
PUSCH
= 1
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)

50th percentile
80th percentile
90th percentile
99th percentile
Figure 4.8. AD as a function of P
0_RACH
and PUSCH load for dierent percentiles.
34 Access Delay
4.2.4 Controllability Summary
As has been shown in the sections above the AD can be controlled by altering
either the PRACH conguration or the power control parameters. The results
have shown that it is especially the power control parameters that give the largest
change in AD. This can be explained by the decrease in DP when decreasing for
example P
0_RACH
. This leads to an increase in the number of attempts needed
by the UE to get access and thus also an increase in AD. As such, the best way
to decrease the AD is to decrease the number of attempts needed by the UEs to
get access.
4.3 Observability of Access Delay
One way of using AD when optimizing the random access procedure could be to
use it in a performance specication model, i.e., the wanted performance of the
system will be expressed in terms of AD. To be able to do so not only does AD
need to be controllable, but also observable. To be observable means that AD can
either be measured explicitly or it can be estimated using other known parameters.
In the sections below, the observer algorithm and the dierent estimators are rst
discussed. After this follows the results from the experiments where the observers
were tested.
4.3.1 Observer Algorithm
The total AD of a UE depends on how many attempts the UE needs. The number
of attempts depends on the AP. AP can be expressed as [9]
AP = (1 DMP)(1 CP)
where DMP and CP are detection miss probability and contention probability
respectively, as below.
Denition 4.2 Detection Miss Probability
The detection miss probability, denoted DMP is dened as the probability that
a preamble sent by a UE is not detected by the eNB.
Denition 4.3 Contention Probability
The contention probability, denoted CP is dened as the probability that a UE
does not get access because of contention.
Since DMP and CP can not be measured, they need to estimated using ratios. As
such they can be estimated as [9]
DMP =
_
1
nDetect
nSent
, nSent > 0
0, nSent = 0
(4.1)
4.3 Observability of Access Delay 35
CP =
_
1
nAccess
nDetect
, nDetect > 0
0, nDetect = 0
(4.2)
where nDetect is the number of detected preambles, nSent is the number of sent
preambles and nAccess is the number of UEs getting access. Since
DMP depend
on the number of sent preambles, nSent, which is not measureable at the base
station, nSent needs to be estimated. If it is assumed that all UEs get access
before they have reached the maximum number of attempts the estimation of
nSent can be expressed as
nSent =
M
i=1
i nAccess
i
where M is the maximum number of allowed attempts and nAccess
i
is the number
of UEs who got access at attempt i. This can be put into (4.1) to get an estimation
of DMP, [8].
As we have seen in Section 4.2.1 and Section 4.2.3 the AD is also depending on
the current RACH and PUSCH load. If the estimators of DMP and CP in (4.1)
and (4.2) are used, the eects caused by dierent loads are covered. The DMP
depends implicitly on the PUSCH load, i.e., the ratio nDetect/nSent is higher if
the PUSCH load is low, and the CP depends implicitly on the RACH load, i.e., the
ratio nAccess/nDetect is higher if the RACH load is low. This has been shown
in [9]. If we also assume that the number of RA attempts needed to get access is
reported to the base station when the UE gets access, we can formulate an AD
observer algorithm based on the number of attempts N, DMP and CP.
3
DMP 1-DMP
CP 1-CP
Detection miss (A)
Access (C)
Contention resolution
failure (B)
Figure 4.9. Probability diagram for one random access attempt.
For one access attempt there are three possibilities for a UE, see Figure 4.9. The
36 Access Delay
rst possibility (called possibility A) is that the access attempt fails because of
detection miss, i.e., the UEs sent preamble was not detected by the eNB. The
second possibility, B, is that the attempt fails because of contention, i.e., the UE
has chosen the same preamble as another UE and looses the contention resolution.
The third and last possibility (C) is that the UE gets access. Each of the possibil-
ities has a penalty associated with it. This means that if a UE travels down path
A in Figure 4.9 it will be punished with the time penalty
2
. The parameters
0
until
4
are dened as below.
Denition 4.4 First Attempt Delay
The rst attempt delay, denoted as
0
, is dened as the time in ms between a UE
wants to start a random access attempt until the UE sends its rst preamble.
Denition 4.5 Detection Delay
The detection delay, denoted as
1
, is dened as the time in ms from a UE sends a
preamble until the time the UE gets the RA response associated with the preamble.
Denition 4.6 Detection Miss Delay
The detection miss delay, denoted
2
, is dened as the time in ms from a UE
sends a preamble until the time the UE sends a preamble in the next attempt,
given that the UE did not receive a RA response.
Denition 4.7 Random Access Finished Delay
The random access nished delay, denoted
3
, is dened as the time in ms from a
UE receives its RA response until the UE gets the contention resolution response
containing the unique identity belonging to the UE.
Denition 4.8 Contention Resolution Failed Delay
The contention resolution failed delay, denoted
4
, is dened as the time in ms
from when a UE receives its RA response until the UE sends a preamble in the next
attempt, given that the UE did not receive a RA contention resolution response
with its unique identity.
From Figure 4.9 and the reported number of attempts N we can formulate the
expected access delay,

AD for one attempt as
AD(N = 1) =
0
+P(A|Access)
2
+P(B|Access)(
1
+
4
) +
+P(C|Access)(
1
+
3
) =
0
+
1
+
3
(4.3)
where P(A|Access), P(B|Access) and P(C|Access) are the conditional probabil-
ities that a UE goes down one of the paths A, B or C given the attempt was
successful. The only path a UE can take to get access is path C. Consequently,
P(C|Access) = 1 and P(A|Access) = P(B|Access) = 0 which leads to the result
in (4.3). If a UE reports two attempts the expression for

AD is altered to
AD(N = 2) =

AD(N = 1)+P(A|AccessFailed)
2
+P(B|AccessFailed)(
1
+
4
)
(4.4)
where P(A|AccessFailed) and P(B|AccessFailed) are the conditional probabili-
ties that a UE goes down one of the paths A or B given the attempt was unsuc-
cessful. For an arbitrary great N the following denition to estimate access delay
is then dened.
Denition 4.9 Estimated Access Delay
The estimated access delay, denoted with

AD for attempt N = n can be dened
as
AD(N = n) =
0
+
1
+
3
+
_
n 1
_
_
P(A|AccessFailed)
2
+
+P(B|AccessFailed)
_
1
+
4
_
_
.
Using (4.1) and (4.2), the conditional probabilities from Denition 4.9 can be
derived from Figure 4.9 to
P(A|AccessFailed) =
P(AccessFailed A)
P(AccessFailed)
=

DMP
1 (1
DMP)(1

CP)
(4.5)
P(B|AccessFailed) =
P(AccessFailed B)
P(AccessFailed)
=
(1
DMP)
CP
1 (1
DMP)(1

CP)
. (4.6)
Combining Denition 4.9, (4.5) and (4.6) gives us an algorithm to base our es-
timators of AD on. However, the penalties
0
to
4
still need to be estimated.
The following sections describe dierent estimators for
0
to
4
. To separate the
estimators from each other each is expressed with an extra index representing
the estimator it belongs to. For example
0
(1)
represents the estimation of
0
for
estimator 1.
4.3.2 Penalty Estimator 1
In this estimator it is assumed that all events happen at a time uniformly dis-
tributed in the time window associated with the event. This means that the
subframe when a UE wants to start its random access attempt is uniformly dis-
tributed in the window [0,T
confP
1] and since we are interested in the average
AD the estimation of
0
, denoted as
0
(1)
is set to

0
(1)
=
T
confP
1
2
.
In the simulator it is assumed that the UEs can make their rst RA attempt
the same subframe they are created and thus the window [0,T
confP
1]. The
38 Access Delay
subframe a UE gets its RA response in is uniformly distributed in the window [1,ra-
ResponseWindowSize] and the contention resolution response comes in a subframe
uniformly distributed in the window [1,mac-ContentionResolutionTimer]. This
means that the estimations of
1
and
3
, denoted as
1
(1)
and
3
(1)
can be
written as

1
(1)
= 2 +
1 +T
respW
2
(4.7)

3
(1)
= 5 +
1 +T
contW
2
(4.8)
where T
respW
=ra-ResponseWindowSize and T
contW
=mac-ContentionResolution-
Timer. The 2 ms in (4.7) is a standardized waiting time in subframes before the
RA response window starts and the 5 ms in (4.8) is a standardized waiting time
before a UE can send its unique identity to the eNB. More information about
these constants can be found in Section 3.3.1 and in [2]. If a UE does not get
either a RA response or a RA contention resolution response, it is assumed that
the UE has to wait until the waiting window has run out plus the time until the
next RA opportunity. It is again assumed that the time after the waiting window
has run out until the UE can try again is uniformly distributed in the window
[0,T
confP
1]. With this assumption
2
and
4
can be estimated as the following:

2
(1)
= 2 +T
respW
+T
(1)
next

4
(1)
= 5 +T
contW
+T
(1)
next
where T
(1)
next
is the time after the waiting window runs out until the UE can try
again, i.e.,
T
(1)
next
=
T
confP
1
2
. (4.9)
This penalty estimator is in many ways similar to penalty estimator 1. The only
dierence is that the time until the next attempt after a UE does not get a response,
T
next
, is estimated dierently. Therefore the estimations of
0
,
1
and
3
are the
same as in Section 4.3.2, i.e.,

0
(2)
=
T
confP
1
2

1
(2)
= 2 +
1 +T
respW
2

3
(2)
= 5 +
1 +T
contW
2
.
The estimations of
2
and
4
are dierent in this penalty estimator compared
to penalty estimator 1. The parameter T
next
is calculated in a dierent way.
Depending on the PRACH conguration and the length of T
respW
and T
contW
the
time T
next
can be calculated in a more precise way. Thus
2
can be estimated as

2
(2)
= 2 +T
respW
+T
(2)
next,2
(4.10)
where T
(2)
next,2
is calculated as
T
(2)
next,2
= T
confP

_
(2 +T
respW
) mod T
confP
_
. (4.11)
This means that the remaining number of subframes can be calculated exactly.
The estimation of
4
is done in a similar way. The possible times from the RA
attempt until the contention resolution window is over for the UE is given in the
vector t
raResp
and can be written as
t
raResp
= 2 +
_
1 2 T
respW
+ 5 +T
contW
.
The vector T
(2)
next,4
can then be expressed as
T
(2)
next,4
= T
confP

_
t
raResp
mod T
confP
_
(4.12)
and
4
is consequently expressed as

4
(2)
= 5 +T
contW
+ T
(2)
next,4
(4.13)
where T
(2)
next,4
is the mean of the vector T
(2)
next,4
. The mean in (4.13) is needed
because it is not known when the UE did get its RA response. The estimation of
4
in (4.13) is not as exact as the estimation of
2
in (4.10) but it is still better
than
4
for penalty estimator 1. Especially for longer T
confP
.
In this penalty estimator the estimations are done during operation at the base
station. Since it is known when there is an RA opportunity at the eNB and it is
also known when the RA response and the RA contention resolution belonging to
this RA opportunity occurs, it is possible to make better estimations of
1
,
2
,
3
and
4
. The rst attempt delay,
0
is estimated in the same way as in penalty
estimators 1 and 2, i.e.,

