WMCE

Module-1
Cellular Concept :
The cellular concept is to partition a geographical area into “cells”, each covering a
small fraction of a city. Each cell is allocated a “channel group”, i.e., a subset of the
total list of channels. A second cell, distant from a first cell using a particular channel
group, can reuse the same channel group. This is called “frequency reuse”. This
assumes that at a long distance, the signals transmitted in the first cell are too low by
the time they reach the second cell to significantly interfere with the use of those
channels in the second cell. There are dramatic technical implications of the cellular
concept. First, rather than one base station, you need dozens or hundreds, deployed
across a city. You need automatic and robust mobility management (handoff) to allow
users to cross cell lines and continue a phone call. Both of these are actually enabled
by semiconductor technology advancement, which made the base stations and the
automated wired PSTN cheaper.

Key Terms:
Communication between two parties (a “link”), in general, can be one of the
following:
Simplex : Data/Voice is transferred in only one direction (e.g., paging). Not even an
acknowledgement of receipt is returned.

Half Duplex : Data/Voice is transferred in one direction at a time. One can’t talk and
listen at the same time. One channel is required.

Full Duplex : Data/Voice can be transferred in both directions between two parties at
the same time. This requires two channels.In a cellular system, there is full duplex
communication, between a base station and a mobile. The two directions are called
either uplink (from mobile to base station) or downlink (from BS to mobile). The
downlink channel is synonymous with “forward channel”; the uplink channel is
synonymous with the “reverse channel”.Simultaneous communication on the many
channels needed for many users (radios) to communicate with a base station can be
accomplished by one (or a combination) of the following multiple access methods.

Frequency division multiple access (FDMA): Each channel occupies a different band
of the frequency spectrum. Each signal can be up-converted to a frequency band by
multiplying it by a sinusoid at the center frequency of that band, and then filtering out
any out-of-band content.
Time division multiple access (TDMA): Every period of time can be divided into short
segments, and each channel can be carried only during its segment. This requires each
device to be synchronized to have the same time clock.
Code division multiple access (CDMA): Many channels occupies the same frequency
band, at the same time. However, each channel occupies a different “code channel”.
Like sinusoids at different frequencies are orthogonal (non-interfering), sets of code
signals can also be made so that all code signals are orthogonal to each other. One
user’s channel is multiplied by one code in the set, and at the receiver, can be
separated from the other signals by filtering (like frequency bands can be filtered to
remove out-of-band content).

Public switched telephone network (PSTN): Wired telephone network, connecting

homes, businesses, switching centers.

Mobile switching center (MSC), a.k.a. mobile telephone switching office (MTSO):
Controls connection of wireless phone calls through the base stations to the PSTN.
Connected either by wire or by wireless (microwave relay) to the base stations.

Base station (BS): Maintains direct wireless connection to cell phones in its cell.
Typically maintains many connections simultaneously. Has multiple antennas, some
for downlink and some for uplink.

In cellular systems, there are actually two types of channels: (1) Control, and (2)
Communication. The control channel is needed to tell the mobile device what to do, or
for the mobile to tell the BS or MSC what to do. The communication channel is the
“voice channel” or data channel, the actual information that the user / system needs to
convey in order to operate. Since we also have a forward and reverse channel (for full
duplex communication), we have
FCC: Forward control channel
FVC: Forward voice channel(s)
RCC: Reverse control channel
RVC: Reverse voice channel(s)

Frequency Reuse:

A cell is the area in which a mobile is served by a single BS. When the signal from the
base station becomes too weak, the mobile will not be able to be served by the BS.
This defines the outer limit of a cell’s coverage area.
What shape is a cell ?
Circular (theoretical): If path loss was a strictly decreasing function of distance, say,
1/dn, where d is the distance from BS to mobile and n is the “path loss exponent”, then
the cell will be a perfect circle. This is never really true, but is often used to get a
general idea.
An approximation to the theoretical shape: required for a tessellation (non-overlapping
repetitive placement of a shape that achieves full coverage. Think floor tiles.) Possible
“tile” shapes include triangles, squares, hexagons. Hexagons are closest to reality.

