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 Objective

Understand LTE Duplexing

Single Transmitter
FDMA Principle
Multi carrier principle

OFDMA and SC FDMA Principle

Multipath Propagation
Cyclic Prefix
OFDMA and SC FDMA
Transmitter
Receiver
OFDM and SC FDMA Key Parameters
Resource Block
Duplexing and Multiple Access
Legacy- Single Transmitter
FDMA Principle
LTE: Multi-Carrier Principle
 The Rectangular Pulse
Fourier
Transform Frequency Domain

spectral power density

Time Domain
amplitude

1
Ts fs
Ts fs

Inverse
time
Fourier
Transform frequency f/fs
Advantages:
Simple to implement: there is no
complex filter system required to
Disadvantage:
detect such pulses and to generate
them. It allocates a quite huge spectrum
The pulse has a clearly defined However the spectral power density
duration. This is a major advantage has null points exactly at multiples
in case of multi-path propagation of the frequency fs = 1/Ts.
environments as it simplifies handling This will be important in OFDM.
of inter-symbol interference.
 OFDMA Principle
Transmits hundreds or even thousands of separately modulated
radio signals using orthogonal subcarriers spread across a
wideband channel

Total transmission bandwidth

15 kHz in LTE: fixed

Orthogonality:

The peak (centre

frequency) of one
subcarrier

intercepts the
nulls of the
neighbouring
subcarriers
 OFDM Basics
Data is sent in parallel across the set of subcarriers, each subcarrier only
transports a part of the whole transmission
The throughput is the sum of the data rates of each individual (or used)
subcarriers while the power is distributed to all used subcarriers
FFT ( Fast Fourier Transform) is used to create the orthogonal subcarriers.
The number of subcarriers is determined by the FFT size ( by the bandwidth)

Power Bandwidth

Frequency
OFDM Signal
OFDM: Nutshell
Frequency-Time Representation
 FFT/IFFT
It can be shown that the OFDM signal may be obtained by transforming
L data symbols by the IFFT, where L is the number of subcarriers.
Therefore, OFDM transmitter and receiver are implemented using IFFT
and FFT respectively.

Time-domain
(to be transmitted)
d1 d1
d2 d2
IFFT FFT
dL dL

The size of the FFT should be chosen carefully as a balance between

protection against multipath (i.e. ISI), temporal variations (i.e. ICI), and
design cost/complexity.
LTE FFT period is 66.67 usec, corresponding to the 15 KHz subcarrier
separation.
 Motivation for OFDMA

Good performance in frequency selective fading

channels
Low complexity of base-band receiver
Good spectral properties and handling of multiple
bandwidths
Link adaptation
Frequency domain scheduling
Compatibility with advanced receiver and antenna
technologies.
Challenges
1) ISI
Solution: CP
 2) Multi-Carrier Modulation

The center frequencies must be spaced so that interference between different

carriers, known as Adjacent Carrier Interference ACI, is minimized; but not too
much spaced as the total bandwidth will be wasted.
Each carrier uses an upper and lower guard band to protect itself from its
adjacent carriers. Nevertheless, there will always be some interference
between the adjacent carriers.

fsubcarrier
fsub-used

f0 f1 f2 fN-2 fN-1 frequency

ACI = Adjacent Carrier Interference

 Solution: OFDM Multi-Carrier
OFDM allows a tight packing of small carrier
called the subcarriers - into a given frequency band.
Power Density

Power Density
Saved
Bandwidth

Frequency (f/fs) Frequency (f/fs)

No ACI (Adjacent Carrier Interference) in OFDM
due to the orthogonal subcarriers !
 3)Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI)
The price for the optimum subcarrier spacing is the sensitivity of OFDM
to frequency errors.
If the receivers frequency slips some fractions from the subcarriers
center frequencies, then we encounter not only interference between
adjacent carriers, but in principle between all carriers.
This is known as Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) and sometimes also
referred to as Leakage Effect in the theory of discrete Fourier
transform.
One possible cause that introduces frequency errors is a fast moving
Transmitter or Receiver (Doppler effect).
 Frequency Drift
Two effects begin to work:
Subcarrier has no longer its
power density maximum- so
loose of signal energy.
P

ICI = Inter-Carrier Interference

The rest of subcarriers have
no longer a null point here.
So we get some noise from
the other subcarrier.