0
(3)
=
T
confP
1
2
.
The estimations of
1
and
3
are set to

1
(3)
= t
raResp
t
ra

3
(3)
= t
raCont
t
raResp
where t
ra
, t
raResp
and t
raCont
are the measured times, in the base station, when an
RA opportunity, an RA response and an RA contention resolution response have
40 Access Delay
occurred. For all congurations except congurations {9, 10, 11} the estimations
of
2
and
4
are done in the same way as for penalty estimator 2. However
for the estimation of
4
there is no need to use the mean of the RA response
times. This means that the estimations of
2
and
4
for all congurations except
congurations {9, 10, 11} can be written as

2
(3)
= 2 +T
respW
+T
(2)
next,2

4
(3)
= 5 +T
contW
+T
(3)
next,4
where T
(2)
next,2
is dened as in (4.11) and T
(3)
next,4
can be dened as
T
(3)
next,4
= T
confP

_
(t
raCont
t
ra
) mod T
confP
_
.
For congurations {9, 10, 11} the estimations of
2
and
4
are better described
as Matlab algorithms than equations, see Algorithm 1.
Algorithm 1 Estimation of
2
subframeNr = mod(t
ra
+ 2 +T
respW
, 10)
nextRaSlot = min(raSlots(raSlots subframeNr > 0))
T
next
= nextRaSlot subframeNr
alpha2 = 2 +T
respW
+T
next
Algorithm 1 consideres the number the current subframe has (subframeNr) and
which RA opportunity subframe is the next in line (nextRaSlot). The constant
vector raSlots is a vector with the subframe numbers where there are RA oppor-
tunities. For example with conguration 9 raSlots would be assigned as
raSlots =
_
1 4 7 11

where the last entry in the array is in fact the rst RA opportunity in the next
radio frame. The estimation of
4
for congurations {9, 10, 11} is done in a similar
way and is given in Algorithm 2.
Algorithm 2 Estimation of
4
subframeNr = mod(t
raResp
t
ra
+ 5 +T
contW
, 10)
nextRaSlot = min(raSlots(raSlots subframeNr > 0))
T
next
= nextRaSlot subframeNr
alpha4 = 5 +T
contW
+T
next
These estimations of
2
and
4
give better estimates than the estimates in penalty
estimator 2, where the mean of the conguration period is used.
4.3.5 Access Delay Observer Experiments
To study how well the observers above perform some experiments need to be ex-
ecuted. The experiments test how stable the observers are when dierent values
on the RACH parameters are used. In the sections below the AD observer with
the dierent estimators are tested for dierent power control parameters, cong-
urations and dierent loads. The AD observer with penalty estimator 1, 2 and 3
will be called AD observer 1, 2 and 3.
4.3.6 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying PRACH Congu-
ration and RACH Load
The goal of this experiment is to study the accuracy of the dierent AD observers
with dierent penalty estimations at dierent PRACH congurations and RACH
loads. The outline of this experiment can be seen in Table 4.4.
Table 4.4. Setup of PRACH conguration and RACH load observer experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
100, 300, 500, 700, 900 preambles/s/cell
RACH Format 0
PRACH Conguration
{0, 1, 2}, {3, 4, 5}, {6, 7, 8}, {9, 10, 11},
{12 ,13} ,{14}
P
0_RACH
-120 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 8
Sampling Period T 2.5 s
To measure the accuracy of the observers the relative residuals, denoted , have
been derived and plotted, where
=
AD

AD
AD
. (4.14)
In (4.14), AD is the measured AD and

AD is the estimated AD by the observers.
Another way to measure the performance is to measure the root mean squared
error (RMSE) of the measured AD and the observed AD. The RMSE between a
measured signal x and an estimate x with N samples is calculated as
RMSE( x) =
_
1
N
N
i=1
(x
i
x
i
)
2
.
42 Access Delay
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
0.01
Load
RACH
= 100 preambles/s/cell; Config 0,1,2
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
0.01
Load
RACH
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
0.01
Load
RACH
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
0.01
Load
RACH
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
0.01
Load
RACH
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)

Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.10. Relative residuals for observers with PRACH conguration {0, 1, 2} and
dierent RACH loads.
The relative residuals for observer 1, 2 and 3 with PRACH conguration {0, 1, 2}
and dierent RACH loads can be seen in Figure 4.10. Here one can get a sense
of how the performance of the observers vary in time and it can clearly be seen,
that the residual for observer 3 in general has the lowest magnitude. We can also
notice that the residual magnitude for observer 1 increases as the RACH load
increases. This can be explained with the fact that more UEs need more attempts
when the RACH load increases. Recall that the dierence between observer 1 and
2 is the estimation of T
next
. Therefore the error in observer 1 increases with more
attempts.
If the RMSE in Figure 4.11 is studied, it can also be seen that the RMSE for
observer 3 is the lowest. The dierence between observer 1 and 2 is minimal for all
congurations except congurations {0, 1, 2}. This can be explained by the fact
that the conguration period is high, 20 ms, for congurations {0, 1, 2}. Thus the
dierence between T
(1)
next
and T
(2)
next
is also great.
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Load
RACH
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Configuration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Load
RACH
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Configuration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Load
RACH
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Configuration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Load
RACH
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Configuration
0,1,2 3,4,5 6,7,8 9,10,11 12,13 14
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
Load
RACH
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Configuration

Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.11. RMSE of measured and observerd AD as a function of PRACH congu-
ration and for dierent RACH loads.
As said before the main reason to the dierence between observer 1 and observer 2
is the estimation of T
(2)
next
. This will aect
2
and
4
. In Figure 4.12
0
until
4
for
the dierent estimations can be seen. It can be seen that
2
and
4
for observer 1
diers a lot from observer 2 and observer 3. Here we can also see the reason why
observer 3 has the best results. In observer 3 the estimations follow the measured
values much better, thus leading to a better estimation of AD. It may also be
noted that the estimation of
0
is not very accurate for any of the observers.
Congurations {9, 10, 11} have varying periods and since
0
is estimated as
0
=
T
confP
1
2
a small error is introduced. See Section 3.3.2 for more details regarding the cong-
uration period for dierent PRACH congurations. Due to the fact that
0
is only
used once per estimation it only has a minimal eect on the result. The eects
44 Access Delay
0 20 40 60 80 100
1.16
1.18
1.2
1.22
Load
RACH
0

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
4.96
4.98
5
5.02
5.04
5.06
Load
RACH
1

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
8
8.5
9
9.5
10
10.5
Load
RACH
2

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
17.3
17.4
17.5
17.6
17.7
Load
RACH
3

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
30
30.5
31
31.5
Load
RACH
4

(
m
s
)
Time (s)

Meas
Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.12. Measured and observed s for the observers with RACH load 900 and
PRACH conguration {9, 10, 11}.
from using PRACH congurations {9, 10, 11} can also be seen in the estimations
of
4
, where the accuracy of observer 2 is not very good. Here we can also see one
of the benets of using observer 3, namely the better estimation of T
next
.
The conclusion of this experiment is that it is possible to estimate the AD good
enough when varying the PRACH conguration and the RACH load. The RMSE
for observer 2 and 3 are relatively low for all cases, where observer 3 gives slightly
better estimations than observer 2. Observer 1 has better results for shorter cong-
uration periods and smaller loads than for longer conguration periods and higher
loads. For RACH loads less or equal to 100 preambles/s/cell observer 1 gives
acceptable results for all congurations, but as the RACH load increases the per-
formance of observer 1 decreases for longer conguration periods. In cases where
the load continuously is low, 300 preambles/s/cell and lower, observer 1 would
suce. For cases where the load is higher observer 2 or 3 is recommendable. Due
to the fact that
1
and
3
are measured in observer 3, this observer gives the best
results if the working conditions in the base station are changed, for example if
the distribution of how the UEs are processed is changed.
4.3.7 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying Power Control Pa-
rameters
The goal of this experiment is to study the accuracy of observers 1, 2 and 3 when
varying P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. A further goal is also to see how the accuracy of
the penalty estimates varies with dierent P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. The outline of
the experiment is seen in Table 4.5.
Table 4.5. Setup of power control observer experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -125, -130, -135, -140, -145, -150 dBW
RACH
0, 2, 4, 6 dB
M 8
In Figure 4.13 the relative residuals for the observers are given. They have been
plotted for the simulations with a P
0_RACH
of -120, -130, -140 and -150 dBW,
and a
RACH
of 0 dB. As can be seen, the residuals of observer 2 and 3 are rela-
tive small and dier very little as P
0_RACH
is varied. The residual of observer 1
however, has an acceptable value, and a very similar value to observer 2, for
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW but for the lower P
0_RACH
the residual increases rapidly.
A lower P
0_RACH
implies an increase in the number of attempts needed by the
UEs to get access. Recall that the dierence between observer 1 and observer 2
was the estimation of T
next
. The more attempts needed, the more number of times
T
next
will be used in the estimation. This explains the large dierences between
observer 1 and the other two.
In Figure 4.14 the RMSE for the observers are given and they conrm the results
in Figure 4.13. When looking at the results in Figure 4.14 it can be noted that
RACH
aects the observers much less than P
0_RACH
.
The estimations for
0
until
4
are seen in Figure 4.15. As can be seen for
2
,
penalty estimation 1 is almost 2 ms under the measured
2
. As
2
aects the es-
46 Access Delay
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
RACH
= 0 dB; P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
RACH
= 0 dB; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
RACH
= 0 dB; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
RACH
= 0 dB; P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)

Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.13. Relative residuals for observers with
RACH
= 0 dB and dierent
P
0_RACH
.
timation more when the number of attempts increases this explains the high error
for observer 1.
The conclusion of this experiment is that it is possible to estimate AD good enough
when varying P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. Observers 2 and 3 have relative good ac-
curacy for all simulations, where observer 3 is the better one. It can also be
noted that observer 1 has a good accuracy for higher P
0_RACH
, whereas for lower
P
0_RACH
it fails to accurately estimate the AD. One of observers 2 or 3 would
be to prefer. Even if observer 1 has a good accuracy for high P
0_RACH
it is not
preferable to always use such high P
0_RACH
which practically rules out the use of
observer 1.
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
RACH
= 0 dB
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
RACH
= 2 dB
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
RACH
= 4 dB
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)
150 145 140 135 130 125 120
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
RACH
= 6 dB
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
(dBW)

Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.14. RMSE of measured and observerd AD as a function of P
0_RACH
and for
dierent
RACH
.
48 Access Delay
0 20 40 60 80 100
1.15
1.2
1.25
1.3
RACH
= 2 dB; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
0

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
4.95
5
5.05
5.1
5.15
RACH
= 2 dB; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
1

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
8
8.5
9
9.5
10
10.5
RACH
= 2 dB; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
2

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
17
17.2
17.4
17.6
17.8
RACH
= 2 dB; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
3

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
30
30.5
31
31.5
32
32.5
RACH
= 2 dB; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
4

(
m
s
)
Time (s)

