Showing posts with label CoMP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CoMP. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Prof. Andy Sutton: 5G Radio Access Network Architecture Evolution - Jan 2019


Prof. Andy Sutton delivered his annual IET talk last month which was held the 6th Annual 5G conference. You can watch the videos for that event here (not all have been uploaded at the time of writing this post). His talks have always been very popular on this blog with the last year talk being 2nd most popular while the one in 2017 was the most popular one. Thanks also to IET for hosting this annual event and IET Tv for making this videos available for free.

The slides and video is embedded below but for new starters, before jumping to this, you may want to check out about 5G Network Architecture options in our tutorial here.




As always, this is full of useful information with insight into how BT/EE is thinking about deploying 5G in UK.

Related Posts:

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Inside 3GPP Release-13 - Whitepaper by 5G Americas


The following is from the 5G Americas press release:

The summary offers insight to the future of wireless broadband and how new requirements and technological goals will be achieved. The report updates Release 13 (Rel-13) features that are now completed at 3GPP and were not available at the time of the publication of a detailed 5G Americas report, Mobile Broadband Evolution Towards 5G: 3GPP Release 12 & Release 13 and Beyond in June 2015.
The 3GPP standards have many innovations remaining for LTE to create a foundation for 5G.  Rel-12, which was finalized in December 2014, contains a vast array of features for both LTE and HSPA+ that bring greater efficiency for networks and devices, as well as enable new applications and services. Many of the Rel-12 features were extended into Rel-13.  Rel-13, functionally frozen in December 2015 and completed in March 2016, continues to build on these technical capabilities while adding many robust new features.
Jim Seymour, Principal Engineer, Mobility CTO Group, Cisco and co-leader of the 5G Americas report explained, “3GPP Release 13 is just a peek behind the curtain for the unveiling of future innovations for LTE that will parallel the technical work at 3GPP on 5G. Both LTE and 5G will work together to form our connected future.”
The numerous features in the Rel-13 standards include the following for LTE-Advanced:
  • Active Antenna Systems (AAS), including beamforming, Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) and Self-Organizing Network (SON) aspects
  • Enhanced signaling to support inter-site Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission and Reception (CoMP)
  • Carrier Aggregation (CA) enhancements to support up to 32 component carriers
  • Dual Connectivity (DC) enhancements to better support multi-vendor deployments with improved traffic steering
  • Improvements in Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing
  • Enhancements to Machine Type Communication (MTC)
  • Enhanced Proximity Services (ProSe)
Some of the standards work in Rel-13 related to spectrum efficiency include:                                                                                                                       
  • Licensed Assisted Access for LTE (LAA) in which LTE can be deployed in unlicensed spectrum
  • LTE Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Aggregation (LWA) where Wi-Fi can now be supported by a radio bearer and aggregated with an LTE radio bearer
  • Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) where lower power wider coverage LTE carriers have been designed to support IoT applications
  • Downlink (DL) Multi-User Superposition Transmission (MUST) which is a new concept for transmitting more than one data layer to multiple users without time, frequency or spatial separation
“The vision for 5G is being clarified in each step of the 3GPP standards. To understand those steps, 5G Americas provides reports on the developments in this succinct, understandable format,” said Vicki Livingston, Head of Communications for the association.

The whitepaper as follows:



Related posts:

Monday, February 11, 2013

Revisiting Coordinated Multi-point (CoMP) Technology

Looks like I re-visit CoMP every Q1 of the year. Couple of years back, I had posted a primer on CoMP here and last year I had a slide on schemes and deployments here. With Release-11 out of the door and  Release-12 getting in full swing in the standards, its time to re-visit this topic in a bit more detail. There are couple of presentations, one completely devoted to this topic and one that has a section on it. Both of them can be downloaded from slideshare.


