Multipath Wave Propagation Effects on the

Performance of OFDM UMTS-LTE

Communications System
Ammar Osmana, Abbas Mohammedb and Zhe Yangb
a
Ericsson AB (Branch Sudan), Market Unit North Africa,
Riad, Kartoum, Sudan
b
School of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology,
37225 Ronneby, Sweden

Abstract. Future generation mobile telecommunication systems are expected to provide high
data rate services and improved system performance. Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a project
within the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) that aims at improving the current 3G
UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) standard to cope with future
requirements and to maintain competitiveness in the long term. This paper analyzes the
requirements for this evolution and evaluates the performance of the Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing (OFDM) UMTS-LTE system under different propagation impairments
(AWGN, Pedestrian and Vehicular multipath fading channels of different speeds) in terms of bit
and symbol error rates (BER and SER) for different modulation formats.
Keywords: LTE, radio wave propagation, OFDM.
PACS: 41.20.Jb

INTRODUCTION
The increasing demands for higher data rates nowadays for mobile wireless
communication systems for supporting the wide range of multimedia and internet
services has gained a significant interest around the globe from academic researchers
and mobile industries. The third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) organization,
as an international collaboration project, has been working on evolving the current
third generation (3G) mobile telecommunication systems towards the future fourth
generation (4G) systems. This has led to the birth of an evolution to the current 3G
systems known as 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution). LTE aims to ensure 3G UMTS
competitiveness in the long term and to improve 3G UMTS standard and performance
to cope with future requirements [1]. Hence, the important goals of LTE include
achieving higher data rates, reducing latency, improving efficiency, enhancing
services, exploitation of new spectrum opportunities, improving system capacity and
coverage, lowering costs and better integration with other standards. 3GPP LTE will
gain momentum in the coming year and is expected to be an important player in the
4G constellation along with other emerging techniques such as mobile WiMAX (IEEE
802.11e).

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 In order to achieve these ambitious requirements Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) was proposed as the multiple access scheme in the physical
layer downlink specifications of LTE system [1]. The use OFDM on the downlink was
specified to provide UMTS-LTE more robustness and flexibility in its use of the
proposed spectrum allocations than the current 3G systems. OFDM has gained a
tremendous interest in recent years because of its robustness in the presence of severe
multipath channel conditions with simple equalization, robustness against Inter-
symbol Interference (ISI), multipath fading, and its high spectral efficiency.
References [3, 7, 5, 11] all deal with the Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) based systems but they did not consider the features and
requirements of LTE. Many technical requirements with the consideration of MIMO
solution are addressed in [8]. In [11], research on Physical Random Access Channel
(RACH), an analysis of the proposed new air interface for the LTE UL with several
channel models has been studied. However, downlink is not considered. The choice of
an appropriate MIMO scheme is still an important research topic in the
standardizations bodies [14].
In light of the above, this paper is focused on studying the performance of the
downlink OFDM UMTS-LTE system with appropriate parameters selected according
to the standards [1]. This physical layer aspect feasibility study has been carried out by
means of software simulations using Matlab. The simulated OFDM UMTS-LTE
system operates over a 20 MHz frequency-band. However, it can be easily modified
and reconfigured to be used with other spectrum bands specified in the standards [1].
The organization of this paper is as follows: First, the transmitter design is outlined.
Then, the OFDM UMTS-LTE receiver design structure is discussed. Next, we briefly
present the ITU frequency-selective, time-variant channel models used in the
simulations. Simulation results showing the BER and SER performance curves are then
presented and compared. Finally, we conclude the paper.

Signal
Serial to Mapper LTE Pilot Parallel to Cyclic
Serial Data
Source Parallel QPSK, Insertion Zero Serial Prefix
Generator Converter 16QAM, Padding IFFT Converter Insertion
and
64QAM
Multipath
Channel
Mod.

AWGN
QPSK,
Parallel 16QAM, FDE- LMMSE Serial to Cyclic
SER/ BER
Computation To Serial and Zero Channel Parallel Prefix
Converter 64QAM Forcing Estimation FFT Con. Extraction
Demapper Equa.

FIGURE 1. Block diagram of the implemented OFDM UMTS-LTE system.