Meas
Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.15. Measured and observed
0
until
4
for the observers with
RACH
= 2 dB
and P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW.
4.3.8 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying PUSCH Load
The goal of this experiment is to study the accuracy of observers 1, 2 and 3 when
varying P
0_RACH
and the PUSCH load. It is also here important to see how
the accuracy of the penalty estimations varies for dierent P
0_RACH
and PUSCH
loads. The setup of this experiment is given in Table 4.6.
Table 4.6. Setup of PUSCH load observer experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0
Load
RACH
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -130, -140, -150 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 8
The results of this experiment are seen in Figure 4.16 and Figure 4.17. As can
be seen observers 2 and 3 show a good accuracy throughout the simulations. For
observer 1 however the accuracy in general decreases when the PUSCH load in-
creases and P
0_RACH
decreases. In Section 4.3.7 it was already noted that the
accuracy of observer 1 decreases when the P
0_RACH
decreases. Recall from Sec-
tion 4.2.3 that the AD was increased when the PUSCH load was increased. The
reason for this was the increase in uplink inter-cell interference, thus requiring a
higher P
0_RACH
to keep the same AD. Therefore with a low P
0_RACH
the number
of attempts needed to get access increases if the PUSCH load increases. This is
also the reason why the accuracy of observer 1 decreases when the PUSCH load
increases.
In Figure 4.18 the estimation of the penalties can be seen. The results look much
the same as in the previous sections. The main reason for the error in observer 1
is the estimation of
2
, which is seen in Figure 4.18. This is why the accuracy of
observer 1 decreases when the number of attempts increase.
50 Access Delay
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
Load
PUSCH
= 1; P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
Load
PUSCH
= 1; P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
Load
PUSCH
= 1; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
0.02
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
Load
PUSCH
= 1; P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Time (s)

Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.16. Relative residuals for observers with a PUSCH load of 1.0 and dierent
P
0_RACH
.
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
PUSCH
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
PUSCH
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
PUSCH
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
PUSCH

Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.17. RMSE of measured and observerd AD as a function of PUSCH load and
for dierent P
0_RACH
.
52 Access Delay
0 20 40 60 80 100
1.15
1.2
1.25
1.3
Load
PUSCH
= 0.2; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
0

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
4.9
4.95
5
5.05
5.1
5.15
Load
PUSCH
= 0.2; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
1

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
8
8.5
9
9.5
10
10.5
Load
PUSCH
= 0.2; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
2

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
17.3
17.4
17.5
17.6
17.7
17.8
Load
PUSCH
= 0.2; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
3

(
m
s
)
Time (s)
0 20 40 60 80 100
30
30.5
31
31.5
32
Load
PUSCH
= 0.2; P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
4

(
m
s
)
Time (s)

Meas
Obs 1
Obs 2
Obs 3
Figure 4.18. Measured and observed
0
until
4
for the observers with a PUSCH load
of 0.2 and P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW.
4.3.9 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying RACH Load and
P
0_RACH
The goal of this experiment is to study the accuracy of the dierent observers
when the RACH load and P
0_RACH
vary. However, due to the fact that this ex-
periment did not produce any new information about observer 1 only the results
from observer 2 and 3 are presented. The outline of this experiment is seen in
Table 4.7.
Table 4.7. Setup of RACH load observer experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 1
Load
RACH
10, 50, 100, 300, 500, 700,
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -130, -140, -150 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 8
The results can be seen in Figure 4.19 and Figure 4.20. As can be seen in Fig-
ure 4.19, observer 2 and observer 3 follow the measured AD relatively good for
P
0_RACH
= 120, 130 and 140 dBW. When P
0_RACH
reaches -150 dBW it can
clearly be seen that the accuracy of observer 2 and 3 decreases with an increasing
RACH load. This can also be seen in Figure 4.20. When P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
the residuals for observer 2 and 3 are decreasing in a linear fashion when RACH
load increases. It can also be noted in the plot for P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW in
Figure 4.19 that the AD stops increasing after a RACH load of 500. This can be
explained by the fact that more UEs will reach the maximum number of allowed
attempts when the RACH load increases and the AD reports of these UEs are
not included in the measured AD. Since the estimations of AD are based on the
reported number of sent preambles the estimations follow the mesured AD.
The conclusion of this experiment is that the accuracy of observer 2 and 3 in gen-
eral are good, but for higher values of P
0_RACH
and RACH load the accuracy of
the observers decreases. The decrease is however not great. The errors are still
under 1% for RACH loads up to 900 preambles/s/cell. The dierences between
observer 2 and observer 3 are very small.
54 Access Delay
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
23.6
23.8
24
24.2
24.4
24.6
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
24
24.2
24.4
24.6
24.8
25
25.2
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
33
33.5
34
34.5
35
35.5
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
60
61
62
63
64
P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)

Meas AD
Obs2
Obs3
Figure 4.19. Measured and observed AD for observers with varying RACH load for
dierent P
0_RACH
.
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
8
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
x 10
3 P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
8
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
x 10
3 P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
8
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
x 10
3 P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
8
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
x 10
3 P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

R
e
s
i
d
u
a
l
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)

Obs2
Obs3
Figure 4.20. Relative residuals for observers with varying RACH load for dierent
P
0_RACH
.
4.4 Conclusion 55
4.3.10 Observability Summary
It has been shown that the AD can be accurately observed when the number of
attempts needed by the UEs is reported to the base station. In all experiments
observer 3 shows the best results. Even if the distribution of how preambles are
processed or the distribution of how contention resolution responses are sent is
changed, observer 3 can still esimate the AD good. This is possible because ob-
server 3 has access to this information from measurements that are done directly
in the eNB. These measurements are also the reason why observer 3 is the most
complex observer. Observer 2 also shows in general a good accuracy for all experi-
ments. It accurately estimates the mean AD for all experiments, but does not have
the same accuracy as observer 3. The complexity of observer 2 is however much
lower than observer 3. There is no need for extra measurements in the eNB with
observer 2 and all the estimations can be done oine. This has also the eect that
any changes in processing distribution can not be taken into account when using
observer 2. As for observer 1 the only time the accuracy can be guarantied to be
good enough is if the UEs need few attempts. That is with high power control
parameter values and congurations with a short conguration period.
It can be noted that the observations of AD have been done with regard to the
mean AD. That is the mean AD for each number of attempts have been calculated.
If one wants the distrubution of the AD this has to be calculated by multiplying
the distribution of the number of attempts with the observed AD for one attempt.
This leads to an estimation of the distribution of AD that can dier a bit from the
real distribution. Another way to do this would be to observe the AD by estimat-
ing the distribution for one attempt and from this build a complete distribution
of AD with help from the number of attempts.
4.4 Conclusion
The conclusion of this chapter is that access delay is both controllable and ob-
servable. In the study of the controllability no special assumptions were made
but for the observability study it is assumed that the UEs report the number of
attempts needed to get access and that the backo parameter B = 0. With these
assumptions it is also possible to use AD in a performance specication model.
The study of backo and the inclusion of backo in the observer algorithms will
be done in the next chapter.
Chapter 5
Backo
5.1 Introduction to Backo
The time a UE waits before it tries to reconnect to a base station after it has failed
a random access attempt can be controlled by the backo indicator. This indicator
is sent to the UE from the eNB with the RA response. This is a possibility for the
eNB to reduce the chance of overload and to a certain extent contention. If for
example an eNB receives more preambles than it can handle in an RA opportunity,
than the eNB can send a backo indicator with the RA response. This tells the
UEs who will not get access in this attempt to wait with their next attempt. The
UEs choose a backo time uniformly in the interval [0,B], where B is the backo
parameter identied by the backo indicator, see Section 3.3.3. A UE can receive
an RA response even if it does not include the preamble sent by the UE and can
therefore read the backo indicator included in these responses. It is therefore still
possible for a UE whose preamble was not detected to receive the backo indicator.
This chapter will deal with backo in the sense of how the backo aects the AD
observers and what possibilities there are to include backo in the AD observers.
The last part of the chapter will be a discussion on whether to include backo
as a control parameter or if it should be seen as an external parameter set by a
separate part of the system.
5.2 Eects of Backo on Access Delay
The observers that were discussed in Section 4.3 did not include any support for
backo parameters greater than zero. If AD should be used in a performance
specication model it must be possible to make good observations of AD for all
backo parameters.
5.2.1 Inclusion of Backo in Observers
The observer algorithm from Section 4.3.1 can be used to include support for
backo. A UE will wait a certain backo time if the UE can not get access. This
57
58 Backo
means that
2
and
4
need to be extended to support a backo parameter greater
than zero. If the backo parameter is set to B a UE chooses its backo time
uniformly in the interval [0,B]. Thus it can be assumed that the average backo
time will be the mean value of the uniform distribution U(0, B). One of the main
dierences between the dierent penalty estimations for the AD observers was
the estimation of T
next
. When the backo parameter is greater than zero it is not
possible to make any special predictions about T
next
as done in penalty estimation
2 and 3 described in sections 4.3.3 and 4.3.4. Therefore the best estimation of T
next
is the one in (4.9). This means that for all backo parameters greater than zero
2,B
and
4,B
can be estimated as

2,B
= 2 +T
respW
+
B
2
+T
next

4,B
= 5 +T
contW
+
B
2
+T
next
where B is the backo parameter used in the base station and T
next
is dened as
T
next
=
T
confP
1
2
.
5.2.2 Experiment: Accuracy at Varying RACH Load
The goal of this experiment is to study the accuracy of the dierent observers
when using a backo parameter greater than zero and when the RACH load and
P
0_RACH
vary. The setup of this experiment can be seen in Table 5.1.
Table 5.1. Setup of RACH load backo experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 1
Load
RACH
10, 50, 100, 300, 500, 700,
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -130, -140, -150 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 8
B 0, 80 ms
The result of this experiment can be seen in Figure 5.1, Figure 5.2 and Figure 5.3.
5.2 Eects of Backo on Access Delay 59
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
23.5
24
24.5
25
25.5
26
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
24
25
26
27
28
29
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
30
40
50
60
70
80
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)

Meas AD; B = 0 ms
Obs 2; B = 0 ms
Meas AD; B = 80 ms
Obs 2; B = 80 ms
Figure 5.1. AD and estimated AD from observer 2 as a function of RACH load for
dierent P
0_RACH
.
In Figure 5.1 and Figure 5.2 the measured AD and the observed AD are plotted
against the RACH load and in Figure 5.3 the RMSE of the measured AD and the
observed AD at dierent RACH loads are presented. As can be seen in gures
5.1 and 5.2 the overall accuracy of the observations decrease when the P
0_RACH
decreases. What is interesting to notice is that the accuracy of the observations is
good for all P
0_RACH
when the RACH load is above 300 preambles/s/cell. This
can also be seen in Figure 5.3 where the errors of the observers decreases with an
increasing RACH load. When the RACH load is low there is a higher probability
that there is only one UE who sends a preamble at a RA opportunity. If this single
UE is not detected there will be no answer from the eNB. The UE will therefore not
know the true backo parameter and will instead use a backo parameter of zero.
This leads to a false assumption on the average backo time used in the observers,
which leads to the low accuracy at low RACH loads. An interesting thing to notice
is that when the accuracy of the observations is low the estimations are always
higher than the measured AD.
60 Backo
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
23.5
24
24.5
25
25.5
26
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
24
25
26
27
28
29
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
30
40
50
60
70
80
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
A
c
c
e
s
s