Monday, June 18, 2012

3GPP Release-12 and beyond


3GPP Recently held a workshop on "Release 12 and Onward" to identify common requirements for future 3GPP radio access technologies. The goal of the workshop is to investigate what are the main changes that could be brought forward to evolve RAN toward Release 12 and onward. It is recommended that presentations in the workshop include views on:
- Requirements
- Potential technologies
- Technology roadmap for Releases 12, 13 and after

The discussions from the workshop should be used to define the work plan for Release 12 and onward in TSG-RAN.

The list of presentations and links, etc. are below and I have also embedded the Summary and Draft report, both of which can be downloaded from 3GPP website or slideshare. Here is a list of different topics and the presentations that covered them:


AdHoc Networks
AdHoc Networks - RWS-120035


Antennas, Beamforming, Transmitters, Receivers
3D-beamforming - RWS-120002
Vertical sectorization/3D beamforming via AAS - RWS-120005
Advanced receivers and joint Tx/Rx optimisation - RWS-120005
Network assistance for IC receivers - RWS-120005
Support of Active Antenna Systems - RWS-120006
Advanced transmitter beamforming - RWS-120010
Advanced receiver cancellation - RWS-120010
Vertical and 3D beamforming - RWS-120011
MIMO Enhancements - RWS-120014
New antenna configurations and 3D MIMO - RWS-120014
UE AAS (Active Antenna System) [Detailed] - RWS-120015 / RWS-120049
Cloud of Antennas (CoA) Concept - RWS-120016
Support of Massive MIMO Technology - RWS-120016
Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) System [Detailed] - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Cloud-RAN: Benefits and Drawbacks - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Further Enhanced Receivers - RWS-120022
Multiple antenna evolution - RWS-120025
3D beamforming - RWS-120026
Vision of 3D MIMO - RWS-120029
Massive MIMO & 3D MIMO - RWS-120034
Potential MIMO Enhancements - RWS-120035
Advanced Antenna Technology - RWS-120035
DL MIMO Enhancement - RWS-120037
Performance Requirement for 8Rx at eNB - RWS-120037
UE Receiver Enhancements - RWS-120039
DL MU-MIMO Enhancement - RWS-120039
Enhancement of MIMO, CoMP - RWS-120040
Advanced MIMO - RWS-120040
MIMO and COMP - RWS-120041
Role of Advanced Receivers - RWS-120041
Advanced Interference Handling - RWS-120041
Interference Suppression Subframes (ISS) and IRC Receiver [Detailed] - RWS-120051


Applications (Apps)
Efficiency for diverse small data applications - RWS-120011
Device Service/Application Awareness - RWS-120018
I-Net:”I”-centric mobile network design philosophy - RWS-120024
Application Aware Comm - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050


Backhaul and Relay
Relay backhaul enhancement - RWS-120011
LTE Backhaul - RWS-120013
Relay - RWS-120025
CoMP, backhaul and X2 interface - RWS-120027 / RWS-120048
Mobile Relay And Relay Backhaul Enhancement - RWS-120029


Baseband
Baseband resource pooling and virtualization - RWS-120011


Capacity and Coverage
Higher system capacity - RWS-120010
Capacity for Mobile Broadband: Requirements and Candidate technologies - RWS-120012
Increase N/W capacity by 1000 times - RWS-120020
Coverage Enhancement - RWS-120037
Capacity Enhancement - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047
Cell-edge Throughput Improvement - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047


Carrier Aggregation, Flexible Bandwidths and Multiflow
LTE multiflow / Inter-site CA - RWS-120002
LTE/HSDPA Carrier Aggregation - RWS-120002
Multiflow Enhancements - RWS-120002
Multi-Stream Aggregation - RWS-120006
Provide mechanisms for Flexible Bandwidth Exploitation - RWS-120008
Carrier aggregation enhancement - RWS-120019
Inter-eNB Carrier Aggregation - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Evolution of Carrier Aggregation - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
CA of Alternative Spectra - RWS-120042