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 THE OFDM UMTS-LTE TRANSMITTER STRUCTURE
The block diagram of the UMTS-LTE transmitter structure is illustrated in figure 1. In
particular the transmitter is based on the popular Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme. The OFDM based transmitter part [2, 3] contains the
following blocks: source generator, modulation schemes [4], the proposed LTE pilot
insertion [1], Zero padding, IFFT, and the cyclic prefix insertion.
The digital random data set is generated uniformly. These blocks of digital data set
have been paralleled and mapped into complex data blocks using different modulation
techniques, i.e. 4QAM, 16QAM, and 64QAM respectively. Each complex data block,
also referred to as symbol, of data is attached to an individual sub-carrier.
Since the bandwidth of the transmitted signal is less than the sampling rate of the
OFDM modulator, the unused frequency bands are padded with zeros. The inverse
DFT is efficiently implemented by means of Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) in
order to generate the time version of the transmitted signal. The time domain signals
corresponding to all sub-carriers are orthogonal to each other; however, their
frequency spectrums overlap. Furthermore, to get rid of the inter-symbol interference
and the noise distortion, transmitting OFDM symbols into parallel intervals allow
signal duration to become large enough to alleviate these effects. Finally, the cyclic
prefix is inserted in front of every transmitted OFDM symbol.

UMTS-LTE Pilot Structure

One of the crucial problems in OFDM systems is how to track and estimate the
time-varying multipath propagation channel environments. In order to assess the
performance of the OFDM UMTS-LTE system presented in this paper, we use the
ITU frequency-selective propagation channel models [9, 13].
There are three main general uses for the pilot tones in the proposed LTE downlink
reference signal [1]:
x Measuring the channel quality
x Channel estimation for different demodulation and detection at the end user side
x Initial acquisition and cell search
An efficient way of tracking the multipath channel is by transmitting these pilot
symbols at instant time intervals of certain locations of the LTE downlink time-
frequency lattice. Based on the working assumptions of [1, section 7.1.1.2.2], neither
all frequency bins nor all transmitted OFDM symbols contain pilots for UMTS-LTE.
However, for the implementation part we considered only the OFDM symbols that
contain pilot tones as shown in the time-frequency lattice figure 7.1.1.2.2-1 in [1].

Zero Padding, OFDM Modulation, and Cyclic Prefix Insertion

In order to simplify the realization of the analog filters used for transmission, the
sampling rate is higher than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal, and therefore zero
padding at the transmitter side is required for our design. It consists of increasing the

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length of the spectrum of the signal with specific number of zeros. However, the
extended length should not be an integer multiple of the total length of the signal.
Extending the length of the signal is usually done either by extending the time band
limits or the frequency band limits of the signal. We used extension in the time
domain with zeros to the transmitted signal.
One of the key elements of any OFDM system is the existence of the Fast Fourier
transform (FFT). The generated streams from the OFDM modulation are carried out
on different sub-carriers [12, 15]. Hence, the transmitter complexity is reduced by the
use of the inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT). Similarly, the receiver is
implemented as the low-complexity Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) operation to
demodulate the OFDM signals. The transmitted data are split into low bit rate streams.
However, these low rate streams are subject to individual flat fading due to their
transmission over the frequency selective channel model.
Suppose we have Nsc sub-carriers, and that the transmitted OFDM symbols are X(1),
X(2), X(3), X(4),…. , X(N). After normalizing all the OFDM IFFT symbols, the
mathematical discrete-time representation for these symbols is:

N 1 j 2S
kn

¦
1
x(k ) X ( n )e N k 0,......, N -1. (1)
N n 0

At the receiver side, the received OFDM data symbols converted to the time domain
by using the FFT:

N 1  j 2S
kn
Y ( n) ¦
k 0
y ( k )e N n 0,......, N -1. (2)

Cyclic prefix is a copy of the last part of the transmitted OFDM symbol which is
appended in front of the same symbol for each transmitted OFDM symbol. Inter-
symbol interference and inter-carrier interference are the two major consequences of
the transmission over time-varying frequency selective channels. Since the cyclic
prefix is used in our UMTS-LTE transceiver, the influence of the inter-symbol
interference is reduced. However, the length of the cyclic prefix must be at least the
same or longer than the length of the channel impulse response, in order to prevent the
occurrence of interference.

THE OFDM UMTS-LTE RECEIVER STRUCTURE

The current mobile receivers are small in size and have stringent power consumption
constraints, hence the design of the receiver should meet specific requirements to
assure low complexity and low cost at the same time. In the first step, the receiver has
to remove the guard period (introduced in the transmitter) from the received signals.
This operation is called de-cyclic prefix. This is followed by the Fast Fourier

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Transform (FFT) operation in order to recover the modulated symbols for all sub-
carriers and to convert them into the frequency-domain.
Due to the propagation of the transmitted signal over the multipath channels, it is
subjected to a number of impairments (i.e. attenuation, Doppler shift, and amplitude-
phase distortion). Thus, all the received sub-carriers signals experience a complex
gain, amplitude and phase distortion. A minimum mean-squares error (MMSE)
channel estimator [7, 8, 10] is implemented. Afterwards, soft or hard QAM de-
mapping schemes are employed. A fully synchronized OFDM transceiver system is
assumed in this paper.

