TheevolutionofWCDMAandthe3rdgeneration

cellularcommunicationsystems
Reviews of articles within the course TSDT74

Amanda Hasselberg, amaha829, 820302-4982

Linus Lund, linlu992, 820610-1910

Theevolutionof3G
The Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technique is used in the 3rd generation
mobile communication systems (UMTS). Since the first release of the standard R99 numerous
improvements have been done. This paper intends to present some basic principles of techniques
used along the evolution of the WCDMA standard and to glimpse somewhat towards the future
of the 3G long term evolution. Shown in Figure 1 are the highlights of advancements within the
WCDMA standards and also the aspects that we will focus on.

Figure 1: The developing of WCDMA

WCDMAR99
The original forerunners of what now is called WCDMA are military system that were designed
to be wideband and employing direct sequence (DS) techniques to get multiple access capability.
The forerunners of the present CDMA and WCDMA were designed in the late 1980s when the
commercial sector became interested in cellular-type communication. The first type of WCDMA
spread over 5 MHz and the WCDMA in the future will spread over either 10 or 20 MHz.
(Milstein, 2000, p 1345)
WCDMA is a wireless communication based on and developed from Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA). CDMA is a technology where all users use the same frequency and transmit at
the same time, separated by unique codes. ("Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access Network"
2001, p 4) WCDMA uses a wide radio signal at 5 MHz and a chip rate at 3.84 Mcps. The basic
concept is to multiply the radio signal with a spreading signal which constructs a signal that seems
to be random. The receiver will then, with the help of a specific code, reverse the process and the
original signal will appear.
The WCDMA needs to possess several functions to bee able to control the radio network and
their users. Some of the functions that are essential for WCDMA are described below.

Powercontrol
The power control regulates the transmission power of the terminal and the base station. This
aims to lessen interference and enable more users on the same carrier. ("Basic concepts in
WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 5) The power control in WCDMA is used in both uplink and down-link to ensure good performance. The aim of power control is to establish good
quality over the time by ensuring that the power the base station receive from all handset are the
same regardless of the distance from the base station. In WCDMA a Signal-To-Interference
Ratio based (SIR-based) power control is used. This means that the base station compares the
received SIR with a SIR target value and on the basis of that demands the transmitter to increase
or decrease the power. The fact that the received quality of the signal compares with the required
quality of the signal results in a closed-loop power control. (Dahlman 1998, p 1111) A higher
power from one handset than needed causes an excessive quality, unnecessary interference and
takes too much resources meanwhile too low power will cause poor quality. The power control is
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a way to escape this and keep the power at a suitable level and thereby also get a suitable quality
over the time. ("Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 5)
Another effect of the power control is the phenomenon cell breathing. Cell breathing is the
trade-off between coverage and capacity and it means that the cell differs in size depending on
the number of users. A low number of users can achieve good quality even at long distance
meanwhile a high number of users creates a high interference level and the users therefore need
to get closer to the base station to get good quality. (Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access
Network" 2001, p 5)

Softandsofterhandover
There are two kinds of handover that can be used by WCDMA, soft and softer handover which
are shown in Figure 2. The one normally used in WCDMA is soft intrafrequency handover.
Intrafrequency handover is a handover between WCDMA carriers on different frequencies that
occurs in high capacity areas. (Dahlman 1998, p 1112) Soft handover means that the handset
simultaneously is connected with two or more cells on the same frequency on two or more base
stations. Softer handover is a special case of soft handover when the handset is connected, not
only with two or more cells, but with two or more cells at the same base station. (Basic concepts
in WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 5)

Figure 2: Soft and softer handover (Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access Network 2001, p 5)

The purpose of using soft or softer handover is that it enables the handset to maintain the quality
of the connection while moving between the cells. The handset will adjust its power to the base
station that requires the lowest transmitted power and the best cell to be used can thereby change
very fast. (Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 5)
To determine which cell to connect to the user equipment uses a cell-search technique. The cellsearch technique can be described as follows. The first step is to find the base station with the
strongest cell. Thereafter, the user equipment determines the code group and the frame timing to
be used and the step after that is to identify all the scrambling codes to the code group. After this
the broadcast on the channel can be read. The user equipment always searches for new cells to
use but it only searches through neighbouring cells broadcast from the network. In soft handover
the uplink signals are combined in the network while the downlink signals are combined in the
user equipments RAKE receiver. For the softer handover the combining can instead be done in
the base station and it thereby gets a more efficient uplink combining. To eliminate the numbers
of user equipments in soft and softer handover the thresholds are not absolute in WCDMA but
relative. (Dahlman 1998, p 1112)