D
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)

Meas AD; B = 0 ms
Obs 3; B = 0 ms
Meas AD; B = 80 ms
Obs 3; B = 80 ms
Figure 5.2. AD and estimated AD from observer 3 as a function of RACH load for
dierent P
0_RACH
.
The conclusion of this experiment is that the accuracy of the observers are very
low at low RACH loads. This has the eect that these observers cannot be used
to accurately estimate AD when a backo parameter greater than zero is used and
the RACH load is low. Because of the dependency the RACH load has on the AD
when a backo parameter greater than zero is used it could be possible to increase
the accuracy of the observers if the RACH load could be estimated. The results
from this experiment also suggest that there is a upper limit to the RACH load
when the accuracy of these observers are low. If the RACH load at a base station
is known to be higher than this limit the use of these observers could be possible.
5.3 Conclusion
As could be seen in Section 5.2.2 a backo parameter greater than zero has a great
eect on the accuracy of the estimated AD. The poor performance of the observers
5.3 Conclusion 61
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
P
0_RACH
= 130 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
P
0_RACH
= 140 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)
10 50 100 300 500 700 900
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
Load
RACH
(preambles/s/cell)

Obs 2; B = 0 ms
Obs 3; B = 0 ms
Obs 2; B = 80 ms
Obs 3; B = 80 ms
Figure 5.3. RMSE of measured and observed AD, in ms, as a function of RACH load
for dierent P
0_RACH
.
at low RACH loads could be an indicator that the only way AD can be used in
a performance specication model is if the AD measured by the UEs is sent to
the eNB. On the other hand, the results also suggest that it could be possible to
increase the accuracy of the estimations if the RACH load could be measured or
observed. If a measurement of the RACH load was at hand the AD observer could
be extended to only include backo if the measured RACH load is high. This
however, does not lead to a complete observability of AD.
One other factor of great importance is the way backo is used. It is possible that
a backo parameter greater than zero will only be used if there is an overload at
the base station, i.e., there are more received preambles in one RA opportunity
than the eNB can process. If this is the case, then the number of UEs that use
a backo greater than zero is limited to a known amount and this could be used
in the estimations. For example, if overloads happen seldom no consideration to
backo needs to be taken when estimating the average AD.
62 Backo
The results also show that the observed AD is correct if B > 0 and the RACH
load is high. This could be used in an environment where B > 0 only if the RACH
load is high. In cases like this an AD observer following the algorithm above could
be used without any extra measurements or assumptions.
The conclusion of this chapter is that the AD can be estimated well for a B > 0
and a relative high RACH load. If the RACH load is low and B > 0, AD cannot
be estimated well. The backo indicator will therefore not be seen as control
parameter in the rest of this thesis, but instead as a parameter set by another
layer out of our control. The backo parameter is however known by our observers
and control system. Despite the great errors in the observers when the RACH
load is low the AD is always over-estimated. The error in the estimated AD is
however decreased as DMP is decreased, i.e., P
0_RACH
is increased. This indicates
that a controller using P
0_RACH
would drive the error of the estimators toward
zero. That is a controller using the AD observer would see a high AD and thus
increasing P
0_RACH
attempting to lower the AD. Increasing the P
0_RACH
would
lead to better estimations of the AD and thus the controller will end up in a stable
state. It is also highly possible that backo will only be used to resolve overload
and thus not signicantly aecting the total average of the AD, assuming that
overloads happen seldom.
Chapter 6
Sampling Period
6.1 Introduction
When designing a control system it is very important to know how dierent sam-
pling periods aect the accuracy of the sampled signal. In the case of the random
access procedure in LTE this sampled signal is AD, which in this chapter is as-
sumed to be measured by the UEs and then reported to the eNB. This chapter
includes a study on how dierent sampling periods aect the accuracy of the sam-
pled AD.
It should be mentioned how the sampling of the RA procedure works. Reports of
AD from UEs are collected in the eNB between two sample points. When the next
sample takes place a percentile is calculated from these collected reports of ADs.
After this the list of reported UEs are cleared and the procedure starts over. Note
that in the following sections we assume a stationary condition, where the RACH
load, PUSCH load and other parameters are assumed to be constant.
Delay
The goal of this experiment is to study how dierent sampling periods aect the
accuracy of the AD. To measure how well the measurements of AD are with
dierent sampling periods a true AD is needed. To nd this true AD a long
simulation is carried out. From the data collected during this long simulation an
AD for dierent percentiles is calculated and seen as the true AD. After this the
data was divided into smaller parts representing the dierent sampling periods.
The results from these sampling periods are then compared to the true AD. The
setup of the experiment can be seen in Table 6.1.
In Figure 6.1 the RMSE of AD for dierent sampling periods can be seen. The
dashed lines represent the 95% condence interval for each percentile. As can be
63
64 Sampling Period
Table 6.1. Setup of sampling period experiment.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
10 preambles/s/cell
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -150 dBW
RACH
4 dB
M 8
B 0 ms
Sampling Period T
1, 10, 20, 50, 75, 100, 125, 200, 300, 500,
1000, 1500 s
1 10 20 50 75 100 125 200 300 500 1000 1500
0
5
10
15
Sample Time (s)
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW

1 10 20 50 75 100 125 200 300 500 1000 1500
0
5000
10000
15000
Sample Time (s)
N
r

o
f

a
c
c
e
s
s
e
d

U
E
s
50th percentile
80th percentile
99th percentile
99.9th percentile
Figure 6.1. RMSE of AD, in ms, for dierent sampling periods at P
0_RACH
=
120 dbW.
Delay 65
1 10 20 50 75 100 125 200 300 500 1000 1500
0
5
10
15
20
25
Sample Time (s)
R
M
S
E
(
A
D
)

(
m
s
)
P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW

1 10 20 50 75 100 125 200 300 500 1000 1500
0
5000
10000
15000
Sample Time (s)
N
r

o
f

a
c
c
e
s
s
e
d

U
E
s
50th percentile
80th percentile
99th percentile
99.9th percentile
Figure 6.2. RMSE of AD, in ms, for dierent sampling periods at P
0_RACH
=
150 dbW.
seen for percentiles 50 to 99 the RMSE is high for shorter sampling periods and
in general decreases as the sampling period increases.
What is interesting to notice is that the RMSE for the 99.9th percentile increase
at a sampling period of 10 s peaks at 75 s and decrease until 500 s. The increase
at 10 s can be explained by the fact that there are very few UEs who need more
than one attempt to get access. The few UEs who need two attempts are however
evenly spread out over the simulation in time. This means that for sampling
periods under 10 s there will be few samples including an AD reported from a UE
needing two attempts. Therefore when the RMSE is calculated these few samples
will have less eect on the result. For sampling periods between 10 and 500 s on
the other hand there will be many samples which includes an AD report from a
UE needing two attempts. When the RMSE is calculated from these samples the
resulting value will be higher. For even higher sampling periods, above 500 s there
is also one or more AD reports from UEs with two attempts, but the reason why
the RMSE is low here is the number of UE reports in each sample. If the UE
reports in a sample is sorted in a list with size N, then the index n of the p-th
percentile can be calculated as
n =
N
100
p +
1
2
66 Sampling Period
and rounded to the nearest integer. This means that if there are enough reports
in a sample the 99.9th percentile are more likely to be from a UE that needs one
attempt. This explains why the RMSE is lower for sampling periods higher than
500 s.
The same result can be seen in Figure 6.2. The RMSE for percentiles 50 to 99
are high for short sampling periods but decrease fast when the sampling period
increases. For P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW the elevation is not as pronounced as for
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW. When P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW the number of attempts
needed by the UEs to get access are more evenly spread out in the interval from
1 attempt to 8 attempts, leading to a wider range of reported ADs. This explains
the lower elevation.
The conclusion of this experiment is that a good enough accuracy of the sampled
AD can be reached as long as the sampling period is long enough. In this exper-
iment this would correspond to a sampling period above 500 s, but this is highly
depending on the percentile that is studied. For all percentiles except the 99th it
could be seen that the accuracy in general increases considerably from a sampling
period of 1 s to 10 s and then reaches a steady state for sampling periods around
50 s and above. For the 99.9th percentile the accuracy is worse for sampling pe-
riods from 10 s to 500 s. This must be kept in mind if the 99.9th percentile is
wanted in a performance specication. If the 99.9th percentile is not used, then
the experiment indicates that it is enough with sampling periods around 20 s.
6.3 Conclusion
According to the experiment in Section 6.2, it is possible to get good measurements
of AD if a sampling period around 20 seconds is used. This is however not true
for percentile 99.9 where sampling periods over 500 seconds should be used to get
the same accuracy as for the other percentiles. If the 99.9th percentile is sampled
it must be kept in mind that the accuracy of the sampled AD is not as good as
for the other percentiles.
If a faster system is needed, then a lter could improve the accuracy of the sampled
AD. Another possibility is to use an aperiodic sample method. This would mean
that the system samples when enough UE reports are collected. Enough reports
are collected when the condence interval of the data in the sample is low enough,
for example |CI| , where CI is the condence interval and is a positiv number.
With this method the accuracy of the samples will always be the same, but the
speed of the controller will be unknown. If the timing of the system is critical an
unknown speed of the controller can lead to unwanted eects.
Chapter 7
Control Structures
7.1 Introduction
When controlling with multiple variables there are many dierent control struc-
tures that can be applied. Some of the control structures require a good model
of the system to be setup, whereas other structures can be setup manually with-
out involving a model. The rst thing to do when designing a controller is to
decide what parameters to use and for what purpose. Which should the control
parameters be, which parameter(s) should be used for reference and so on. In this
chapter we will rst discuss how to dene our control system and its parameters
and after this three dierent control structures will be presented. Thirdly, some
experiments will be run to show the performance of the control structures and at
last there will be a conclusion of the results.
7.2 Denition of Control Parameters
At rst the parameters to use in the controller must be chosen. Access delay is
chosen to be part of the reference or performance specication. One advantage of
using AD instead of for example AP is that AD is more intuitive for the operator
to set than AP. It is important that the performance specication is specied in
a way that is possible for the controllers to use. If the reference is only specied
like AD = 30 ms it is dicult to verify if the specication is held, since it is not
specied if it is the average AD that should be 30 ms or if all UEs should have
an AD under 30 ms. In this thesis the AD is therefore specied for a certain per-
centile, like P(AD < 30 ms) = 0.5. This means that the the 50th percentile of the
measured ADs should be 30 ms.
For controlling the random access procedure P
0_RACH
,
RACH
and the PRACH
conguration will be used. These three parameters oer a wide range for control-
ling AD according to the experiments in Chapter 4. Another parameter that could
be used is the backo parameter B. However in the experiments below B is seen
67
68 Control Structures
as a parameter that is set by another layer when the RACH load is too high, and
is therefore out of our control. The basic principle of our controller can then be
summarized and seen in Figure 7.1.
P
0_RACH
RACH
Config.
Controller RACH
-
r
AD AD
Figure 7.1. Basic principle of the RACH with a controller.
The box named Controller in Figure 7.1 can be designed in dierent ways. Three
dierent structures have been designed and tested in this thesis. The rst two
are based on a so-called mid-range controller, and the third is a structure where
P
0_RACH
,
RACH
and the PRACH conguration are controlled in separate loops.
These three control structures will be explained more in detail below.
7.3 Modelling
Due to the high complexity of the system the derivation of a physical model would
be too time consuming. Therefore we will instead use an autoregressive model
called an ARX-model, [14]:
A(q)y(t) = B(q)u(t) +e(t). (7.1)
In (7.1) u(t) and y(t) represent the input and the output respectively and q rep-
resents the shift-operator which means that q
1
u(t) = u(t 1). The term e(t)
represents white noise. The rational functions A(q) and B(q) can be written as
A(q) = 1 +a
1
q
1
+. . . +a
na
q
na
B(q) = b
1
+b
2
q
1
+. . . +b
nb
q
nb+1
where a
i
and b
i
are the parameters of the model, which need to be estimated. This
can be done by sampling input-output data from a simulation and then calculate
the prediction error
(t, ) = y(t) y(t|)
where is the parameter vector and y(t|) is the prediction created with our model.
By using the following tness metric
V
N
() =
1
N
N
t=1
2
(t, ) (7.2)
7.3 Modelling 69
we can see how good the parameter vector is. We can thus nd our model
parameters by choosing the value of that minimizes (7.2):
N
= arg min
V
N
(). (7.3)
By nding the correct grade for the system we can nd a parameter vector that
suits our system.
7.3.1 Modelling with regard to P
0_RACH
The modelling was done by running a simulation where the value of P
0_RACH
was
changed rapidly during a time interval of 200 seconds. After this (7.3) was used
to nd the parameters that best suited the model. The outline of this experiment
can be seen in Table 7.1.
Table 7.1. Setup of modelling with regard to P
0_RACH
.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-120, -150 dBW
RACH
4 dB
M 50
Sampling Period T 1 s
In Figure 7.2 the values of V
N
, calculated from (7.2) are presented. As can be
seen the lowest value is reached when na = 2 and nb = 1. However the dierence
between the simplest model, where na = 0 and nb = 1, and the best model is
low in comparison to the gain from using the simple model. The system from
P
0_RACH
to AD is therefore modelled as
y(t) = b
1
u(t) +c +e(t) (7.4)
where b
1
= 0.63 and c = 44.44 constants. The signal u(t) is in this case
P
0_RACH
. In Figure 7.3 the model compared to the sampled data can be seen.
0 1 2 3 4
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
na
V
N
(
)