Cells, Carriers, C/U Planes
C/U plane split & Phantom cell - RWS-120010
Phantom cell by single/separate nodes - RWS-120010
Phantom cell: Other topics - RWS-120010
New Carrier Type for Primary Component Carrier - RWS-120011
Flexible/Reconfigurable Cells - RWS-120023
New carrier-type (NCT) enhancements - RWS-120026
Amorphous cells - RWS-120034
New Carrier Types - RWS-120035
Non-Orthogonal Access - RWS-120039
Dynamic Area Construction for UE - RWS-120040


Cognitive Radio
Cognitive radio - RWS-120034
Cognitive Networking - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050


Coordinated MultiPoint (CoMP)
CoMP Enhancements - RWS-120014
CoMP/ICIC enhancement - RWS-120019
CoMP Enhancements - RWS-120023
CoMP enhancements - RWS-120026
CoMP Technologies - RWS-120027 / RWS-120048
Enhanced CoMP - RWS-120029
Potential CoMP Enhancements - RWS-120035
CoMP - RWS-120037
CoMP Enhancement for Indoor Environment - RWS-120040
Overhauling DL CoMP - RWS-120042


Device, Handsets, UE's
Additional UE Enhancements - RWS-120018
Coordination : Multi-mode UE - RWS-120024


D2D / Device-to-Device
Device-to-Device - RWS-120003
LTE Device to Device - Proximity Based Services - RWS-120004
LTE device to device - RWS-120007
LTE direct communication - RWS-120007
Device-to-Device Communications - RWS-120014
D2D Discovery/Communication - RWS-120016
3GPP Proximity Services (ProSe) / D2D - RWS-120022
Device-to-Device communications - RWS-120026
Device-to-Device communication - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050


Data Rates and Throughputs
Higher data rate and user-experienced throughput - RWS-120010
Fairness of user throughput - RWS-120010


Deployments
LTE in Local Area Deployments & Enhancements - RWS-120004
Energy Efficient Local Area Deployments - RWS-120004
Scaling for Mass Deployment - RWS-120008
Flexible and cost-efficient NW deployments - RWS-120010
Considerations on dense NW deployment - RWS-120019


Energy Consumption, Efficiency and Savings
Energy efficiency - RWS-120005
Reduce energy consumption - RWS-120008
Energy Saving - RWS-120014
UE Power Saving - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
NB Power Saving - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
Energy Saving Enhancements with CoMP - RWS-120040
Energy Saving with Centralized eNB - RWS-120040


Herogeneous Networks (HetNets)
Optimisation of Het Nets performance - RWS-120005
Improved Support for Heterogeneous Networks - RWS-120006
Network hyper-densification: LTE HetNet2.0 - RWS-120007
Multi-layer HetNet Deployments - RWS-120016
HetNet for HSPA - RWS-120017
HetNet Enhancements - RWS-120023
HetNet Mobility - RWS-120029
Small cells & HetNet - RWS-120031
HetNet - RWS-120037
HetNet Enhancements for HeNB - RWS-120040


HSDPA / HSUPA / HSPA+ Enhancements
HSPA UL Enhancements - RWS-120003
Uplink Enhancements - RWS-120006
UMTS evolution: enhancing CS voice on DCH - RWS-120007
High Speed Packet Access - RWS-120012
HSPA RRM enhancement - RWS-120024
HSPA+ further evolution - RWS-120034


Interworking (HSPA, LTE)
Coordination : HSPA/LTE e-interworking - RWS-120024
Inter-RAT Coordination/CA - RWS-120037


Local-Area Access (Small Cells)
Local-Area Access - RWS-120003
LTE in Local Area Deployments & Enhancements - RWS-120004
LTE Local Area Enhancements - RWS-120004
LTE Local Area Enhancement Areas - RWS-120004
enhanced Local Area (eLA) - RWS-120010
Local Area Enhancements - RWS-120022
Improved Local Area Mobility - RWS-120022


LTE
LTE for Nomadic and Fixed Use - RWS-120018
E-PDCCH enhancement - RWS-120019
Efficiency : Paging Optimization - RWS-120024