I3
I1
I4
I0

f0 f1 f2 f3 f4
 OFDM Transmitter xN-1
s0
Frequency s1 s2 sN-1
x0 x1
Domain Signal: t0 t1 xt22 tN-1 time
(Collection of f0 f1 f2 fN-1 freq.
Sinusoids) Time Domain Signal

b10 ,b11, Modulation s0

Mapper

b20 ,b21, Modulation s1

cos(2fct)
Mapper
D

Frequency Domain
I Low I
Serial to Pass

Generation
CP/Guard
Parallel x0, x1, , xN-1 A
Binary IQ RF
Converter . IFFT
Coded Split
(Bit . Time
Data Q D Q
Distrib.) . Domain Low
Pass
A
-sin(2fct)

bN-1 0 Modulation sN-1 Each entry to the IFFT module

Mapper corresponds to a different sub-
carrier
Each sub-carrier is modulated
independently by Modulation
Schemes:
BPSK,QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM
 OFDM Receiver
s0
y0 y1
yN-1 s1 s2 sN-1
x2

t0 t1 t2 tN-1 time f0 f1 f2 fN-1 freq.

Frequency Domain

s0 s0 B10 ,B11,
Time Domain Bit Mapping

s1 s1 B20 ,B21,
De- Bit Mapping
A

Channel Correction
I rotator

Frequency Domain
Low Noise Amp.

RF

Windowing +

Bit Distribution
Demodulator
+ Bandpass

D . . . . Soft Bit

FFT
. . . . Coded
A . . . . Data
Q
signal strength

signal autocorreation

D
phase correction

j
sN-1 sN-1 BN-1 0
AGC Bit Mapping
LNA gain
Automatic

response
reference

channel
Gain Control QPSK
adjust
timee

(pilot)
Im
Channel 01 11
Frequency And Timing Sync Estimation d11
sk
Re
d10
00 10
 OFDM Key Parameters
1) Variable Bandwidth options: 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz

Frequency

f
Power
density
2) Subcarrier Spacing (f = 15 KHz)
The Symbol time is
Tsymbol = 1/ f = 66,7s
Amplitude Frequency
TCP TSYMBOL

CP T
SYMBOL

TS Time
 OFDM Key Parameters
3) The number of Subcarriers Nc

If BW = 20MHz Transmission BW = 20MHz 2MHz = 18 MHz

the number of subcarriers Nc = 18MHz/15KHz = 1200 subcarriers

Channel Bandwidth [MHz]

Transmission Bandwidth Configuration [RB]

Transmission
Bandwidth [RB]

Channel edge
Channel edge

Resource block

Active Resource Blocks DC carrier (downlink only)

 OFDM Key Parameters
4) FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) size Nfft

For a bandwidth BW = 20 MHz

Nc = 1200 subcarriers not a power of 2
The next power of 2 is 2048 the rest 2048 -1200
848 padded with zeros

5. Sampling rate fs

This parameter indicates what is the sampling frequency:

fs = Nfft x f
Example: for a bandwidth BW = 5 MHz (with 10% guard band)
The number of subcarriers Nc = 4.5 MHz/ 15 KHz = 300
300 is not a power of 2 next power of 2 is 512 Nfft = 512
Fs = 512 x 15 KHz = 7,68 MHz fs = 2 x 3,84 MHz which is the chip rate in
UMTS!!
The sampling rate is a multiple of the chip rate from UMTS/ HSPA. This
was acomplished because the subcarriers spacing is 15 KHz. This
means UMTS and LTE have the same clock timing!
 OFDM Recap
Bandwidth 1.4 MHz 3 MHz 5 MHz 10 MHz 15 MHz 20 MHz
(NCf)

Subcarrier Fixed to 15 kHz Spacing (f)

Symbol Tsymbol = 1/f = 1/15kHz = 66.67s

duration

Sampling rate, 1.92 3.84 7.68 15.36 23.04 30.72

fS (MHz)

Data 72 180 300 600 900 1200

Subcarriers (NC)

NIFFT 128 320 512 1024 1536 2048

(IFFT Length)

Number of 6 15 25 50 75 100
Resource Blocks

Symbols/slot Normal CP=7; extended CP=6

CP length Normal CP=4.69/5.12sec., Extended CP= 16.67sec

 OFDMA Challenges

ICI
1) Tolerance to frequency offset
(Inter carrier Interference-ICI)

Frequency

2) High Peak-to-Average Power Ratio

(PAPR)
SC FDMA
 SC-FDMA
Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
Access is another variant of OFDMA used to
reduce the PAPR for lower RF hardware
requirements.

