Showing posts with label MIMO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MIMO. Show all posts

Wednesday, 17 July 2013

Decision Tree of Transmission Modes (TM) for LTE


4G Americas have recently published whitepaper titled "MIMO and Smart Antennas for Mobile Broadband Systems" (available here). The above picture and the following is from that whitepaper:

Figure 3 above shows the taxonomy of antenna configurations supported in Release-10 of the LTE standard (as described in 3GPP Technical Specification TS 36.211, 36.300). The LTE standard supports 1, 2, 4 or 8 base station transmit antennas and 2, 4 or 8 receive antennas in the User Equipment (UE), designated as: 1x2, 1x4, 1x8, 2x2, 2x4, 2x8, 4x2, 4x4, 4x8, and 8x2, 8x4, and 8x8 MIMO, where the first digit is the number of antennas per sector in the transmitter and the second number is the number of antennas in the receiver. The cases where the base station transmits from a single antenna or a single dedicated beam are shown in the left of the figure. The most commonly used MIMO Transmission Mode (TM4) is in the lower right corner, Closed Loop Spatial Multiplexing (CLSM), when multiple streams can be transmitted in a channel with rank 2 or more.

Beyond the single antenna or beamforming array cases diagrammed above, the LTE standard supports Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna configurations as shown on the right of Figure 3. This includes Single User (SU-MIMO) protocols using either open loop or closed loop modes as well as transmit diversity and Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO). In the closed loop MIMO mode, the terminals provide channel feedback to the eNodeB with Channel Quality Information (CQI), Rank Indications (RI) and Precoder Matrix Indications (PMI). These mechanisms enable channel state information at the transmitter which improves the peak data rates, and is the most commonly used scheme in current deployments. However, this scheme provides the best performance only when the channel information is accurate and when there is a rich multi-path environment. Thus, closed loop MIMO is most appropriate in low mobility environments such as with fixed terminals or at pedestrian speeds.

In the case of high vehicular speeds, Open Loop MIMO may be used, but because the channel state information is not timely, the PMI is not considered reliable and is typically not used. In TDD networks, the channel is reciprocal and thus the DL channel can be more accurately known based on the uplink transmissions from the terminal (the forward link’s multipath channel signature is the same as the reverse link’s – both paths use the same frequency block). Thus, MIMO improves TDD networks under wider channel conditions than in FDD networks.

One may visualize spatial multiplexing MIMO operation as subtracting the strongest received stream from the total received signal so that the next strongest signal can be decoded and then the next strongest, somewhat like a multi-user detection scheme. However, to solve these simultaneous equations for multiple unknowns, the MIMO algorithms must have relatively large Signal to Interference plus Noise ratios (SINR), say 15 dB or better. With many users active in a base station’s coverage area, and multiple base stations contributing interference to adjacent cells, the SINR is often in the realm of a few dB. This is particularly true for frequency reuse 1 systems, where only users very close to the cell site experience SINRs high enough to benefit from spatial multiplexing SU-MIMO. Consequently, SU-MIMO works to serve the single user (or few users) very well, and is primarily used to increase the peak data rates rather than the median data rate in a network operating at full capacity.

Angle of Arrival (AoA) beamforming schemes form beams which work well when the base station is clearly above the clutter and when the angular spread of the arrival is small, corresponding to users that are well localized in the field of view of the sector; in rural areas, for example. To form a beam, one uses co-polarized antenna elements spaced rather closely together, typically lamda/2, while the spatial diversity required of MIMO requires either cross-polarized antenna columns or columns that are relatively far apart. Path diversity will couple more when the antennas columns are farther apart, often about 10 wavelengths (1.5m or 5’ at 2 GHz). That is why most 2G and 3G tower sites have two receive antennas located at far ends of the sector’s platform, as seen in the photo to the right. The signals to be transmitted are multiplied by complex-valued precoding weights from standardized codebooks to form the antenna patterns with their beam-like main lobes and their nulls that can be directed toward sources of interference. The beamforming can be created, for example, by the UE PMI feedback pointing out the preferred precoder (fixed beam) to use when operating in the closed loop MIMO mode TM4.

For more details, see the whitepaper available here.