LTE Hotspot and Indoor Enhancements (LTE-Hi)
Hotspot and Indoor Enhancements (LTE-Hi) - RWS-120006
Hotspot/indoor Scenario (LTE-Hi) - RWS-120025
Indoor & Hotspot Enhancements (LTE-Hi) [Detailed] - RWS-120029
Possible Study Items for Indoor Environment - RWS-120040


M2M / Machine Type Communications (MTC)
Machine Type Communications - RWS-120003
Improved Support for MTC - RWS-120006
Machine-to-Machine: The Internet of Things - RWS-120014
Machine Type Communications: a new ecosystem - RWS-120014
Wireless MTC and RAN optimizations for MTC - RWS-120016
Low-Cost MTC UE - RWS-120017
MTC + eDDA (enhanced Diverse data application) - RWS-120019
Further Enhancements to Support MTC - RWS-120023
MTC - RWS-120025
MTC enhancements - RWS-120026
M2M - RWS-120029
MTC and migration of traffic from 2G - RWS-120031
Machine Type Communications enhancements - RWS-120034
Machine Type Communications - RWS-120035
Extension triggered by growing M2M traffic - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047
LTE-based M2M - RWS-120041


MBMS / eMBMS
eMBMS Enhancements - RWS-120007
eMBMS - RWS-120013
UHD Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050


Mesh Networks
Mesh Networks - RWS-120018


Network Density
Network density: Scenarios - RWS-120010


Network Architecture and Operation
Easier network operation, tolerance to failure - RWS-120005
System Architecture - RWS-120032
Evolution of LTE Networks - RWS-120034


Positioning
Positioning Enhancements - RWS-120006


Public Safety
Public Safety - RWS-120030
Operation of Public Safety System via LTE - RWS-120031
Public safety’s future in LTE [Detailed] - RWS-120033


Self Organising Networks (SON) and Minimisation of Drive Testing (MDT)
SON Evolution - RWS-120002
Enhanced MDT - RWS-120011
Network Self-Optimisation - RWS-120014
SON and MDT - RWS-120017
HetNet SON - RWS-120029
MDT & Energy Saving - RWS-120029
Autonomous Interference Coordination - RWS-120029
Large scale multi-layer centralized cooperative radio - RWS-120034
MDT Enhancement - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
SON Enhancements - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
MDT and eDDA - RWS-120041


Small Cells (HNB/HeNB)
UMTS evolution: small cells - RWS-120007
Wide & Local area enhancements - RWS-120010
Small Cells - RWS-120014
Small Cell Enhancement in Rel-12 - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
HeNB Enhancement - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050
Efficient Usage of Macro and Small Cells - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047
Low-cost Low Power Nodes (LC-LPN) - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047
Small-Cell Improvements: System Aspects - RWS-120041


Spectrum
Enhanced spectrum efficiency - RWS-120005
Spectrum efficiency: eLA topics - RWS-120010
Scenarios for spectrum extension - RWS-120010
Spectrum and spectrum usage - RWS-120012
Wider Spectrum Utilization - RWS-120016
Spectral efficiency for LTE - RWS-120017
New Spectrum for Mobile Broadband Access - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Enabling Technologies for New Spectrum - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Radio Propagation - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Opportunistic Use of Unlicensed Spectrum for D2D Local Traffic - RWS-120023
Flexible Spectrum Utilization - RWS-120024
Spectrum Related: New Bands And CA Band Combinations - RWS-120029
Spectrum - RWS-120032
Hybrid access scheme - RWS-120034
Spectrum - RWS-120035
Spectrum and Transmission Efficiency - RWS-120039
Spectrum-Agile LTE - RWS-120041


TDD / TD-LTE
TD-LTE - RWS-120014
TDD-specific aspects - RWS-120014
TDD adaptive reconfiguration - RWS-120034
Efficient Usage of Dual Duplex Modes - RWS-120038 / RWS-120047
LTE TDD Small-Cell versus WiFi - RWS-120041


