In-Building Solutions

Introduction

The wide area coverage system are usually planned not only to provide contiguous cover
throughout the operational area of RF Systems, but also to provide adequate in-building
coverage, as an integral part of the overall coverage plan. This will be achieved through
strategic siting of the Tetra radio sites, to provide adequate RF penetration of standard
buildings, as well as wide area coverage.

However it is recognised, particularly in a military and harsh environment, that a substantial

quantity of building will fall outside the normal building composition pattern, in that they will
have:

(1) Substantially thicker walls than the standard building, or their material composition
will act as a block to RF penetration, Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSS)
(2) All or part of the building may be underground
(3) Substantial internal obstructions
(4) Not cost effective to provide RF penetration from an external site

These environments are particularly hostile to RF penetration and require specialist solutions
in order to provide the required level of coverage.

General Solution

In order to provide those specialist solutions, confined space technology will be used in order
to provide a working signal throughout the complete building and its environs. Equally those
same solutions can also be used to provide coverage within tunnels and underground
complexes. It is worthy of note, that using these solutions, would lead to a reduction in the
number of external sites and tailored coverage.

These technologies consist of a number of methodologies, but in the case of UHF systems,
only one generic solution is both cost and operationally effective.

This solution evolves around picking up the signal from an external site (known as the donor),
and relaying that signal either through a distributed antenna system or radiating feeder
network within the building. A brief technical description is as follows:

The signal is picked up from the external site (Off Air), through a receive antenna, and is then
fed to a Cell Enhancer, located within the building. A brief technical discussion is attached,
which addresses the technical aspects, such as inter-modulation effects and delay that must be
considered when using Cell Enhancer technology for Tetra systems.

The signal is amplified and repeated within the Cell Enhancer, and is then re-radiated within
the building either through a distributed antenna system, radiating feeder or a combination of
both. In terms of cost the preferred radiation method is via distributed antenna networks.
Should the amplification provided by the Cell Enhancer be inadequate to cover the complete
building then in-line bi-directional amplifiers can also be added to the network. The signal
going from the Cell Enhancer through the internal system to the terminal is known as the
downlink. The reverse which is the terminal back to the Cell Enhancer is known as the uplink.
The uplink signal is fed back to the Cell Enhancer, through a transmit antenna and thence to
the external base station. Splitters and Couplers are used in order to feed a number of
antennas and/or radiating cables. Both uplink and downlink have to be carefully engineered to
ensure reciprocity of service. Equally careful engineering is required to minimise signal
leakage from the building, as such leakage could impact on the frequency plan and frequency
reuse pattern.

In particularly complex environments, or environments where the cosmetic aspects are of

critical concern, parts of the technology such as the co-axial cables can be substituted by
Fibre optic cables and RF-Optical, Optical-RF converters. This means that the signal can be
relayed up to distances of 20 kilometres without additional amplification. However this
technology is costly and would only be used where the operational need dictated
 The Use of Cell Enhancers in Tetra Networks

1. Introduction

The adoption of the Tetra standard for future digital PMR networks introduced new aspects
which had to be considered for providing communication in confined spaces.
The Tetra standards of performance are well documented for various types of outside
environment e.g. the urban, rural and hilly terrain encountered in typical PMR systems, but
little work had been done in the other environments where PMR is frequently used such as
inside buildings and underground in tunnels shopping centres etc.

For confined space communication systems various techniques are used to overcome the
difficulties of propagation underground, such as radiating feeder cables with in line
amplifiers, off air reception using Cell enhancers etc etc..

The following paragraphs consider various important aspects which must be addressed when
engineering confined space systems using Tetra modulation.

2. Intermodulation Effects

To allow co-existence of Tetra with traditional analogue FM systems (which may be

operating in the adjacent channel 25kHz away) during the gradual migration of PMR users
from one modulation technique to the other, there are stringent adjacent channel emission
requirements in the Tetra specification.

To achieve the adjacent channel power which is specified, the power amplifiers of Tetra base
stations must be extremely linear in order to prevent them spreading their digitally modulated
signal into the next channel.

Typical base station power amplifiers are realised as Class AB stages and they contain
correction loops to achieve the linearity required.

Cell Enhancer / In Line amplifiers are typically Class A devices and they are inherently more
linear than Class AB types, however care must be taken to operate them at signal levels which
are commensurate with their peak power capability.

Measurements have shown that a Cell Enhancer amplifier with +55dBm Output Intercept
rating can amplify a 1 Watt (+30dBm) Tetra signal with negligible effect an the adjacent
channel power of the signal.

In the confined space environment where Cell Enhancers or in-line amplifiers are required,
maintaining the Tetra specified adjacent channel power will place limitations on the power
level of each carrier but these appear little more severe than the intermodulation constraints
which have been addressed in conventional PMR service.

In the confined space environment, strict limits on adjacent channel power and IM is not
always necessary. In the vast majority of cases there will not be any services using the
affected channels in the underground location and therefore the adjacent channel power /IM
specifications are not so critical and could be relaxed.