A cellular system assigns subsets, “channel groups”, of the total set of channels to
each cell. Call the total number of channels S, and the number of channel groups N .
Then there are on average k = S/N channels per cell, and N cells per cluster. (In
reality, k may vary between groups.) Then with N channel groups, how do we assign
them? We want cells that reuse group A, for example, to be as far apart as possible.
The total number of channels in a deployment are S times the number of clusters in
our deployment area. If we’re limited by spectrum (number of channels) and want to
increase the capacity over a fixed area, we want to maximize the number of clusters,
or minimize the area covered by any particular cluster. This is why we might use
smaller and smaller cell diameters as we want to increase our system capacity.

Channel Assignment
Two ways:
Fixed assignment : Each base station has a fixed set of channels to use. Simple, but a
busy cell will run out of channels before a neighboring cell. System performance will
be limited by the most crowded cell.
Dynamic allocation: Each base station can change the channels it uses. Channels in
neighboring cells must still be different. This requires more careful control, but
increases the capacity.

Hexagonal tessellation and channel groupings for N = 3, 4, 7, and 12

All cellular tiling patterns can be represented using two non-negative integers, i How
do you generally “move” from one cell to the co-channel cell (a second cell assigned
the same and j. The integer i is the number of cells to move from one cell in one
direction. Then, turn 60 degrees counter-clockwise and move j cells in the new
direction.
N = i2 + ij + j2
For example i = 2, j = 0. In this notation, the number of cells can be shown to be:

If the distance between the BS and a vertex in its cell is called R, its “radius”, then this
co-channel reuse distance D is: D  R 3N .The ratio of D/R = 3N is called Q, the co-
channel reuse ratio.

Co-Channel Interference:

This ratio is abbreviated S/I. Signal power is the desired signal, from the base station
which is serving the mobile. The interference is the sum of the signals sent by co-
channel base stations, which is not intended to be heard by mobiles in this cell. The
S/I ratio is defined as:

Where Ii is the power received by the mobile from a co-channel BS, of which there are
i0, and S is the power received by the mobile from the serving BS. NOTE: All powers
in the S/I equation above are LINEAR power units (Watts or milliWatts).
We model the received power as inversely proportional to distance to the n power, for
some constant path loss exponent n: S = cd−n for some real valued constant c.

We typically look at the worst case, when the S/I is the lowest. This happens when the
mobile is at the vertex of the hexagonal cell,i.e.at the radius R from the serving BS. So
we know S = cR−n.
To calculate the distances to the neighboring cells from the mobile at the vertex the
easiest approximation is (1) that only the first “tier” of co-channel BSs matter; (2) all
mobile-to-co-channel-BS distances are approximately equal to D, the distance
between the two co-channel BSs. In this case,where i 0 is the number of co-channel
cells in the first tier. For all N , we have i 0 = 6 this will change when using sector
antennas, so it is useful to leave i0 as a variable in the denominator. It is useful to
report the S/I in dB, because S/I requirements are typically given in dB.

Handoff:

As a mobile travels beyond the coverage region of its serving BS, it must be
transferred to better BS. If the average received power drops too low prior to handoff,
the call is “dropped”.
This minimum average received power, below which a call cannot be received, as
Pr,minimum usable. We want to initiate a handoff much prior to this point, so we set a higher
threshold Pr,handoff at which the MSC initiates the handoff procedure.
Instantaneous power may go down or up very quickly due to multipath fading. The
time-averaged received power will be less variable, but will still vary due to changes
in the path length (and thus the large-scale path loss) and due to shadowing.
Regardless, at high mobile speeds, this handoff needs to happen quickly.
In GSM, handoff is typically within 1-2 seconds. In AMPS, this was 10 seconds
(higher potential for dropped calls!)
Define handoff margin as ∆ : ∆ = Pr,handoff − Pr,minimum usable .

Mobile handoff (in GSM) is mobile-assisted hand-off (MAHO), in which the mobile
measures the FCC from neighboring BSs, and reports them to the MSC.
Handoff assumes that there is a channel in the new BS to offer the entering mobile!
But there may not be, and the call may be dropped for this reason. Users complain
about dropped calls. So BSs may reserve “guard channels” purely for handoff
purposes, which then are not offered to mobiles making new calls.