Admissioncontrol
The admission control is a way to avoid reduction of the cell breathing and to avoid overloading
the system. The interference will always increase when admitting a new call and to prevent the
coverage to decrease when the interference increases admission control is used. (Dahlman 1998,
p 1115) The admission control works by either admitting or denying the new call depending on
the load of the network. (Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 6) If the
load is high and a risk for call dropping occurs the new call will be denied in order to keep the
already ongoing calls stable. The admission control is used in both uplink and downlink because
of the systems capability of serving different services with different claims for capacity and
quality. (Dahlman 1998, p 1115)

Congestioncontrol
Even with use of an admission control, is it possible for the system to be overloaded. This is
mainly caused by user equipment that moves from one area to another. (Basic concepts in
WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 6)The congestion control is activated when the
threshold of the congestion is exceeded. In case of an overload there are four actions that can be
taken which all aim to degrade the quality of the users in the overloaded cell until the congestion
is solved. (Dahlman 1998, p 1115)The first step for the congestion control is to reduce the bit
rate of services that are insensitive for increasing delays. If this doesnt work the next step to do
is an interfrequency handover i.e. move some users to other less loaded frequencies. The third
step, if interfrequency doesnt help, is to move some users to GSM and if thats not enough the
last step is to remove some of the connections in aim to keep the quality on the remaining
connections. (Basic concepts in WCDMA Radio Access Network" 2001, p 6)

WCDMArelease5
HSPA is an abbreviation for High Speed Packet Access and was introduced in the downlink with
WCDMA release 5, then called High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and presented
more thoroughly below.

HSPDA
Traditional cellular systems have typically allocated resources in a relatively static way, where the
data rate for a user is changed slowly or not at all. This is efficient for services with a relatively
constant data rate such as voice. However for high-speed data access data typically arrives in
bursts, posing rapidly varying requirements on the amount of radio resources required. Together
with the low delays required for good end-user experience a fast allocation of shared resources is
more efficient approach (Parkvall 2006, p 68).
HSDPA solves this by introducing a shared channel, called the High Speed Downlink Shared
CHannel or HS-DSCH. The HS-DSCH corresponds to a common channelization code resource,
shared primarily in the time domain. An illustration of this is found in Figure 3 where the HSDSCH resource consists of a number of codes of spreading factor 16, the other codes are used
for other purposes e.g. voice services (Parkvall 2001, p 28).

Figure 3: The HS-DSCH (Parkvall 2001, p 28)

The HS-DSCH is as mentioned above primarily shared in the time domain and allocation of the
resource is done on a 2 ms transmission time interval (TTI). A short TTI brings some advantages
such as reduced over-all delays, improved possibility to track channel variations used by the link
adaptation and makes channel-dependent scheduling easier (Parkvall 2006, p 69). It is however
possible to use code multiplexing to allow more than one user transmitting data over the HSDSCH if for example one user cannot fill the entire channel due to radio conditions (Parkvall
2001, p 28). This is illustrated in Figure 4 where in the first slot User #1 transmits using the
whole bandwidth but shares the next time slot with User #4.

Figure 4: Sharing within time slots (Parkvall 2007, p 69)

There are some architectural impacts using a HS-DSCH. The HSDPA technique relies on rapid
adaptation which requires functionality such as scheduling and retransmissions to be placed in
the Node B (the base station). These functions were earlier handled by a radio network controller
(RNC) which in its turn handled a number of Node Bs. In other words the base station must be
more complex than in networks not supporting HSDPA (Parkvall 2001, p 28). As a direct effect
from the architectural impacts soft handovers are not possible with the HSDPA scheme because
inter-node-B soft handovers are impossible. Since the HS-DSCH is not power controlled but rate
controlled it is possible to allow the power remaining after serving other channels, such as voice
channels, to be used for HS-DSCH transmissions. This enables efficient use of all the available
power for a base station (Parkvall 2006, p 69) and has been implemented by Ericsson (Bark,
WCDMA/HSPA, 2007).
The HS-DSCH controls the Eb/N0 ratio by adjusting the data rate while keeping transmission
power constant, which is also know as link adaptation. The link adaptation is implemented by
adjusting the channel-code rate selecting between e.g. QPSK and 16-QAM, where 16-QAM
makes more efficient use of bandwidth but requires higher received Eb/N0. Hence when a
terminal is within good radio conditions the link adaptation features selects the higher-order
modulation and vice versa. To provide node B with information about the channel conditions
each terminal transmits a channel quality indicator (CQI) containing a recommended data rate as
often as every 2 ms making the data rate independently selectable in every TTI (Parkvall 2006, p
70).