Related posts:


Monday, 25 February 2013

LTE-A: Downlink Transmission Mode 9 (TM-9)

When LTE was introduced in Release-8 it had 7 transmission modes that were increased to 8 in Release-9. Earlier, I posted an R&S whitepaper on the different Transmission modes (10K+ views already) that listed transmission modes till TM 8. In Release-10 (LTE-A) 3GPP Introduced a new transmission mode, TM 9. TM9 is designed to help reduce interference between base stations to maximise signal stability and boost performance. The new TM-9 enables the enhancement of network capabilities and performance with minimum addition of overhead. TM9 is designed to combine the advantages of high spectrum efficiency (using higher order MIMO) and cell-edge data rates, coverage and interference management (using beamforming). Flexible and dynamic switching between single-user MIMO (SU-MIMO) and an enhanced version of multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) is also provided.



A new Downlink Control Information (DCI) format - known as format 2C - is used for TM9 data scheduling. Two new reference signals are defined in TM9: Channel State Information Reference Signal (CSI-RS) and Demodulation Reference Signal (DMRS). The first is used from the UE to calculate and report the CSI feedback (CQI/PMI/RI), while the latter is an evolution - providing support for more layers - of the UE specific reference signal that is already used for beamforming in Rel-9, and is used for signal demodulation. TM-9 is particularly smart as it can detect when a mobile device is being used and send a different type of signal that is optimal for a mobile device (variable DM-RS – demodulation reference signals). This maximises the efficient use of the base station and guarantee’s a decent data rate for users.


Early results in SK Telecom press release are positive with a claimed 10-15% increase in data rates in locations where there was known inter-cell interference.

I also looked into couple of books and here is one explanation from An Introduction to LTE by Chris Cox.


To use eight layer spatial multiplexing, the base station starts by configuring the mobile into a new transmission mode, mode 9. This supports both single user and multiple user MIMO, so the base station can quickly switch between the two techniques without the need to change transmission mode.

The base station schedules the mobile using a new DCI format, 2C. In the scheduling command, it specifies the number of layers that it will use for the data transmission, between one and eight. It does not have to specify the precoding matrix, because that is transparent to the mobile. The base station then transmits the PDSCH on antenna ports 7 to 7 + n, where n is the number of layers that the mobile is using. The maximum number of codewords is two, the same as in Release 8.

The mobile still has to feed back a precoding matrix indicator, which signals the discrepancy between the precoding that the base station is transparently providing and the precoding that the mobile would ideally like to use. Instead of using the PMI, however, the mobile feeds back two indices, i1 and i2. Both of these can vary from 0 to 15, which provides more finely-grained feedback than the PMI did and in turn improves the performance of the multiple user MIMO technique. The base station can then use these indices to reconstruct the requested precoding matrix.


Embedded below is an extract from Google books for Lte-Advanced Air Interface Technology By Xincheng Zhang, Xiaojin Zhou

Friday, 5 October 2012

3D-Beamforming and 3D-MIMO

When I did the summary from Rel-12 workshop, one of the feature proposed by many companies was the feature on 3D MIMO/Beamforming. Here is a quick introduction from different presentations.




A presentation by China mobile lists the motivations and Challenges is embedded below:





Monday, 18 June 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:


Wednesday, 2 May 2012

LTE 'Antenna Ports' and their Physical mapping

People who work with LTE Physical layer and maybe higher layers would be aware of this term called 'Antenna Ports'. I have always wondered how these antenna ports are mapped to physical antennas.

The following is from R&S whitepaper:

The 3GPP TS 36.211 LTE standard defines antenna ports for the downlink. An antenna port is generally used as a generic term for signal transmission under identical channel conditions. For each LTE operating mode in the downlink direction for which an independent channel is assumed (e.g. SISO vs. MIMO), a separate logical antenna port is defined. LTE symbols that are transmitted via identical antenna ports are subject to the same channel conditions. In order to determine the characteristic channel for an antenna port, a UE must carry out a separate channel estimation for each antenna port. Separate reference signals (pilot signals) that are suitable for estimating the respective channel are defined in the LTE standard for each antenna port. 

Here is my table that I have adapted from the whitepaper and expanded. 




The way in which these logical antenna ports are assigned to the physical transmit antennas of a base station is up to the base station, and can vary between base stations of the same type (because of different operating conditions) and also between base stations from different manufacturers. The base station does not explicitly notify the UE of the mapping that has been carried out, rather the UE must take this into account automatically during demodulation (FIG 2).


If there is another way to show this physical mappings, please feel free to let me know.

The R&S Whitepaper is available here if interested.

Monday, 22 August 2011

MU-MIMO (and DIDO)

Late last month a guy called Steve Perlman announced of a new technology called DIDO (Distributed-Input-Distributed-Output) that could revolutionise the way wireless transmission works and can help fix the channel capacity problem as described by Shannon's formula. A whitepaper describing this technology is available here.