OFDM Demodulation and Channel Estimation

The received time-domain signal is converted back to the frequency-domain
(demodulated) by the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Equation (2) illustrates the
mathematical representation of the FFT algorithm. The FFT demodulates the N sub-
carriers OFDM signals. The complex output signal then contain N different complex
QAM symbols.
The reference frequencies that were used for the estimation of the multipath channel
realizations, i.e. pilot tones, placed at certain positions in the time-frequency grid as
shown in figure 7.1.1.2.2-1 in [1], are used to track the multipath channel effects. The
pilot-tones are found only every six symbols in the frequency-domain. In addition to
that, the pilot-tones are found only in OFDM symbols number one and Nsc - 2 in the
time-domain (where Nsc = 6, 7, 8, or 9) according to table 5.1 and 7.1.1-2 in [1],
respectively. The LTE pilot-tones are generated randomly by the simulator.

MMSE Equalization
A frequency-domain equalizer (FDE) was implemented in this simulation, in the
form of a linear MMSE equalizer. The simplicity of the implemented frequency-
domain equalizer leads to cheap hardware implementation. Then the equalized signal
is applied to the M-QAM demodulator block to retrieve the binary information.

THE ITU CHANNEL MODELS

The simplest form of the wireless propagation channel used as a reference in the
design of the UMTS-LTE transceiver is the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN)
channel model. A more complicated but realistic model is the frequency-selective,
time-variant channel models, which specifies the typical multipath effects associated
with real-world propagation environments experienced by this wireless system.
The frequency-selective, time-variant channel models that used for designing the
UMTS-LTE transceiver in this simulator are based on the ITU channel models [9, 13].
The ITU channel models are divided into two categories: Pedestrian and Vehicular.
Pedestrian-A at 3 km/h (“PA3”), Vehicular-A at 120 km/h (“VA120”) and Vehicular-

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A at 350 km/h channel models are used in this paper. The last model with speed of
350 km/h is considered in this study to deal with situations such as high speed trains.
Each of these channel models has different number of delay taps which represents the
respective delay and power of each signal path. These channel power delay profiles
are presented in [13].

SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section we present simulation results to evaluate the performance of the
considered UMTS-LTE transceiver under different ITU multipath fading propagation
channel models. Perfect synchronization between the transmitter and receiver is
assumed in the simulations. The measure used to assess and evaluate the performance
is the achieved bit and symbol error rates (BER and SER) for the different proposed
QAM modulation formats. The theoretical performance over AWGN is also presented
as a reference. The designed transceiver is considered operating with a bandwidth of
20 MHz.
Figures (2-7) show the OFDM UMTS-LTE system performance in terms of bit error
rate (BER) and symbol error rate (SER) versus signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for 4-
QAM, 16-QAM and 64-QAM modulation formats, respectively. The figures clearly
show the adverse effect of channel selectivity due to the severe multipath fading
propagation conditions on the performance as is evident by comparing the vehicular
120 and 350 km/h plots together, and with the performance of the pedestrian plot at
3 km/h. It is also apparent that as the number of transmitted QAM symbols increases,
higher data rates are achieved at the expense of higher energy resources needed for
satisfactory operation.
The results presented here would be very useful for evaluating and comparing the
system performance when using other advanced receiver structures, spectrum
allocations, the upcoming LTE-advanced system and other emerging techniques such
as mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.11e).

CONCLUSIONS
Research towards meeting the increasing demands for higher data rates was a major
reason for the birth of an evolution technology towards the future fourth generation
mobile telecommunication systems. The evolution of the current 3G UMTS system
was given the name LTE by 3GPP, where higher data rates are key objective and
OFDM is utilized as the multiple access technique in the downlink. In this paper we
presented a Matlab simulator of OFDM UMTS-LTE system and highlighted the
design and operation of the different system blocks. In addition, we investigated the
performance of the system under different multipath propagation environments and
modulation formats. These performance results can be used as a benchmark platform
for future reference and comparison purposes. For example, the simulator parameters
can be adjusted to evaluate the coded performance of the system, the performance
over different spectrum allocations and advanced receiver structures.

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 FIGURE 2. BER versus SNR using 4-QAM modulation format over various channel models.

FIGURE 3. BER versus SNR using 16-QAM modulation format over various channel models.

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FIGURE 4. BER versus SNR using 64-QAM modulation format over various channel models.

FIGURE 5. SER versus SNR using 4-QAM modulation format over various channel models.

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FIGURE 6. SER versus SNR using 16-QAM modulation format over various channel models.

FIGURE 7. SER versus SNR, using 64-QAM modulation format over various channel models.

330
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