The demands on short TTIs and fast channel adaptation makes the scheduler very important it
determines to large extent the overall performance of the downlink (Parkvall 2006, p 70). The
scheduler is responsible for selecting which user is to send at what data rate in every TTI
(Parkvall 2001, p 30). The scheduler can actually make use of one of the greatest problems within
radio communications the channel fading. Since radio conditions for the users typically vary
independently there is almost always a user, in each point of time, whose channel quality is near
its peak. By using this channel-dependent scheduling and schedule the users with good radio conditions
to transmit one obtains larger gains with larger channel variations, effectively making fading
desirable (Parkvall 2006, p 70). This is illustrated in Figure 5 where the dotted line represents the
channel as seen by node B which is a rather good channel effectively rendered by the
independent variations of User 1 through 3.

Figure 5: Channel-dependent scheduling (Parkvall 2006, p 71)

However if only the terminals with good radio conditions are allowed to transmit there is a
potential for large variations in the service quality among the user population (Parkvall 2001, p
30). A practical scheduler strategy needs to maintain some degree of fairness between the users,
but in principle the larger the long-term unfairness the higher cell-capacity (Parkvall 2006, p 70).
So there is a trade off between fairness and channel utilization and there are different strategies
available for a scheduler, e.g. one implemented by Ericsson is called Proportional Fair where the
channel is assigned to the user with best relative channel quality (WCDMA/HSPA, 2007).
The last feature of the HSDPA technique is the hybrid ARQ with soft combining which allows the
terminal to rapidly request retransmissions of erroneous transport blocks the terminal reports a
successful or failed decoding of a block within 5 ms from reception (Parkvall 2006, p 70).
Incremental Redundancy (IR) is used as basis for soft combining meaning that the
retransmissions may contain parity bits not contained in the original transmission (Parkvall 2001,
p 30). IR is well known to be able to provide significant gains when the code rate for the initial
attempt is high, thus IR is mainly useful in band limited situations, e.g. when the terminal is close
the Node B and the number of channelization codes limits the achievable data rate.

WCDMArelease6
With the 6th release of the WCMDA standard two features were introduced, namely the
Enhanced Uplink (EUL) and Broadcast/Multicast (MBMS). These two concepts are presented
below.