nb = 1
nb = 2
nb = 3
nb = 4
nb = 5
Figure 7.2. Value of V
N
for dierent values on na and nb, when modelling with regard
to P
0_RACH
. On the x-axis we have na. For each na, the most left bar represents nb = 1
and the most right bar nb = 5.
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
30
40
50
60
Time (s)
A
D
,

8
0
%

P
e
r
c
e
n
t
i
l
e

(
m
s
)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
150
140
130
120
Time (s)
P
0
_
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
W
)
Predicted AD
Sampled AD
Figure 7.3. Sampled and predicted data with na = 0 and nb = 1, when modelling with
regard to P
0_RACH
.
7.3 Modelling 71
7.3.2 Modelling with regard to
RACH
The modelling was done similarly to the experiment in Section 7.3.1 but the param-
eter
RACH
was changed. The outline of the experiment can be seen in Table 7.2.
Table 7.2. Setup of modelling with regard to
RACH
.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
RACH Format 0
P
0_RACH
-150 dBW
RACH
0, 6 dB
M 50
0 1 2 3 4
0
50
100
150
200
250
na
V
N
(
)

nb = 1
nb = 2
nb = 3
nb = 4
nb = 5
N
to
RACH
. On the x-axis we have na. For each na, the most left bar represents nb = 1
and the most right bar nb = 5.
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
40
60
80
100
120
140
Time (s)
A
D
,

8
0
%

P
e
r
c
e
n
t
i
l
e

(
m
s
)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Time (s)
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
)
Predicted AD
Sampled AD
Figure 7.5. Sampled and predicted data with na = 0 and nb = 1, when modelling with
regard to
RACH
.
In Figure 7.4 the values of V
N
can be seen for dierent degrees on the model. As
can be seen the lowest value of V
N
is reached when na = 2 and nb = 4, but also here
there is such a small dierence between V
N
for this model and the simplest model,
that there is more to gain from using the simpler model. Therefore the model
is also here written as in (7.4) with b
1
= 6.60, c = 89.20 and u(t) =
RACH
.
The result when comparing the prediction to the sampled data can be seen in
Figure 7.5.
7.3.3 Modelling with regard to PRACH Conguration
The goal of this experiment is to study how a prediction of AD best can be modeled
with regard to the PRACH Conguration. The outline of the experiment can be
seen in Table 7.3.
The values of V
N
for dierent degrees can be seen in Figure 7.6. It can be noticed
that the lowest value of V
N
is reached when na = 3 and nb = 2. Still, as in sections
7.3.1 and 7.3.2 the simplest model is chosen because of its simplicity. Therefore
the model will be the same as in (7.4) with b
1
= 5.31, c = 56.28 and u(t) is the
PRACH conguration. The result when comparing the prediction to the sampled
data can be seen in Figure 7.7.
7.3 Modelling 73
Table 7.3. Setup of modelling with regard to the PRACH Conguration.
Parameter Value
Load
PUSCH
(mean value) 0.5
Load
RACH
RACH Format 0
PRACH Conguration {0, 1, 2}, {14}
P
0_RACH
-138 dBW
RACH
2 dB
M 50
0 1 2 3 4
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
na
V
N
(
)

nb = 1
nb = 2
nb = 3
nb = 4
nb = 5
N
to the PRACH conguration. On the x-axis we have na. For each na, the most left bar
represents nb = 1 and the most right bar nb = 5.
7.3.4 Modelling Summary
All the experiments show that the RACH system is static when only one of the
control parameters is changed. The sampling period used in all the experiments
was set to 1 s. In the experiments in Section 4.2 the longest AD for the 80th
percentile was registered around 250 ms. This means that a step response will
have reached its nal state within one second and this is an explanation of the
static behavior of the system. It is also important to remember that the models
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
30
40
50
60
70
80
Time (s)
A
D
,

8
0
%

P
e
r
c
e
n
t
i
l
e

(
m
s
)