Testing
Testing and Certification - RWS-120022


Traffic and Signalling Overhead
Efficient support of diverse traffic characteristics - RWS-120005
Efficient support for variety of traffic types - RWS-120010
Enhancements for variety of traffic types - RWS-120010
Very high traffic (and signalling) scenarios - RWS-120017
Control Plane Overhead Reduction - RWS-120021 / RWS-120046
Further Enhancements to Support Diverse Data Applications - RWS-120023
Efficiency : Small data services in high mobility - RWS-120024


User Experience
Improve User experience - RWS-120009
User Challenges - RWS-120032


Video streaming, call
RAN Enhancements for Video Streaming QoE - RWS-120023
RAN Enhancements for Internet Video Call - RWS-120023


WiFi / WLAN
Cooperation between LTE/HSPA and WiFi - RWS-120005
Unlicensed spectrum: LTE & WLAN - RWS-120007
LTE integration with other RATs - RWS-120014
WiFi integration: For Beyond Rel-12 - RWS-120017
LTE-WLAN Interworking - RWS-120023
Coordination With WiFi - RWS-120029
Smarter opportunistic usage of Wi-Fi - RWS-120031
LTE TDD Small-Cell versus WiFi - RWS-120041


Others
Other identified techniques for LTE - RWS-120005
Efficient Transactions - RWS-120035
Link Enhancement Considerations - RWS-120035
Intra-RAT cooperation / Inter-RAT cooperation - RWS-120036 / RWS-120050


Here is the summary from the workshop:

Complete list of Presentations

RWS-120002Release 12 and beyond for C^4 (Cost, Coverage, Coordination with small cells and Capacity)NSN
RWS-120003Views on Rel-12Ericsson & ST-Ericsson
RWS-120004LTE evolving towards Local Area in Release 12 and beyondNokia Corporation
RWS-120005Views on Release 12Orange
RWS-120006Views on Rel-12 and onwards for LTE and UMTSHuawei Technologies, HiSilicon
RWS-1200073GPP RAN Rel-12 & BeyondQualcomm
RWS-120008New Solutions for New Mobile Broadband ScenariosTelefonica
RWS-120009Telecom Italia requirements on 3GPP evolutionTelecom Italia
RWS-120010Requirements, Candidate Solutions & Technology Roadmap for LTE Rel-12 OnwardNTT DOCOMO, INC.
RWS-120011Where to improve Rel-12 and beyond: Promising technologiesNEC
RWS-120012Deutsche Telekom Requirements and Candidate TechnologiesDeutsche Telekom
RWS-120013Release 12 Prioritization ConceptsDish Networks
RWS-120014Towards LTE RAN EvolutionAlcatel-Lucent
RWS-120015UE AAS (Active Antenna System)Magnolia Broadband
RWS-120016Requirements and Technical Considerations for RAN Rel.12 & OnwardsFujitsu Limited
RWS-120017Operator requirements on future RAN functionalityTeliaSonera
RWS-120018AT&T View of Release 12 in the North America MarketplaceAT&T
RWS-120019Major drivers, requirements and technology proposals for LTE Rel-12 OnwardPanasonic
RWS-120020Efficient spectrum resource usage for next-generation N/WSK Telecom
RWS-120021Technologies for Rel-12 and onwardsSamsung Electronics
RWS-120022LTE Rel-12 and BeyondRenesas Mobile Europe
RWS-120023LTE Rel-12 and Beyond: Requirements and Technology ComponentsIntel
RWS-120024Considerations on further enhancement and evolution of UMTS/LTE network in R12 and onwardsChina Unicom
RWS-120025Views on LTE R12 and BeyondCATT
RWS-120026A proposal for potential technologies for Release 12 and onwardsETRI
RWS-120027A view on requirements on Rel-12 and onwards from an operator’s viewpointSoftbank Mobile
RWS-120028India market Requirements for Rel. 12 and beyondCEWiT
RWS-120029Views on LTE Rel-12 & BeyondCMCC
RWS-120030LTE addressing the needs of the Public Safety CommunityIPWireless
RWS-120031Vodafone view on 3GPP RAN Release 12 and beyondVodafone
RWS-120032An Operator’s View of Release 12 and BeyondSprint
RWS-120033Public Safety Requirements for Long Term Evolution REL-12U.S. Department of Commerce
RWS-120034Views on 3GPP Rel-12 and BeyondZTE
RWS-120035Considerations for LTE Rel-12 and beyondMotorola Mobility
RWS-120036LG’s view on evolution of LTE in Release 12 and beyondLG Electronics
RWS-120037Views on REL-12 and OnwardsChina Telecom
RWS-120038KDDI’s Views on LTE Release 12 onwardsKDDI
RWS-120039Evolving RAN Towards Rel-12 and BeyondSHARP
RWS-120040Views on enhancement of system capacity and energy efficiency toward Release12 and onwardHitachi
RWS-120041Beyond LTE-A: MediaTek’s view on R12MediaTek
RWS-120042Potential Technologies and Road Map for LTE Release 12 and BeyondITRI, HTC
RWS-120043New concept to maximize the benefit of interference rejection at the UE receiver: interference suppression subframes (ISS)Broadcom
RWS-120046Technologies for Rel-12 and onwardsSamsung Electronics
RWS-120047KDDI’s Views on LTE Release 12 onwardsKDDI
RWS-120048A view on Rel-12 and onwards from an operator’s viewpointSoftbank Mobile
RWS-120049UE AAS (Active Antenna System)Magnolia Broadband
RWS-120050LG’s view on evolution of LTE in Release 12 and beyondLG Electronics
RWS-120051New concept to maximize the benefit of interference rejection at the UE receiver: interference suppression subframes (ISS)Broadcom