EUL
The Enhanced Uplink (EUL) tries to achieve reduced delays, increased availability of high
bitrates and an increased capacity. Low delays are critical to numerous applications, especially
TCP based applications where the higher the bitrates offered the lower the delays must be in
order for TCP to fully benefit from the bitrates. A lower delay in the uplink will also benefit the
throughput in the downlink when regarding TCP performance as it is dependent on an end-toend round trip time (Parkvall 2005, p 1411). The implementation of the EUL is based on the
same principles to those of the HSDPA, but with a number of differences that will be presented
below (Parkvall 2006, p 71).
The EUL uses an enhanced dedicated channel (E-DCH) that is non-orthogonal. Hence fast
power control is necessary to handle the near-far problem. Within the uplink the shared resource
is no longer channelization codes but rather the maximum tolerable interference, which depends
on the combined power resource of all terminals, further emphasizing the ability to perform fast
power control (Parkvall 2005, p 1411).
In order to handle interference generated from neighbouring cells soft handover is supported to
allow power control from multiple cells. This also allows reception at multiple cells providing
macro diversity gains (Parkvall 2005, p 1412). The HSDPA required certain functionality to be
located in the Node B, but since duplicate detection and macro-diversity combining is required in
the EUL some of this functionality is moved to the radio network controller (RNC).
Similarly to HSDPA EUL uses a hybrid ARQ to provide robustness against unpredictable
interference but also to receive an early termination gain a kind of implicit link adaptation. To
explain the implicit link adaptation consider a terminal that wants to transmit with a data rate of x
MBit/s. The terminal may do so by transmitting x MBit/s using a transmission power to target a
low error possibility. But it may also do so by transmitting using an n time higher data rate with
an unchanged transmission power and use multiple hybrid ARQ retransmissions that means
deliberately transmit with a higher probability of error. It can be shown that the latter case
actually averages a lower Eb/N0 (Parkvall 2005, p 1413).
The amount of common uplink resources a terminal uses depends on the required transmission
power, which usually follows from transmitting at a higher data rate. Packet data is typically
bursty with large and rapid variations in their resource requirements. The scheduler is still
responsible for determining which users should transmit when and at what data rate, but now
focuses on allocating a large fraction of the shared resources to the users momentarily requiring
the highest data rate. The scheduler also has to make sure that the system is stable by avoiding
large interference peaks (Parkvall 2006, p 71).
Unlike the downlink scheduler, the uplink scheduler typically schedules multiple users to transmit
in the same time slot due to the fact that most terminals are not able to use all the available power
within one slot. The scheduler algorithm is not standardized but the framework for
communication is. This framework is based on scheduling grants, sent by Node B, and
scheduling requests sent by the terminal to request resources. There are two different scheduling
grants used to set the upper limit on the data rate the terminal may use. The absolute grant is
transmitted on a dedicated channel and are used for large infrequent changes, e.g. at the time for
bearer setup. The relative grant is transmitted on an individual control channel and tells the
terminal whether its transmitting with too low, too high or sufficient power. When a terminal is
communicating with several Node Bs one of them is the serving cell. The terminal only listens to
the serving cells absolute grant and only the serving cell may ask the terminal to increase its
transmitting power. The other cell may however tell the terminal to decrease its power if its
interfering with their transmissions (Parkvall 2005, p 1414).

The scheduling requests are emitted by the terminal and contain its current status, including
information on buffer status, traffic priority and power availability. These requests are sent on the
E-DCH and are allowed to be sent even when terminal lacks a scheduling grant (Parkvall 2005, p
1414).

Broadcastandmulticast
Broadcast and multicast differs from the traditional cellular point-to-point communication in the
sense that one transmission should be receivable by many users. Traditional broadcast services
such as radio and TV have focused on covering very large areas and offered a very limited
possibility to target individual users, but in WCDMA release 6 these two concepts are combined
in a single network (Parkvall 2006, p 72).
Multicast and broadcast are in principle equal the same content is transmitted to multiple users
in a unidirectional way. There is a difference between them though. Broadcast serves all users
subscribing to the service simultaneously and users need not to notify the network before
receiving the service. The service is distributed via a point-to-multipoint radio service set up in
each cell as a part of the MBMS broadcast area (Parkvall 2006, p 72). Multicast on the other hand
could be set up both as point-to-multipoint radio service as well as a point-to-point radio service.
When a user wants to take part in a multicast transmission it has first to request to join a
multicast group and after being granted this request the users movements are tracked and radio
resources are adjusted appropriately. In cells where only a few users are subscribing the service it
might be more appropriate to use point-to-point transmissions whereas if the cell has a large
number of users the point-to-multipoint approach is better (Parkvall 2006, p 72).
The point-to-point transmission is handled over a HS-DSCH as described above and the pointto-multipoint transmission uses a forward access channel (FACH). Multiple services may be
transmitted on the same channel using time multiplexing or transmitted through multiple
channels. In neither case no information is fed back from the terminal, the communication is
strictly unidirectional (Parkvall 2006, p 72).
The transmission of one signal to multiple receivers leads to an efficient use of radio resources
through macro diversity. Since no adaptation of parameters to specific users conditions is
possible the service coverage is determined by the worst case scenario and it is of key importance
for MBMS services to maximize diversity without relying on feedback and with limited power.
The two main techniques used for this is a long 80 ms TTI to obtain time diversity and
combining multiple cells to obtain macro diversity. The long TTI will make the transmission less
sensible for fast fading and since MBMS services are not delay sensitive this will not be a problem
from the users perspective (Parkvall 2006, p 73).
There are two different ways to obtain macro diversity by combining different transmissions,
namely soft combining and selection combining. The soft combining combines soft information
bits before decoding and provides diversity gains of 4-6 dB. However the soft bits from each
radio link needs to be buffered until the whole TTI is received from all transmitting links and this
may pose a problem since many WCDMA networks operate on different levels of synchronism.
If the transmissions are synchronized within approximately 80 ms soft combining is possible,
otherwise selection combining will be used (Parkvall 2006, p 73-74).
Selection combining gives less diversity gains than soft combining in the order of 2-3 dB. The
principle is to decode each signal received and for each TTI select one of the correctly decoded
blocks. When using the strategy it sufficient to buffer the information bits from each link and, for
large asynchronism, requires smaller buffers. The terminal will be informed about the level of
synchronism and can select strategy accordingly (Parkvall 2006, p 73-74).