SC-FDMA is a new hybrid modulation scheme

that cleverly combines the low PAR of single-
carrier systems with the multipath resistance
and flexible subcarrier frequency allocation
offered by OFDM.

OFDMA
SC-FDMA
This mechanism can reduce the PAPR of 6..9
dB compared to normal OFDMA.

SC-FDMA is one option in WiMAX (802.16d)

and it is the method selected for EUTRAN in the
uplink direction.
 SC-FDMA and OFDMA
OFDMA transmits data in parallel across multiple subcarriers
SC-FDMA transmits data in series employing multiple subcarriers
In the example:
OFDMA: 6 modulation symbols ( 01,10,11,01,10 and 10) are
transmitted per OFDMA symbol, one on each subcarrier
SC-FDMA: 6 modulation symbols are transmitted per SC-FDMA
symbol using all subcarriers. The duration of each modulation
symbol is 1/6th of the modulation symbol in OFDMA

OFDMA SC-FDMA
 SC-FDMA and OFDMA
Difference in transmission: for SC-FDMA there is an extra block on
the transmission chain: the FFT block

which should spread the input modulation symbols over all the
allocated subcarriers

OFDM SC-FDMA
 OFDMA vs SC-FDMA: QPSK

From: TS 36.211.
 SC-FDMA Principles
PAPR is the same as that used for the input modulation symbols

This could be achieved by transmitting N

modulation symbols in series at N times the
rate.
One can see that the SC-FDMA symbol which is
having 66.66s is containing N sub-symbols
N = 6 in the example shown
In Time domain only one modulation symbol
is transmitted at a time.

The number of subcarriers which could be allocated for transmission

should be multiple of 2,3 and/or 5

This limitation is imposed by the input of the FFT block which is

before the IFFT. This enables efficient implementation of the
FFT.
Note that also the number of Resource Blocks should be
multiple of 2,3 or/and 5
 SC-FDMA Principles
The FFT output size is always smaller than the IFFT input size

This is because a typical cells uplink

capacity will be greater than 180kHz

Other UEs will be assigned other groups of FFT

subcarriers to use across the uplink channel
bandwidth. Subcarriers
No two UEs will be assigned the same allocated for one .
180KHz block to use simultaneously. UE
. IFFT
As not all sub-carriers are used by the .
mobile station, many of them are set to zero Subcarriers
in the diagram allocated to
other users or
set to zero
Note that if the output size of the FFT is equal
to the size of the IFFT input then the overall
effect is null since the two operations (FFT and
IFFT are complementary)
 SC-FDMA Principles
Adjusting the data rate in SC-FDMA
If the data rate increases more bandwidth is needed to transmit more modulation
symbols (when data rate is doubled the resource allocation in the frequency domain
is also doubled). The individual transmission is now shorter in time but wider in
the frequency domain.
For double data rate the amount of inputs in transmitter doubles and the sub-
symbol duration (Time) is halved. Note that the SC-FDMA is still 67 s

Double the data

rate Halved SC-FDMA
SC-FDMA sub-symbol
sub- duration
symbol
duration

Doubled
bandwidth
Initial
bandwidth

SC-FDMA SC-FDMA
symbol 67s symbol 67s
In the example 6 modulation symbols are sent initially and 12 modulations for double data rate
 SC-FDMA: Multiplexing

One user always continuous in frequency

Smallest uplink bandwidth, 12 subcarriers: 180 kHz (same for OFDMA in downlink)
Largest uplink bandwidth: 20 MHz (same for OFDMA in downlink)

In time domain the granularity for resource allocation is 1 ms

for one user (same for OFDMA in downlink)

Receiver
User 1 f

User 1 User 2 f

User 2 f
Bandwidth Distribution

Carrier Number of
Bandwidth Sub-
(MHz) Carriers
1.4 72
3 198
5 330
10 660
15 990
20 1320
 Resource: Element, Block, Grid

LTE Reference Signals (R)are

Interspersed Among Resource
Elements
[source: 3GPP TR 25.814]
 The Usage of RE
One subframe (1ms)

Resource elements
reserved for
reference symbols
12 subcarriers
Frequency

Control Channel Time

Data
Region (1-3 OFDM symbols) Region
Duplexing FDD/TDD

FDD
Frequency band 1..
..
Frequency band 2..
..

