What are Interference and its source, effect and types in

GSM
Interference is the sum of all signal contributions that are neither noise not the wanted signal. Lets
understand how its effect, its type and what possible source for it.
Effects of Interference

Interference is a major limiting factor in the performance of cellular systems.

It causes degradation of signal quality.

It introduces bit errors in the received signal.

Bit errors are partly recoverable by means of channel coding and error correction
mechanisms.

The interference situation is not reciprocal in the uplink and downlink direction.

Mobile stations and base stations are exposed to different interference situation.

Sources of Interference

Another mobile in the same cell.

A call in progress in the neighboring cell.

Other base stations operating on the same frequency.

Any non-cellular system which leaks energy into the cellular frequency band.

Types of Interference

There are two types of system generated interference

1.

Co-channel interference

2.

Adjacent channel interference

1.Co-Channel Interference

This type of interference is the due to frequency reuse, i.e. several cells use the same set of
frequency.

These cells are called co-channel cells.

Co-channel interference cannot be combated by increasing the power of the transmitter. This
is because an increase in carrier transmit power increases the interference to neighboring cochannel cells.

To reduce co-channel interference, co-channel cells must be physically separated by a

minimum distance to provide sufficient isolation due to propagation or reduce the footprint of
the cell.

Some factors other than reuse distance that influence co-channel interference are antenna
type, directionality, height, site position etc.

GSM specifies C/I > 9dB.

In a cellular system, when the size of each cell is approximately the same, co-channel
interference is independent of the transmitted power and becomes a function of cell radius(R)
and the distance to the center of the nearest co-channel cell (D).
Q = D / R = 3N
By increasing the ratio of D/R, the spatial separation between the co-channel cells relative to
the coverage distance of a cell is increased. In this way interference is reduced from improved
isolation of RF energy from the co-channel cell.
The parameter Q, called the co-channel reuse ratio, is related to the cluster size.
A small value of Q provides larger capacity since the cluster size N is small whereas a large
value of Q improves the transmission quality.

2.Adjacent-Channel Interference

Interference resulting from signals which are adjacent in frequency to the desired signal is
called adjacent channel interference.

Adjacent channel interference results from imperfect receiver filters which allow nearby
frequencies to leak into the passband.

Adjacent channel interference can be minimized through careful filtering and channel
assignments.

By keeping the frequency separation between each channel in a given cell as large as possible, the
adjacent interference may be reduced considerably.