I havent gone through the paper in any detail nor do I understand this DIDO very well but what many experienced engineers have pointed out is that this is MU-MIMO in disguise. Without going into any controversies, lets look at MU-MIMO as its destined to play an important part in LTE-Advanced (the real '4G').

Also, I have been asked time and again about this Shannon's channel capacity formula. This formula is better known by its name Shannon-Hartley theorem. It states:

C <= B log2 (1 + S/N)
where:
C = channel capacity (bits per second)
B = bandwidth (hertz)
S/N = Signal to Noise ratio (SNR)

In a good channel, SNR will be high. Take for example a case when SNR is 20db then log2 (1 + 100) = 6.6. In an extremely noisy channel SNR will be low which would in turn reduce the channel capacity.

In should be pointed out that the Shannon's formula holds true for all wireless technologies except for when multiuser transmission like MU-MIMO (or DIDO) is used.

Anyway, I gave a simple explanation on MU-MIMO before. Another simple explanation of what an MU-MIMO is as explained in this video below:




The picture below (from NTT) gives a good summary of the different kinds of MIMO technology and their advantages and disadvantages. More details could be read from here.

Click to enlarge

As we can see, MU-MIMO is great but it is complex in implementation.

Click to enlarge

Multiuser MIMO technology makes it possible to raise wireless transmission speed by increasing the number of antennas at the base station, without consuming more frequency bandwidth or increasing modulation multiple-values. It is therefore a promising technology for incorporating broadband wireless transmission that will be seamlessly connected with wired transmission in the micro waveband (currently used for mobile phones and wireless LAN, and well suited to mobile communications use), where frequency resources are in danger of depletion. Since it also allows multiple users to be connected simultaneously, it is seen as a solution to the problem specific to wireless communications, namely, slow or unavailable connections when the number of terminals in the same area increases (see Figure 9 above).

There is a good whitepaper in NTT Docomo technical journal that talks about Precoding and Scheduling techniques for increasing the capacity of MIMO channels. Its available here. There is also a simple explanation of MIMO including MU-MIMO on RadioElectronics here. If you want to do a bit more indepth study of MU-MIMO then there is a very good research paper in the EURASIP Journal that is available here (Click on Full text PDF on right for FREE download).

Finally, there is a 3GPP study item on MIMO Enhancements for LTE-Advanced which is a Release-11 item that will hopefully be completed by next year. That report should give a lot more detail about how practical would it be to implement it as part of LTE-Advanced. The following is the justification of doing this study:

The Rel-8 MIMO and subsequent MIMO enhancements in Rel-10 were designed mostly with homogenous macro deployment in mind. Recently, the need to enhance performance also for non-uniform network deployments (e.g. heterogeneous deployment) has grown. It would therefore be beneficial to study and optimize the MIMO performance for non-uniform deployments where the channel conditions especially for low-power node deployments might typically differ from what is normally encountered in scenarios considered so far.

Downlink MIMO in LTE-Advanced has been enhanced in Release 10 to support 8-layer SU-MIMO transmission and dynamic SU-MU MIMO switching. For the 8-tx antenna case, the CSI feedback to support downlink MIMO has been enhanced with a new dual-codebook structure aimed at improving CSI accuracy at the eNB without increasing the feedback overhead excessively. Precoded reference symbols are provided for data demodulation, allowing arbitrary precoders to be used by the eNB for transmission. In many deployment scenarios, less than 8 tx antennas will be employed. It is important to focus on the eNB antenna configurations of highest priority for network operators.

The enhancement of MIMO performance through improved CSI feedback for high priority scenarios not directly targeted by the feedback enhancements in Release 10, especially the case of 4 tx antennas in a cross-polarised configuration, in both homogeneous and heterogeneous scenarios should be studied.

MU-MIMO operation is considered by many network operators as important to further enhance system capacity. It is therefore worth studying further potential enhancement for MU-MIMO, which includes UE CSI feedback enhancement and control signaling enhancement. Furthermore, open-loop MIMO enhancements were briefly mentioned but not thoroughly investigated in Rel-10.

In addition, the experience from real-life deployments in the field has increased significantly since Rel-8. It would be beneficial to discuss the experience from commercial MIMO deployments, and identify if there are any potential short-comings and possible ways to address those. For example, it can be discussed if robust rank adaptation works properly in practice with current UE procedures that allow a single subframe of data to determine the rank. In addition the impact of calibration error on the performance could be discussed.

This work will allow 3GPP to keep MIMO up to date with latest deployments and experience.