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
Time (s)
P
R
A
C
H

C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
Predicted AD
Sampled AD
Figure 7.7. PRACH Conguration. Sampled and predicted data with na = 0 and
nb = 1, when modelling with regard to the PRACH conguration.
derived above only apply to the assumptions made in the simulator.
7.4 Description of Controllers
When controlling with more than one control parameter there are many ways to
combine these. In this thesis three dierent control structures have been tested:
two control structures of the Mid-Range type [15] and one control structure where
the controllers work separately without any knowledge of each other. The actual
controllers are simple PI-controllers and are also explained below. These control
structures can all be tuned manually and do not require a model of the system
when calculating the tuning parameters. Because only simulated data is available,
the models derived in Section 7.3 can only be seen as approximations of the true
system and therefore no control structures requiring a model of the system have
been tested.
7.4.1 I-Controller
In Section 7.3 the dynamics of the system was derived. It could be seen that
the RACH system is a static system when only one of the control parameters is
changed. To remove the steady-state error a controller with an integrator part
7.4 Description of Controllers 75
-
G F
r u y e
Figure 7.8. A controller and system with the name of the signals.
is used. It is also important that the control system is not too fast, since such
a system is very sensitive to noise. With the denitions of the signals as seen in
Figure 7.8, an I-controller can, according to [15], be expressed as
U(s) =
K
I
s
E(s) = F(s)E(s) F(s) =
K
I
s
(7.5)
in the Laplace domain. In (7.5) K
I
is the tuning parameter that denes the
controller. By using Eulers method we can change the variable s to
s =
1
T
(1 q
1
). (7.6)
If we put (7.6) into (7.5) we can write our time discrete controller F
d
(q) as
F
d
(q) =
K
I
T
1 q
1
which represents the dierence equation
u(kT) = u(kT T) +K
I
Te(kT). (7.7)
This type of controller also has an integrated anti-windup function, see [15]. The
expression in (7.7) can be translated into pseudo code which can be seen in Algo-
rithm 3.
The controller in (7.7) can be used together with the models derived in Section 7.3
Algorithm 3 PI-controller
e = r y
v = u
k1
+K
I
T e
if v > u
max
then
u = u
max
else if v < u
min
then
u = u
min
else
u = v
end if
u
k1
= u
-
G F
w
r r u w
c c
y
-
Figure 7.9. Example of a control system with a removal of a constant.
to calculate K
I
. The details are only shown for the P
0_RACH
model in Sec-
tion 7.3.1 since the calculations are done similarly for the other models.
First of all the constant c needs to be removed from (7.4) to avoid problems when
combining it with the controller. Therefore we create the new control variable
w(t):
w(t) = y(t) c = b
1
u.
By making a Laplace transformation we get
W(s) = b
1
U(s) = G(s)U(s).
Our system now has the form that can be seen in Figure 7.9. If F in Figure 7.9
is the same as F(s) in (7.5), the closed loop system from r
w
to w can be derived
from Figure 7.9, i.e.,
G
C
(s) =
F(s)G(s)
1 +F(s)G(s)
=
K
I
b
1
s +K
I
b
1
. (7.8)
By pole placing the wanted dynamics of the system can be found. To avoid a
system that is too fast the pole is placed at s = 0.3 which means that the tuning
parameter K
I
is computed as
K
I
b
1
= 0.3 K
I
=
0.3
b
1
= 0.48.
If the similar is done for the
RACH
model in Section 7.3.2 and the pole is placed
in s = 0.2 the parameter K
I
is calculated to 0.03. If the PRACH conguration
model in Section 7.3.3 is combined with the controller in (7.5) and the pole is
placed in s = 0.2 the parameter K
I
for the conguration controller is calculated
to 0.038. The placement of the poles for the
RACH
controller and the con-
guration controller can be motivated by the working intervals for
RACH
and
the PRACH conguration. They are both highly discretized and have short work-
ing intervals and a too fast controller could therefore make the system unstable.
Therefore the poles for the
RACH
controller and the conguration controller are
placed closer to the origin than for the P
0_RACH
controller.
7.4.2 Double-Percentile Controller
As the name suggests this controller has two percentiles as reference. The thought
behind this concept is that by specifying the reference for two percentiles it makes
it easier for the operator. Thus the percentile that requires the highest values
of the control parameters will have higher priority than the other percentile. The
controller can be seen in Figure 7.10. From the experiment in Section 4.2.2 it could
be seen that
RACH
aects the higher percentiles more than the lower percentiles.
This controller is therefore designed to control a lower percentile with P
0_RACH
and a higher percentile with
RACH
, i.e., r
Perc1
< r
Perc2
. What is lost in range
of possible AD values from not using both control parameters together is gained
with the possibility to use two percentiles as reference.
r
Perc1
r
Perc2
RACH
F
P
0_RACH
RACH
AD
P
0_RACH
-
-
RACH
F
RACH
Alarm
Figure 7.10. Double-Percentile Controller
The controllers in Figure 7.10 operate separately from each other. This means
that the eect from one controller will be seen as a disturbance by the other.
Because of this the controllers operate with dierent sample times. The controller
for P
0_RACH
operates faster than the controller for
RACH
. The controllers
F
P
0_RACH
and F
RACH
are the same as described in Section 7.4.1. Outside of
these two controllers is a PUSCH controller that controls the assigned RBs for
PUSCH by altering the PRACH conguration. The PUSCH controller is described
in Section 7.4.5.
The dotted line in Figure 7.10 named Alarm is a communication possibility for
the controllers to raise an alarm if their measured AD percentile is higher than
their reference and their control signal has reached its limit. If, for example,
P
0_RACH
= 120 dBW and the measured AD percentile is higher than r
Perc1
,
than the controller F
P
0_RACH
will send an alarm to the controller F
RACH
. This
will cause F
RACH
to increase
RACH
with 2 dB if possible. If r
Perc1
still cannot
be reached then
RACH
is increased with another 2 dB and so on. The controller
F
RACH
has a timer that starts when the alarm from F
P
0_RACH
is received. When
this timer expires F
RACH
will return to its normal controlling of the second
percentile. If both P
0_RACH
and
RACH
have reached their highest limit and
one of the target r
Perc1
or r
Perc2
still cannot be reached an alarm will be sent to
the PUSCH controller that causes the PUSCH controller to increase the PRACH
conguration.
7.4.3 Mid-Range Controller 1
In a control problem where two dierent control signals aect the same process
variable it can sometimes be interesting to use a mid-range controller. Especially if
the two control signals have dierent working ranges. The control signal with the
smallest working range can then be used to control the process variable and the
control signal with the larger working range can be used to keep the rst control
signal in the middle of its working area. The mid-range controller used in this case
can be seen in Figure 7.11. The reason why this structure has been chosen, is that
both PRACH conguration and P
0_RACH
is used to control the AD. This leads to
a wider range of possible values for AD. Another reason is that the working point
of the PRACH conguration can be controlled by an external PUSCH controller,
see Section 7.4.5.
F
Config
r
Config
r
AD
RACH
F
P
0_RACH
RACH
AD
Config
P
0_RACH
-
-
F
ff
u
1
u
2
u
1,ff
Figure 7.11. Mid-Range Controller 1
In Figure 7.11 the PRACH conguration is used to control one percentile of AD
and P
0_RACH
is used to keep the PRACH conguration in its working area. The
reference to the PRACH conguration controller is thus the wanted AD and the
reference to the P
0_RACH
controller is the wanted working point for the PRACH
conguration. An internal feed-forward connection is also included to keep the
PRACH conguration from varying to much. The expression for the feed-forward
control, named F
ff
in the gure, is expressed as
u
1,ff
(kT) = u
1
(kT) +K
ff
_
u
2
(kT T) u
2
(kT)
_
(7.9)
where u
1,ff
, u
1
and u
2
is the signal as they are dened in Figure 7.11. The tuning
parameter K
ff
in (7.9) represents the gain of the feed-forward connection. The
control parameter
RACH
is not used in this structure and thus set to a x value.
The controller used in the boxes F
P
0_RACH
and F
Config
is the same as described
in Section 7.4.1.
7.4.4 Mid-Range Controller 2
To use all three control parameters the mid-range controller from Section 7.4.3
has be modied to the one that can be seen in Figure 7.12. As for mid-range
controller 1 a wider range of values for AD is reached by using all three control
parameters. The reference for the PRACH conguration, r
Config
, can also here be
controlled by an external PUSCH controller, see Section 7.4.5. From the experi-
ment in Section 4.2.2 it could be noticed that the range for AD varies with dierent
RACH
. Still the lowest possible AD is the same for all
RACH
. Therefore the
reference for
RACH
can be set to a value that gives the highest possible range of
AD. This would be equivalent to
RACH
= 0 dB, but this is not a wanted value
because of the high AD at low values of P
0_RACH
.
RACH
= 2 dB is a good value
for
RACH
, which also gives a wide range but not too high values on AD.
F
Config
r
Config
r
AD
RACH
F
P
0_RACH
RACH
AD
Config
P
0_RACH
-
-
F
RACH
RACH
RACH
r
RACH
-
F
ff
F
ff
Figure 7.12. Mid-Range Controller 2
This controller has three levels where the rst one is PRACH conguration, which
is used to control AD. The second level is
RACH
which is then used to control
the working point of the PRACH conguration. Level three is P
0_RACH
, and is
used to control the working point of
RACH
. As can be seen in Figure 7.12 two
internal feed-forward connections have been included in this mid-range controller
as well. The feed-forward control in the F
ff
boxes use the same expression as in
(7.9). Here u
1
is the control signal from the same level as the F
ff
box and u
2
is the
control signal from the level above. The controller used in the boxes F
P
0_RACH
,
F
RACH
and F
Config
is the same as described in Section 7.4.1.
If both
RACH
and P
0_RACH
are at their limits an alarm will be raised. If this
happens the conguration target, r
Config
will be raised one level. After a certain
time the r
Config
will be reset and once again controlled by the PUSCH controller.
7.4.5 PUSCH Controller
Even if the main purpose of this thesis is to control the AD of the random access
procedure, it is still important not to forget that the PRACH and the PUSCH
share resources. This means that if PUSCH needs a lot of resources, it is wanted
to change the PRACH conguration to a conguration with a longer opportunity
period, T
confP
. For this purpose a PUSCH controller is used. The concept of the
controller can be seen in Figure 7.13. The PUSCH controller is used dierently
for the controllers described above. For the double-percentile controller in Sec-
tion 7.4.2 the signal u in Figure 7.13 represents the PRACH conguration and for
the mid-range controllers in Section 7.4.3 and Section 7.4.4 u represents the target
conguration, r
Config
.
-
G
RB
available
u
RB
needed
F
PUSCH
Figure 7.13. PUSCH Controller
If the number of resource blocks needed for PUSCH in average, RB
needed
, is
higher than the resource blocks available, RB
available
, i.e., RB
needed
> RB
available
,
the PRACH conguration is decreased one step and opposite if RB
needed
<
RB
available
.
As mentioned in Section 7.4.2 and Section 7.4.4 the double-percentile controller
and the mid-range controller 2 have a connection between them and the PUSCH
controller. If the PUSCH controller receives an alarm it will give away the control
to the controller who sent the alarm. After a certain time the PUSCH controller
automatically takes back the control.
Since this report is focused on the random access procedure of LTE and not
PUSCH, no complex controller is used. This is only meant to show how it is
possible to include a protection of the PUSCH resources when controlling the AD
of the random access procedure.
7.5 Controller Experiments
To compare the controllers, described in Section 7.4, with each other they need to
be tested in experiments. These experiments are presented in this section.
It should be mentioned that not all of the controllers use the same sampling period,
but a sampling period of 2 s is chosen as shortest. Compared to the results in
Chapter 6 the sampling period should be around 10 s to get a low RMSE. A
shorter sampling period is however chosen to speed up the simulations. To ease
up the oscillations of the measured AD, a low-pass ltered version of the measured
7.5 Controller Experiments 81
AD is fed to the controllers. The lter is calculated as
y
k
= x
k
+ (1 )y
k1
where y is the ltered signal and x is the measured signal. The parameter
decides how much trust is put on the measured signal x and is calculated as
=

y

x
+
y
(7.10)
where
x
is the estimated standard deviation of the AD reports during the last
sample and
y
is the standard deviation from the previous ltered measurements.
It is wanted that samples with many AD reports should be considered more reliable
than samples with few reports. In a sample where a change in AD is documented
with many reports,
x
will be small. If on the other hand a change in AD is
documented with few reports,
x
will be large. With a as in (7.10), all samples
where
x

y
will be considered as reliable samples. Only the measured AD is
shown in the experiments below.
7.5.1 Simulation Scenario
The scenario that has been simulated represents a wave of UEs wanting to send
data and connect to the eNB. This means that PUSCH load and RACH load is
increased in steps and after some time decreased again. The scenario can be seen
in Figure 7.14.
This scenario has been simulated for dierent references of AD and for dierent
inter-site distances (ISDs). It should be noted that the loads shown in Figure 7.14
are average values of the loads at each base station.
The performance specication for the experiments is specied with an AD per-
centile and its target/reference like r
AD
=
_
Percentile Target
. For the double-

percentile controller this will be written as
r
AD
=
_
r
Perc1
r
Perc2
_
=
_
Percentile1 Target1
Percentile2 Target2
_
.
This means that with a demand of P(AD < 30 ms) = 0.5 and P(AD < 70 ms) =
0.99 the performance specication is written as
r
AD
=
_
0.5 30
0.99 70
_
.
7.5.2 Experiment: Double-Percentile Controller
The goal of this experiment is to evaluate the performance of the double-percentile
controller. The scenario that was simulated can be seen in Figure 7.14 and the
setup of the experiment can be seen in Table 7.4 and Table 7.5. The double-
percentile controller described in Section 7.4.2 was combined with the PUSCH-
controller described in Section 7.4.5 to get a controller sensitive to the needs of
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
L
o
a
d
P
U
S
C
H
Time (s)
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
L
o
a
d
R
A
C
H

(
p
r
e
a
m
b
l
e
s
/
s
/
c
e
l
l
)
Time (s)
Figure 7.14. Simulation scenario where the PUSCH load and the RACH load are
altered.
PUSCH as well. In this experiment a PUSCH-controller was used, that changed
the PRACH conguration directly. Three dierent sampling periods were used,
one for each controller. This enables the controller with shorter sampling periods
to react on any changes made in the other controller. Only two of the nine simu-
lations are presented here. The results of the other simulations are similar to the
ones presented.
Table 7.4. Setup of double-percentile controller experiment.
Parameter Value
Inter-site Distance 500, 1700, 5000 m
r
AD
_
0.5 30
0.99 70
_
,
_
0.5 30
0.5 30
_
,
_
0.5 30
0.8 40
_
Sampling Period T
P
0_RACH
2 s
Sampling Period T
RACH
4 s
Sampling Period T
Config
8 s
RACH Format 0
M 50
Channel Bandwidth 15 resource blocks = 2.7 MHz
Table 7.5. Setup of double-percentile tuning parameters
Parameter F
P
0_RACH
F
RACH
K
I
-0.4 -0.02
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
50
100
150
A
D

(
m
s
)

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
P
R
A
C
H

C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
150
140
130
120
P
0
_
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
W
)
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
2
4
6
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
)
Time (s)
50th percentile
99th percentile
Target
Figure 7.15. Simulation with double-Percentile controller for an inter-site distance of
500 m and with r
AD
=
_
0.5 30
0.99 70
_
.
In Figure 7.15 the simulation with ISD 500 m and r
AD
=
_
0.5 30
0.99 70
_
can be seen.
Some of the parts in the gure might need a bit of explanation. For the rst
100 seconds really low ADs are received, even though P
0_RACH
and
RACH
are
at their lowest values (-150 dBW and 0 dB). This is explained by the PRACH
conguration during this time, i.e., since the PUSCH load is low the PRACH con-
guration with the shortest T
confP
can be used. This is PRACH conguration
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
20
30
40
50
60
A
D