TDD
Single frequency ..
.. band

Downlink Uplink
Frame Structure: Generic
Radio Frame Type 1 - FDD

subframe 1 msec Type 1

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

radio frame 10 msec

0 1 2 3 4 5 6
7 OFDM symbols (short CP)
 Radio Frame Type 2 - TDD
radio frame 10 ms
f

UL/DL

DwPTS

DwPTS

UpPTS
UpPTS
Slot

GP

GP
carrier

subframe 0 subframe 1 subframe 2 subframe 3 subframe 4 subframe 5 subframe 6 subframe 7 subframe 8 subframe 9

half frame half frame

time
radio frame 10 ms
f

UL/DL
DwPTS

UpPTS

Slot
GP

carrier

subframe 0 subframe 1 subframe 2 subframe 3 subframe 4 subframe 5 subframe 6 subframe 7 subframe 8 subframe 9

half frame half frame

time

Downlink Slot Uplink Slot Uplink or Downlink Special Slot

 Special Subframe
DwPTS (Downlink Pilot Timeslot Channel)
Can contain synchronization, PDSCH and PDCCH.
The DwPTS is used for downlink synchronization.
Primary synchronization signal transmitted in the first OFDM symbol of the
DwPTS.
Secondary synchronization signal transmitted in the last OFDM symbol of
subframe 0 (immediately preceding to the DwPTS).
Resources not used for synchronization signals can be used for data,
reference signals and control signaling.

UpPTS (Uplink Pilot Timeslot Channel)

Used by eNB to determine the received power level and the received
timing from the UE.
Resources not used for reference signals(sounding and/or demodulation
reference signals) can be used for random access.
No PUCCH is transmitted in UpPTS.

GP (Guard Period)
The guard period between DwPTS and UpPTS determines the maximum cell
size.
 TDD Frame Configurations

Configuration1 DL:UL=2:2 (or 3:2)

Configuration2 DL:UL=3:1 (or 4:1)
Uplink- Downlink-to-Uplink Subframe number
downlink Switch-point 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
configuration periodicity
0 5 ms D S U U U D S U U U
1 5 ms D S U U D D S U U D
2 5 ms D S U D D D S U D D
3 10 ms D S U U U D D D D D
4 10 ms D S U U D D D D D D
5 10 ms D S U D D D D D D D
6 5 ms D S U U U D S U U D

D Downlink S Special U Uplink

 Different Methods for OFDMA

Plain OFDM Time Division Multiple Access Plain Orthogonal Frequency Orthogonal Frequency
on OFDM Multiple Access Multiple Access
OFDMA OFDMA
time time time time

... ... ... ...

... 1 2 3 1 2 ... 1 1 1 1 1 ... 1 1 1 2 2 ...

... 1 2 3 1 2 ... 2 2 2 2 2 ... 1 1 1 2 2 ...

... 1 2 3 1 2 ... 2 2 2 2 2 ... 1 1 1 2 2 ...

subcarrier

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
subcarrier

subcarrier

subcarrier
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
... ... ... 1 1 1 ...

... ... 1 1 1 1 1 ... 1 1 1 ...

... 1 2 3 1 2 ... 3 3 3 3 3 ... 3 3 3 3 3 ...

... 1 2 3 1 2 ... 1 1 1 1 1 ... 3 3 3 3 3 ...

... 1 2 3 1 2 ... 3 3 3 3 3 ... 3 3 3 3 3 ...

1 2 3 common info Resource Block (RB)

UE 1 UE 2 UE 3
(may be addressed via HL)
OFDMA is registered trademark of Runcom Technologies Ltd.
 Summary

Understand LTE Duplexing

Single Transmitter
FDMA Principle
Multi carrier principle

OFDMA and SC FDMA Principle

Multipath Propagation
Cyclic Prefix
OFDMA and SC FDMA
Transmitter
Receiver
OFDM and SC FDMA Key Parameters
Resource Block
 HAPPY LEARNING

MobileComm Professionals, Inc.

www.mcpsinc.com