More technically minded people want to explore the 3GPP website for the workshop links here: http://3gpp.org/ftp/workshop/2012-06-11_12_RAN_REL12/

Draft report that gives more insight into the presentations as follows:


Monday, March 21, 2011

A quick primer on Coordinated Multi-point (CoMP) Technology

From NTT Docomo Technical Journal:

CoMP is a technology which sends and receives signals from multiple sectors or cells to a given UE. By coordinating transmission among multiple cells, interference from other cells can be reduced and the power of the desired signal can be increased.

Coordinated Multi-point Transmission/Reception:

The implementation of intracell/inter-cell orthogonalization on the uplink and downlink in LTE Rel. 8 contributed to meeting the requirements of capacity and cell-edge user throughput. On the downlink, simultaneously connected UE are orthogonalized in the frequency domain. On the other hand, they are orthogonalized on the uplink, in the frequency domain as well as the code domain, using cyclic shift and block spreading. It is possible to apply fractional frequency reuse (A control method which assigns different frequency ranges for cell-edge UE) to control interference between cells semi-statically, but this is done based on randomization in LTE Rel. 8. Because of this, we are planning to study CoMP technology, which performs signal processing for coordinated transmission and reception by multiple cells to one or more UE, as a technology for Rel. 11 and later in order to extend the intracell/ inter-cell orthogonalization in LTE Rel. 8 to operate between cells.


Independent eNode B and Remote Base Station Configurations:

There are two ways to implement CoMP technology: autonomous distributed control based on an independent eNode B configuration, or centralized control based on Remote Radio Equipment (RRE) (Figure 7). With an independent eNode B configuration, signaling over wired transmission paths is used between eNode B to coordinate among cells. Signaling over wired transmission paths can be done with a regular cell configuration, but signaling delay and overhead become issues, and ways to increase signaling speed or perform high-speed signaling via UE need study. With RRE configurations, multiple RREs are connected via an optical fiber carrying a baseband signal between cells and the central eNode B, which performs the baseband signal processing and control, so the radio resources between the cells can be controlled at the central eNode B. In other words, signaling delay and overhead between eNode B, which are issues in independent eNode B configurations, are small in this case, and control of high speed radio resources between cells is relatively easy. However, high capacity optical fiber is required, and as the number of RRE increases, the processing load on the central eNode B increases, so there are limits on how this can be applied. For these reasons, it is important to use both distributed control based on independent eNode B configurations and centralized control based on RRE configurations as appropriate, and both are being studied in preparation for LTE-Advanced.