(
m
s
)

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
P
R
A
C
H

C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
150
140
130
120
P
0
_
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
W
)
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
2
4
6
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
)
Time (s)
50th percentile
80th percentile
Target
Figure 7.16. Simulation with double-Percentile controller for an inter-site distance of
5000 m and with r
AD
=
_
0.5 30
0.80 40
_
.
{14} which implies that there is a RA opportunity at every subframe. This aects
the AD in two ways. Firstly the AD will be shorter because the UEs do not have
to wait for the next RA opportunity. Secondly when all eNBs in the network use
conguration {14} there will be no or very little uplink inter-cell interference that
can aect the AD negatively. This explains why the AD is so low during the rst
100 seconds. As soon as the PRACH conguration, at 100 s, changes from {14}
to {12, 13} a sudden high increase in AD is seen.
At 150 s the PUSCH load increases to 1, which can be seen in Figure 7.14. This
has the aect that the PRACH conguration is decreased to {0, 1, 2}. After this
the two controllers have diculties to reach their targets. This will cause them to
take help from the PRACH conguration, which explains why the PRACH con-
15 20 25 30 35 40
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Time (s)
A
D

(
m
s
)

50th percentile
99th percentile
Figure 7.17. Step response from double-Percentile controller for an inter-site distance
of 500 m controlling the 50th and the 99th percentile.
guration is increased one step at 200 s and one more step at around 225 s, see
Section 7.4.2 and Section 7.4.5. In this experiment the PUSCH controller waits
around 40 s before it takes back the control of the conguration. This can be seen
in Figure 7.15 at around 240 s where the PRACH conguration decreases.
During the time when the PRACH conguration is in the interval [{3, 4, 5}, {12, 13}],
it can be noticed that the targets are held with relative small variations on
P
0_RACH
and
RACH
. Since only an integrator part is used for both controllers
it can be expected that the control signal varies a bit.
As a comparison, the simulation with r
AD
=
_
0.5 30
0.80 40
_
and an ISD of 5000 m
can be seen in Figure 7.16. One can see here that the power control parameters
are low during the whole simulation except when the PUSCH load is close to 1
and the PRACH conguration is {0, 1, 2}. In this simulation it is even more clear
that the P
0_RACH
and
RACH
controllers cannot reach their target, starting at
around 175 s, and thus take help from the PRACH conguration at 225 s. When
the PRACH conguration is increased at 225 s one can see a great decrease in
P
0_RACH
, which can be explained by the fact that the ISD is 5000 m. This has
the eect that the uplink inter-cell interference between the eNBs will be lower
than ISD = 500 m even if the PUSCH load is high and the AP for low values of
P
0_RACH
is therefore almost as high as for high values of P
0_RACH
.
Step Response
A step response of the double-percentile controller can be seen in Figure 7.17.
From this some commonly used KPMs can be calculated. The rise time, T
r
is
around 2.5 s for the 50th percentile and around 4 s for the 99th percentile. The
overshoot, A
M
can be found as 90% for the 50th percentile and 33% for the
99th percentile. Because of a high uncertainty in the measurements of AD, the
measurements of T
r
and A
M
can vary a lot between dierent step responses. This
means that the values here cannot be seen as the true values of T
r
and A
M
, but
more as an estimation. The high uncertainty in the measurements of AD is also
the reason why the settling time cannot be measured. Even if the results from
this step resonse are not exact, still the step response shows the trend of what to
expect from the controller.
Conclusion
The conclusion of this experiment is that the double-percentile controller together
with the PUSCH-controller performes well. The targets for the AD are followed
as wanted. Because of the opportunity to specify the target of two percentiles the
operator gets a more detailed insight in how well the random access procedure is
carried out. Both a mean and a sort of maximum in AD can be controlled. The
calculated KPMs from the step resonse might seem high, especially A
M
, but one
must keep in mind that with the short sample interval of 2 s the measurements of
AD will have a RMSE around 5 ms, see Chapter 6.
To improve the performance of the double-percentile controller one method would
be to work on the cooperation between the control of AD and the control of
resources for PUSCH. For example, the order of control can be switched, so the
PUSCH would only be assigned more resources if a higher PRACH conguration
is not needed to reach the AD target. That is the PUSCH control is started by the
P
0_RACH
and the
RACH
controller when no increases in P
0_RACH
and
RACH
have been done for a certain time and P
0_RACH
and
RACH
are saturated.
7.5.3 Experiment: Mid-Range Controller 1
The goal of this experiment is to study and evaluate the performance of the mid-
range controller 1. The structure of the mid-range controller 1 can be seen in
Section 7.4.3. This controller was combined with the PUSCH-controller in Sec-
tion 7.4.5. The PUSCH-controller was set to control the target conguration,
r
Config
. In this experiment, only one sampling period was used. Since the con-
trollers are connected with output to input it is dicult to use dierent sampling
periods for the two controllers. In Table 7.6 and Table 7.7 the setup of this exper-
iment is seen.
In Figure 7.14 the scenario that was simulated is seen. The results from the sim-
ulation where the ISD was 500 m and r
AD
=
_
0.80 40
is seen in Figure 7.18. In

general the AD follows its target, even if it oscillates quite a lot. However with an
I-controller this is normal and the average AD is close to the target of 40 ms.
During the rst 100 s the PUSCH load is low enough for the PUSCH-controller to
keep r
Config
at PRACH conguration {14}. Because of this P
0_RACH
is set to its
Table 7.6. Setup of mid-range controller 1 experiment.
Parameter Value
Inter-site Distance 500, 1700, 5000 m
r
AD
_
0.80 40
,
_
0.5 30
,
_
0.99 70
RACH
2 dB
RACH Format 0
M 50
Table 7.7. Setup of mid-range 1 tuning parameters
Parameter F
Config
F
P
0_RACH
K
I
-0.04 -1
K
ff
0.25 n/a
lowest value (-150 dBW) to drive the PRACH conguration up towards the value
of r
Config
. Since the PRACH conguration controller only is focused on reaching
the AD target the PRACH conguration will only be set to r
Config
if the AD
target is reachable with this conguration. In the time interval from 120 s until
150 s one part is seen where the PRACH conguration is held at its reference.
One interesting thing to notice in Figure 7.18 is that the AD is relatively low the
rst 50 s even if P
0_RACH
= 150 dBW and the PRACH conguration is under
{6, 7, 8}. This is explained by the low PUSCH load during this time. The PUSCH
load has an average of 0.1 during this time and this has the eect that the PUSCH
generates very low uplink inter-cell interference. A low interference enables the
UEs to get access using a low P
0_RACH
.
The other simulations had similar results to the simulation with r
AD
=
_
0.80 40
.
As a comparison one other simulation is discussed here, seen in Figure 7.19. This
simulation was done with ISD = 5000 m and r
AD
=
_
0.99 70
. In general the
AD follows its target well except for some high peaks with ADs over 100 ms, but
the interesting thing to notice here is the dierence in the cooperation between
PRACH conguration and P
0_RACH
in this simulation and in the one above,
seen in Figure 7.18. In Figure 7.19 the conguration oscillates much more and
P
0_RACH
has either the value -150 dBW or -120 dBW. Since this simulation was
done with an ISD of 5000 m the uplink inter-cell interference is much lower than
with an ISD of 500 m. For this reason the altering of P
0_RACH
has less eect on
AD, thus forcing the control of the PRACH conguration to step in.
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
30
40
50
60
70
80
A
D

(
m
s
)

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
P
R
A
C
H

C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
150
140
130
120
P
0
_
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
W
)
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
r
C
o
n
f
i
g
Time (s)
80th percentile
Target
Figure 7.18. Simulation with mid-range controller 1 for an inter-site distance of 500 m
and with r
AD
=
_
0.80 40
.
Step Response
The step response of the mide-range controller 1 can be seen in Figure 7.20. From
this, a T
r
of about 8 s and a A
M
of 40% can be found. Due to a low precision caused
by the short sampling period these values can not be seen as exact values. Because
of this it is also not possible to nd the settling time of the step response. The
step-response can however be seen as a indication of how the controller performs
with regard to speed and overshoot.
Conclusion
The conclusion of this experiment is that mid-range controller 1 in general performs
well. The AD is kept around its target value except for some peaks that occur
when the conguration is at {0, 1, 2}. Because the PUSCH-controller changes the
conguration target, r
Config
, a higher priority will be set on reaching the AD tar-
get of the random access procedure than the priority of how many resource blocks
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
50
100
150
200
250
A
D

(
m
s
)

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
P
R
A
C
H

C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
150
140
130
120
P
0
_
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
W
)
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
r
C
o
n
f
i
g
Time (s)
99th percentile
Target
and with r
AD
=
_
0.99 70
.
are assigned to PUSCH. This can be compared to the double-percentile controller
in Section 7.5.2, where the needs of PUSCH has a higher priority than to reach
the AD target. In the step response a T
r
could be found that is almost 4 times
as long as the T
r
for the double-percentile controller. Because of the feed-forward
connection in the mid-range controller this controller is a bit slower, since most
of the controlling is done using P
0_RACH
. The amount of feed-forward can be
controlled by changing the tuning parameter K
ff
.
The main disadvantage of the mid-range controller 1 is that the control parameter
RACH
is not used. Using
RACH
would allow for a wider range of possible values
for AD, but would also increase the complexity of the controller. Another way to
use
RACH
is to control a second percentile, like is done for the double-percentile
controller. It should also be noted that K
I
for P
0_RACH
and K
ff
for the cong-
uration in this controller has been derived manually and not using modelling and
pole placement. The complexity of the controller makes a theoretical derivation of
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
22
24
26
28
30
32
34
36
38
40
Time (s)
A
D

(
m
s
)