The confined space system designer should be able to use his knowledge and discretion to
decide whether the frequency plan and RF propagation characteristics of a particular system
can tolerate such a relaxation in adjacent channel power and IM suppression.
3. Delay Effects

The effects of delay on the Tetra digital modulation format will be more serious than has been
the case with analogue FM and a more careful treatment must be given to analyse delay
during system design.

There are two main problems with delay in digital systems such as Tetra.

3.1 Bulk Time Delay

The system timing places an upper limit on the total round trip propagation delay to the
mobile station and therefore there is a finite limit to system range before communication must
fail.

This is because timing between different mobiles is critical. Each mobile transmission must
fall in it’s proper time slot or it will corrupt the signals of its neighbours. Timing advance at
the mobile can be adjusted for compensation of bulk delay effects but there is an upper limit
beyond which communication will fail.

These effects are found in GSM cellular where there is a maximum range limit and a
maximum speed of travel. The range is limited by the available timing advance, while the
speed of travel is limited by the rate at which the timing advance can be adjusted once a call is
in progress.

A further aspect of timing control for Cell Enhancer systems is that the system protocol must
be capable of adjusting the mobile timing when a station moves from direct coverage into an
area served by Cell Enhancer. The propagation time difference between the direct radio path
and the path via the Cell enhancer must be corrected out rapidly or the call will fail due to
missed time slots.

It has been suggested that Tetra signal propagation has a delay limited range of 56km,
equivalent to a one way propagation time of approximately 187uS.

3.2 Group Delay

If delay is not constant across the bandwidth of a Tetra transmission then data corruption
could occur because different components of the signal arrive at slightly different times in
spite of the fact that they left the transmitter together. Such effects are common in the multi
path situation where signals can be reflected by buildings, terrain etc.

The Tetra specification acknowledges these effects by defining different classes of receiver,
the Class A,B and E standards. Receiver class E includes an equaliser for better performance
with channels including delayed components of the signal (reflections in hilly terrain) which
of course can be similar to the situation in Cell Enhancer systems where coverage overlap
occurs between direct and enhanced signal components.

Any filters used in Cell Enhancer systems, particularly those in Channelised types using
narrow bandwidths, are chosen for a delay characteristic that is as constant as possible across
the bandwidth of the Tetra emission.
3.3 Delay Measurements

Measurements of delay have been made for some typical filters which would be used in
constructing Tetra Cell Enhancers and the results have been evaluated against the gross
transmission rate of Tetra at 36 Kbit/s and the equivalent bit duration which can be calculated
as approximately 27.8 uS.

For the case where a direct BS signal; and an indirect signal from a Cell Enhancer are
received together at approximately equal signal levels it can be proposed that to avoid
excessive intersysmbol interference the tolerable difference in delay should be <1/4 symbol
duration or approx 7uS.

This situation could exist in the approach road to a traffic tunnel for example where a small
coverage overlap frequently occurs between the signal arriving direct from the base station
and the enhanced signal which is radiated inside the tunnel. Under these conditions it is
suggested that the delay difference between the two paths should be kept to less than 7uS to
avoid data corruption.

3.4 Cell Enhancer Band Selective Type

For the band selective type, measurements suggest that about 500nS delay occurs in each
bandpass filter (assuming 2.5 MHz BW) . A Band Selective Cell Enhancer could typically
contain three of these filters and so have a total time delay of about 1.5uS.

For most practical Tetra applications this will be acceptable. Cell Enhancer delay is so short
that has an insignificant effect on delay limited range and the timing equalisation of the
protocol should be more than adequate to cope with the delay change due to the Cell
Enhancer which occurs when moving between outside and inside coverage.

For systems with overlap areas between enhanced and direct coverage a further 5.5 uS of
delay is available for the differences in propagation time between the direct BTS-Mobile path
and the enhanced BTS-CE-MS path before intersysmbol interference is likely to become
troublesome. This equates to a differential path length in air of 1.65km or about 1km in
cable. (Due to reduced velocity of propagation).

3.5 Cell Enhancer Channelised Type

The channelised Cell Enhancer using an IF filter will introduce greater delays.
These will be approximately 5uS for a 200kHz IF BW type and 18uS for 40kHz IF BW type.

The delay time of the 40kHz BW type is about equal to 1/2 a Tetra symbol delay and the
result of equal level direct and enhanced signals arriving together would probably be a very
high Bit Error Rate.

This fact would mean that the 40kHz BW type of Cell Enhancer would be limited to the case
where no equi-signal overlap areas can occur. For this situation the designer should aim for a
wanted to unwanted protection ratio of 20dB. This would mean tailoring coverage to make
the boundary between BS and CE coverage very abrupt.

Compared to the one way Tetra delay limit of 187uS, the time delays of the Channelised Cell
Enhancers can be expected to fall within timing advance capability of the Tetra protocol.
The 18uS delay of the 40 kHz type would reduce the 56km range limit to around 50km. It is
unlikely that Cell Enhancers would ever be deployed at such extreme range.
It is, however, important to realise that the timing protocol must be capable of correcting the
round trip timing change when a Mobile Station passes from direct coverage (outside) to
enhanced coverage (inside a confined space, tunnel etc) or vice versa. This adjustment would
be 2x 18 =36uS for the 40kHz BW type.