Downlink Coordinated Multi-point Transmission:

Downlink coordinated multi-point transmission can be divided into two categories: Coordinated Scheduling/ Coordinated Beamforming (CS/CB), and joint processing (Figure 8). With CS/CB, a given subframe is transmitted from one cell to a given UE, as shown in Fig. 8 (a), and coordinated beamforming and scheduling is done between cells to reduce the interference caused to other cells. On the other hand, for joint processing, as shown in Fig. 8 (b-1) and (b-2), joint transmission by multiple cells to a given UE, in which they transmit at the same time using the same time and frequency radio resources, and dynamic cell selection, in which cells can be selected at any time in consideration of interference, are being studied. For joint transmission, two methods are being studied: non-coherent transmission, which uses soft-combining reception of the OFDM signal; and coherent transmission, which does precoding between cells and uses in-phase combining at the receiver.

Uplink Multi-cell Reception:

With uplink multi-cell reception, the signal from a UE is received by multiple cells and combined. In contrast to the downlink, the UE does not need to be aware of whether multi-cell reception is occurring, so it should have little impact on the radio interface specifications.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP): Unresolved problems

I have blogged about CoMP in quite some detail in the past. Someone recently pointed out an interesting video from Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institut which is embedded below:



CoMP may be not as practical as we may think. One of the things pointed out by Dr. Ariela Zeira, InterDigital's Vice-President of Advanced Air Interfaces in the LTE World Summit was that there exists a gap between the theoretical and the practical gains of CoMP.

She went on to suggest the following as way forward for the Coordinated Multipoint acceptance in future:
  • Address root causes of gaps between academia and current feedback schemes
    • Need for improved Channel State Information (CSI) feedback resolution
    • Need for improved frequency domain precoding granularity
  • Apply CoMP where most needed and/or theoretical gains can be approached
    • Heterogeneous networks
      • Interference problem is more severe than in macro-only deployment
        • Especially for Femto Closed Subscriber Group and Pico Cells employing large cell extension
      • Lower delay spread and low mobility can be expected in Femto and Pico cells and reduce performance loss from feedback impairments
    • Relay Backhaul Channel (RBC)
      • More accurate CSI feedback from stationary relay station is possible enabling advanced non-linear precoding schemes.
      • High rank MIMO transmission will not be effective due to higher probability of Line of Sight (LOS) channel from Macro to Relay
CoMP is still probably the most promising spectral efficiency solution but need to focus on closing the gap between gains predicted by theory and those achievable with current LTE Release 8 Feedback Schemes

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission and reception

The industry’s first live field tests of Coordinated Multipoint Transmission (CoMP), a new technology based on network MIMO, were conducted in Berlin in October 2009. CoMP will increase data transmission rates and help ensure consistent service quality and throughput on LTE wireless broadband networks as well as on 3G networks. By coordinating and combining signals from multiple antennas, CoMP, will make it possible for mobile users to enjoy consistent performance and quality when they access and share videos, photos and other high-bandwidth services whether they are close to the center of an LTE cell or at its outer edges.

The following is from the 3G Americas report on CoMP:

Coordinated Multi-Point transmission/reception (CoMP) is considered by 3GPP as a tool to improve coverage, cell-edge throughput, and/or system efficiency.

The main idea of CoMP is as follows: when a UE is in the cell-edge region, it may be able to receive signals from multiple cell sites and the UE’s transmission may be received at multiple cell sites regardless of the system load. Given that, if the signaling transmitted from the multiple cell sites is coordinated, the DL performance can be increased significantly. This coordination can be simple as in the techniques that focus on interference avoidance or more complex as in the case where the same data is transmitted from multiple cell sites. For the UL, since the signal can be received by multiple cell sites, if the scheduling is coordinated from the different cell sites, the system can take advantage of this multiple reception to significantly improve the link performance. In the following sections, the CoMP architecture and the different CoMP schemes will be discussed.