50th percentile
Figure 7.20. Step response from mid-range controller 1 for an inter-site distance of
5000 m controlling the 50th percentile.
K
I
and K
ff
problematic and modelling and pole placement of the system would
be too time consuming and was therefore not done.
7.5.4 Experiment: Mid-Range Controller 2
The goal of this experiment is to study the performance of the mid-range con-
troller 2, described in Section 7.4.4. As in the other experiments the scenario
in Section 7.5.1 has been run. The PUSCH-controller from Section 7.4.5 has
been used to control the conguration target, r
Config
, and the target for
RACH
,
r
RACH
, was xed during the whole experiment. As in the experiment for mid-
range controller 1 only one sampling period has been used. The setup of the
experiment is seen in tables 7.8 and 7.9.
Table 7.8. Setup of mid-range controller 2 experiment.
Parameter Value
Inter-site Distance 500, 5000 m
r
AD
_
0.80 40
,
_
0.99 70
RACH
2 dB
RACH Format 0
M 50
Table 7.9. Setup of mid-range 2 tuning parameters
Parameter F
Config
F
RACH
F
P
0_RACH
K
I
-0.04 -1 -3
K
ff
0.25 0.5 n/a
The results from the simulation with r
AD
=
_
0.80 40
and an ISD of 500 m can

be seen in Figure 7.21. As can be noticed does the control signals
RACH
and
P
0_RACH
oscillate a lot. Despite this is the AD held around its target. The reason
for the oscillating control signals is badly set tuning parameters. First of all, K
I
for P
0_RACH
should be closer to zero. Secondly is K
ff
for
RACH
to high. If
RACH
diers from its target, r
RACH
, it will have the eect that P
0_RACH
will
try and compensate. Due to the large K
I
for P
0_RACH
, the compensation made
by P
0_RACH
will be relative large. The compensation from P
0_RACH
will be fed
forward to
RACH
where the badly set K
ff
will result in an over compensation
on
RACH
. Therefore
RACH
and P
0_RACH
will force themselves into an oscil-
lation. This can be seen clearly in Figure 7.21(a) in the time interval from 100 to
175 s. After this P
0_RACH
reaches its maximum thus allowing the oscillation to
stop.
If r
Config
in Figure 7.21(b) and Figure 7.18 are compared in the time intervals
0-100 s, 200-300 s and 375-500 s, one can see that the two gures are not equal. In
mid-range controller 2 there is an alarm function included which takes over the
control of r
Config
if both
RACH
and P
0_RACH
are at their maximum or mini-
mum values. The PRACH conguration target is therefore altered to compensate
for this.
Conclusion
The conclusion of this experiment is that the mid-range controller 2 performs
poorly. Even if the AD is held around its target the control signal
RACH
and
P
0_RACH
oscillates to much. The reason for this are bad tuning parameters. If
more time and eort were spent on optimizing the tuning parameters a better
result might be reached. The complexity of the controller makes this however a
time consuming task and the gain would be relatively low. This type of controller
can be dicult to tune since an extensive modelling would probably be necessary,
to nd good tuning parameters. Another reason not to continue with this controller
is that the mid-range controller 2 only controls one percentile, whereas the double-
percentile controller controls two percentiles and the mid-range conntroller 1 can
be extended to control two percentiles.
Due to the bad performance of the mid-range controller 2 fewer simulations were
made and no step response was done. No additional results were found in the
other simulations and as such they will not be presented here.
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
20
40
60
80
100
A
D

(
m
s
)

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
P
R
A
C
H

C
o
n
f
i
g
u
r
a
t
i
o
n
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
150
140
130
120
P
0
_
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
W
)
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0
2
4
6
R
A
C
H

(
d
B
)
Time (s)
80th percentile
Target
(a) AD and control signals.
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8
9,10,11
12,13
14
r
C
o
n
f
i
g
Time (s)
(b) PRACH conguration target, r
Config
.
and with r
AD
=
_
0.80 40
.
7.6 Conclusion 93
7.6 Conclusion
The results from the sections above have shown that it is possible to control the
AD around a wanted target. The performace for the double-percentile controller
and the mid-range controller 1 was good. Both controllers manage to keep the
AD around its target without exposing the control signals to too much stress.
Except from the fact that two percentiles are controlled by the double-percentile
controller and only one with the mid-range controller 1 the greatest dierences
between the two are seen in the beginning and in the end of the simulations in
Figure 7.15 and Figure 7.18. In Figure 7.15 the AD is really low during the rst
100 s and the last 100 s. The reason for this is the short conguration period used
during this time. The focus of the double-percentile controller is to always provide
PUSCH with the resources it needs and this is done by explicitly changing the
PRACH conguration. With the mid-range controller 1 the needs for PUSCH are
controlled by implicitly changing the PRACH conguration through r
Config
. As
such the priority of the mid-range controller 1 lies more on the AD which can be
seen during the rst 100 s and the last 100 s in Figure 7.18.
The possibility of controlling two percentiles is probably the strongest feature of
the double-percentile controller. This provides one more level of control since both
the average and the upper boundary of AD can be controlled. This is also the
greatest disadvantage of the mid-range controller 1. It is however possible to up-
grade the mid-range controller 1 with an external control loop where a second
percentile is controlled by
RACH
. From the step responses in Figure 7.17 and
Figure 7.20 it could be seen that the mid-range controller 1 is slower than the
double-percentile controller.
The results from the experiment with the mid-range controller 2 were not as sat-
isfactory as for the other two controllers. It could however be possible to improve
these results by nding better tuning parameters. Due to lack of time and extra
eort it would take to derive these tuning parameters properly, it was not done. A
well tuned mid-range controller 2 would probably not have a much better perfor-
mance than the other two controller in this thesis which was also another factor
why the mid-range controller 2 was not further developed.
Chapter 8
Summary and Future Work
The rst part of this thesis was a discussion about access delay and the goals
were to study the controllability and observability of AD. The controllability ex-
periments were done with regard to P
0_RACH
,
RACH
, PRACH conguration,
PUSCH load and RACH load and they showed that AD is controllable. The ex-
periments with regard to P
0_RACH
,
RACH
and the PRACH conguration gave
the most important results since these parameters are possible control parameters.
These experiments also showed that P
0_RACH
had the greatest inuence on AD
whereas the PRACH conguration had the least inuence on AD. The inuence
from
RACH
were high for the 80th percentile and above and low for the 50th
percentile and below.
In the observability experiments three dierent observers were studied by simu-
lating dierent scenarios. The observers can be ordered by complexity with ob-
server 1 being the least complex and observer 3 the most complex. From these
experiments it was shown that observer 3 had the best results. On second place
came observer 2 with results almost as good as the results from observer 3. The
results from observer 1 were by far the worst, since it could only estimate AD well
if few access attempts were needed by the UEs. If the accuracy of the estimates
are of absolute importance observer 3 should be used. Observer 3 does however
require measurements to be done in the base station which also requires that there
are enough free processing opportunities to make these measurements. This means
that if the little extra accuracy delivered by observer 3 is not needed observer 2 is
to recommend.
In the study of access delay it was assumed that the backo parameter, B was
always set to zero. The second goal of this thesis was to investigate how the ob-
servability of AD was aected with B > 0 and if support for backo was needed
in the observer algorithm. It was shown that the observers performed well if the
RACH load was high or if P
0_RACH
was high. At low RACH loads fewer UEs
received the backo parameter than was estimated. This lead to an overestimation
of the AD in the eNB. If it is not known that the RACH load is constantly high it
95
96 Summary and Future Work
is not recommended to use the observer of AD when B > 0. If AD is wanted in a
performance specication and B > 0, then reports of the measured AD from the
UEs are needed.
The third part of this thesis was to design one or more controllers to control the
AD of the random access process. To do this, a study on how dierent sampling
periods aect the accuracy of the measured AD was rst done. This study showed
that when using sampling periods from 20 s and above the RMSE of the AD, for
percentiles 99 and under, is under 5 ms. The experiments also showed that if the
99.9th percentile is measured it is very important to choose a sampling period high
enough. In this experiment sampling periods above 300 s were needed to get an
accuracy under 5 ms.
Three dierent controllers were tested in this thesis. One controller was designed
to control two percentiles of AD, using P
0_RACH
and
RACH
and using PRACH
conguration to control resources needed by PUSCH. The other two controllers
were based on the mid-ranging technique to control one percentile of AD. The
mid-range controller 1 used PRACH conguration and P
0_RACH
to control AD
and the mid-range controller 2 used PRACH conguration,
RACH
and P
0_RACH
to control AD. In the case of the two mid-range controllers the needs of PUSCH
were controlled by changing the reference of PRACH conguration. The con-
trollers were tested in a scenario representing a wave of incoming UEs wanting
to get access and send more data through the PUSCH. The experiments show
that the double-percentile controller and the mid-range controller 1 have the best
results. Their performance were similar in the simulated scenario but the double-
percentile controller showed somewhat better results in a step response. The mid-
range controller 2 did not show any good results. The reason for this were badly
set tuning parameters. Due to the complexity of mid-range controller 2 and lack
of time no eort was made to improve these constants. Both the double-percentile
controller and the mid-range controller 1 performed well, but they have other dif-
ferences that should be taken into consideration when choosing a controller. The
double-percentile controller can control two percentiles which gives the possibility
to control an average and a maximum AD at the same time. It also gives the
needs of PUSCH a higher priority than to reach the target AD. The mid-range
controller 1 cannot control two percentiles but it prioritises on the other hand to
reach the target AD more, than the needs of PUSCH.
The main goal of this thesis was to see how well the random access procedure could
be optimized with regard to access delay. It has been shown that it is possible
to optimize the random access procedure with regard to AD and by tuning the
RACH parameters P
0_RACH
,
RACH
and PRACH conguration an AD target
can be reached.
8.1 Future Work 97
F
Config
r
Config
RACH
F
P
0_RACH
RACH
AD
Config
P
0_RACH
-
-
F
ff
r
Perc2
RACH
-
RACH
F
RACH
r
Perc1
Figure 8.1. Example of how mid-range controller 1 can be extended with an extra
control loop where
RACH
is used to control a second percentile.
8.1 Future Work
During the work on this thesis there were parts that were not nished, either
because there was not enough time or because of practical problems. Here follows
a list of issues that can be studied further.
Improve the estimations of AD when B > 0. This could for example be
done by running tests in a real base station and from these test derive an
estimator for the RACH load. With a known RACH load it could be possible
to estimate AD in a better way. For example by not including backo in the
estimator if the RACH load is under a certain limit.
Extend mid-range controller 1 to control two percentiles. By adding an
external control loop where
RACH
is used it could be possible to use this
loop to control one extra percentile, see Figure 8.1.
Continue the work with optimizing the tuning parameters in mid-range con-
troller 2, for example by modelling of how the outer loops aect the inner
loops.
Introduce self-tuning controllers. To avoid the problem of manually setting
the tuning parameters of the controllers self-tuning controllers can be used.
This means that the controllers, during operation, optimize their own tuning
parameters.
Study other parts of the random access procedure to see how they aect the
AD. As mentioned in Chapter 1, there are many dierent parameters that
can be changed to aect the state of the random access procedure. Some
parameters that could be interesting to study are for example:
PRACH format
Determine if UEs are power limited and change the PRACH format
accordingly.
98 Summary and Future Work
Preamble split
Study how the ratio between preambles dedicated for contention free
RA and for non-contention free RA aects AD.
Bibliography
[1] 3GPP TS 36.211. E-UTRA; Physical Channels and Modulation, (Release 8).
[2] 3GPP TS 36.213. E-UTRA; Physical layer procedures, (Release 8).
[3] 3GPP TS 36.300. E-UTRA and E-UTRAN; Overall description; stage 2,
(Release 8).
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[7] 3GPP. URL: http://www.3gpp.org, 1 September 2009.
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[14] L. Ljung and T. Glad. Modellbygge och Simulering. Studentlitteratur, second
edition, 2004. ISBN 91-44-02443-6.
[15] Linkpings universitet Reglerteknik, ISY. Industriell reglerteknik, Kurskom-
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[16] J. Reig, O. Lpez-Jimnez, L. Rubio, and N. Cardona. Random Access Chan-
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. For the double-

is seen in Figure 7.18. In

and an ISD of 500 m can

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