Thefutureof3G
The 3G long term evolution (LTE) specifies a number of goals it wishes to achieve, among those
are (Ekstrm, 2006, p 38)

High data rates more than 100 MBps downlink and 50 MBps uplink peak data rate and
improved cell-edge throughput

Low latency less than 10 ms round trip time

Spectrum flexibility enabling deployment in different spectrum allocations

High spectral efficiency

The developing of the 3G LTE is an ongoing process and many of the techniques introduced
have been considered for the 4th generation (Ekstrm 2006, p 39). A few of these techniques will
be touched upon briefly below.
It is proposed that the number of nodes along the data path should be reduced by substituting
entities like the radio network controller (RNC) and the GPRS support node (GGSN) with a
single central node called the access core gateway (ACGW). This reduction of nodes would
reduce overall protocol-related processing and the number of interfaces which yields shorter call
setup times (Ekstrm 2006, p 39).
Further it is proposed that a classification scheme should be used to classify each packet with a
quality of service (QoS) indicator. This indicator would then effect strategies concerning queuing,
bandwidth allocation, scheduling and dropping of packets (Ekstrm 2006, p 40-41).
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an attractive choice to manage radio
resources since it allows for a smooth migration from earlier radio access technologies, has a
flexible spectrum allocation and performs well in frequency-selective channels. It is also possible
to operate in different spectrums by varying the number of subcarriers while keeping the
subcarrier spacing unchanged. This will effectively support transmissions in spectrum allocations
of 1.25, 2.5, 5, 10 and 20 MHz (Ekstrm 2006, p 41).
The proposed downlink structure is to use a subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz and time slots as short
as 500 s. The proposal intends to take the exploitation of channel variations used through link
adaptation with HSDPA one step further and also allow fast adaptation of parameters in the
frequency domain. The use of frequency domain adaptation can give large performance gains in
cases where the cannel varies significantly over the system bandwidth. The scheduler is now
responsible, based on feedback information about the downlink channel quality, to schedule
which user should transmit when, at what frequency or frequencies and at what data rate. The
principle is illustrated in Figure 6 (Ekstrm 2006, p 42).

Figure 6: Downlink and uplink principle structure (Ekstrm 2006, p 42, modified)

The uplink structure needs to allow for power efficient user-terminal transmissions to maximize
coverage. Therefore the preferred structure is to use a single-carrier FDMA, which can be seen in
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Figure 6. The base station scheduler assigns a unique time-frequency interval where the terminal
may transmit and thereby ensuring intracellular orthogonally. Primarily time domain scheduling is
used, but it is possible to use frequency domain scheduling for terminals with limitations in
transmitting power or the amount of data awaiting transmission. Frequency domain adaptation is
typically not used as each terminal cannot continuously transmit a pilot signal covering the entire
frequency domain (Ekstrm 2006, p 42).
In order to achieve high coverage, capacity and data rate it is necessary to consider multi-antenna
technologies as a well integrated part (Parkvall 2006, p 42-43). For example to achieve a high
peak data rate a multi-layer transmission could be used, to achieve a good coverage beamforming antennas are suitable and to achieve a high capacity a combination of the two mentioned
is suitable (3G Long Term Evolutions (LTE), 2007).

Conclusion
This paper has presented the basic principles of the WCDMA R99, the first WCDMA release. It
has then covered some of the advantages made in release 5 and release 6 to increase data rates
and base station efficiency. Finally it has looked upon the current standardization work for 3G
LTE, which is an ongoing project where we probably will see more efficient solutions emerging
as we approach the 4th generation of cellular communication systems.

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