CoMP communications can occur with intra-site or inter-site CoMP as shown in Figure 7.7.


With intra-site CoMP, the coordination is within a cell site. The characteristics of each type of CoMP architecture are summarized in Table 7.1.



An advantage of intra-site CoMP is that significant amount of exchange of information is possible since this communication is within a site and does not involve the backhaul (connection between base stations). Inter-site CoMP involves the coordination of multiple sites for CoMP transmission. Consequently, the exchange of information will involve backhaul transport. This type of CoMP may put additional burden and requirement upon the backhaul design.



An interesting CoMP architecture is the one associated with a distributed eNB depicted in Figure 7.8. In this particular illustration, the Radio Remote Units (RRU) of an eNB are located at different locations in space. With this architecture, although the CoMP coordination is within a single eNB, the CoMP transmission can behave like inter-site CoMP instead.

DL COMP

In terms of downlink CoMP, two different approaches are under consideration: Coordinated scheduling, or Coordinated Beamforming (CBF), and Joint Processing/Joint Transmission (JP/JT). In the first category, the transmission to a single UE is transmitted from the serving cell, exactly as in the case of non-CoMP transmission. However, the scheduling, including any Beamforming functionality, is dynamically coordinated between the cells in order to control and/or reduce the interference between different transmissions. In principle, the best serving set of users will be selected so that the transmitter beams are constructed to reduce the interference to other neighboring users, while increasing the served user’s signal strength.

For JP/JT, the transmission to a single UE is simultaneously transmitted from multiple transmission points, across cell sites. The multi-point transmissions will be coordinated as a single transmitter with antennas that are geographically separated. This scheme has the potential for higher performance, compared to coordination only in the scheduling, but comes at the expense of more stringent requirement on backhaul communication.

Depending on the geographical separation of the antennas, the coordinated multi-point processing method (e.g. coherent or non-coherent), and the coordinated zone definition (e.g. cell-centric or user-centric), network MIMO and collaborative MIMO have been proposed for the evolution of LTE. Depending on whether the same data to a UE is shared at different cell sites, collaborative MIMO includes single-cell antenna processing with multi-cell coordination, or multi-cell antenna processing. The first technique can be implemented via precoding with interference nulling by exploiting the additional degrees of spatial freedom at a cell site. The latter technique includes collaborative precoding and CL macro diversity. In collaborative precoding, each cell site performs multi-user precoding towards multiple UEs, and each UE receives multiple streams from multiple cell sites. In CL macro diversity, each cell site performs precoding independently and multiple cell sites jointly serve the same UE.

UL COMP

Uplink coordinated multi-point reception implies reception of the transmitted signal at multiple geographically separated points. Scheduling decisions can be coordinated among cells to control interference. It is important to understand that in different instances, the cooperating units can be separate eNBs’ remote radio units, relays, etc. Moreover, since UL CoMP mainly impacts the scheduler and receiver, it is mainly an implementation issues. The evolution of LTE, consequently, will likely just define the signaling needed to facilitate multi-point reception.

INTER-CELL INTERFERENCE COORDINATION

Another simple CoMP transmission scheme which relies on resource management cooperation among eNBs for controlling inter-cell interference is an efficient way to improve the cell edge spectral efficiency. The Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) enhancement currently being studied for LTE-Advanced can be classified into dynamic Interference Coordination (D-ICIC) and Static Interference Coordination (S-ICIC). In D-ICIC, the utilization of frequency resource, spatial resource (beam pattern) or power resource is exchanged dynamically among eNBs. This scheme is flexible and adaptive to implement the resource balancing in unequal load situations. For S-ICIC, both static and semi-static spatial resource coordination among eNBs are being considered.

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