CDMA phones do not require the same type of handoff as in GSM. In CDMA, a user
does not need to switch “channel”. Multiple base stations simultaneously receive a
mobile’s signal, and the MSC can combine the signals in some way (to obtain the best
received signal). “Soft” handoff changes: which BSs are receiving the mobile’s signal,
and which BS (singular) is sending the replies.
Trunking:
Trunking refers to sharing few channels among many users. Let U be the number of
users, and C be the number of channels. Each user requires a channel infrequently, so
a dedicated channel for each user is not required. But, the request for a channel
happens at random times, and so for any C < U , it is possible that there will be more
requests than channels.
Erlang : A “unit” of measure of usage or traffic intensity. One Erlang is the traffic
intensity carried by one channel that is occupied all of the time. 0.1 Erlang is the same
channel occupied only 10% of the time.
Average holding time: Average call duration, denoted H.
Call rate: Average number of calls per unit time, denoted λ. Typically taken to be at
the busiest time of day.
Total offered traffic intensity : The total amount of traffic users request of the system,
denoted A.
Grade of Service (GOS): The probability an offered call will be blocked (and thus not
served, or carried by the system).
An average user will request (offer) this much traffic, A u = λH. For example, if a user
makes on average, two calls per hour, and that call lasts an average of 3 minutes, A u =
60 min
0.1 Erlang.
Then, to compute the total offered traffic intensity, and the total offered traffic
intensity per channel (denoted Ac), A = UAu,Ac = A/C
For the above example, assume that there are 1000 users and 200 channels. Then A =
1000(0.1) = 100, and Ac = 100/200 = 0.5.
Note that Ac is a measure of the efficiency of the utilization of the channels.
Ac should be less than one (A < C); or we’ll never satisfy our call demand.
What do we do when a call is offered (requested) but all channels are full?
Blocked calls cleared : Ignore it.
Blocked calls delayed : Postpone it!

Blocked calls cleared:

Call requests are a Poisson process. That is, the times between calls are exponentially
distributed, and memoryless. Call durations are also exponentially distributed.
Rather than a finite number U of users each requesting Au traffic, we set the total
offered traffic as a constant A, and then let U → ∞ and A u → 0 in a way that preserves
UAu = A. This is the “infinite number of users” assumption that simplifies things
considerably.

These assumptions, along with the blocked calls cleared setup of the system, leads to
the Erlang B formula:
By setting the desired GOS, we can derive what number of channels we need; or the
maximum number of users we can support (remember A = UAu); or the maximum Au
we can support (and set the number of minutes on our calling plans accordingly).

Blocked calls delayed:

Instead of clearing a call; put it in a queue (a first-in, first-out line). Have it wait its
turn for a channel. (“Calls will be processed in the order received”). There are now
two things to determine:
1. The probability a call will be delayed (enter the queue).
2. The probability that the delay will be longer than t seconds.

The first is no longer the same as in (2); it goes up, because blocked calls aren’t
cleared, they “stick around” and wait for the first open channel.
Here, we clarify the meaning of GOS for a blocked calls delayed system. Here it
means the probability that a call will be forced into the queue AND it will wait longer
than t seconds before being served (for some given t).

We need a couple additional assumptions:

The queue is infinitely long. In a computer system, this translates to infinite memory.
No one who is queued gives up / hangs up (rather than wait).
With these assumptions, we can derive the Erlang C formula, for the probability that a
call will be delayed:

k=0
Once it enters the queue, the probability that the delay is greater than t (for t > 0) is
given as

The two combined are needed to find the marginal (overall) probability that a call will
be delayed AND experience a delay greater than t, the event that we are quantifying in
GOS.
Increasing Capacity and Coverage:
Sectoring :
In sectoring, we divide each cell into three or six “sectors” which are then served by
three or six separate directional antennas, each with beamwidth of about 120 or 60
degrees.
When we used omnidirectional antennas at each BS, we saw that i 0 = 6 regardless of N
. By using sector antennas at the BSs, we will show that i 0 reduces. By reducing the
S/I ratio for a given N , we allow a system to be deployed for a lower N , and therefore
a higher capacity system.However, each cell’s channel group must be divided into
three sub-groups. These new groups have 1/3 or 1/6 the number of channels, and thus
the trunking efficiency will be lower.

Microcells:
When we introduced “cells” we said the radius was a variable R. The idea of using
microcells is that for a densely populated area, we cut the size of the cell by half. In
this microcell-covered area, the concept of frequency reuse occurs described earlier,
only with smaller R. The smaller R also has the benefit that transmit powers would be
cut by a factor of 2n . The other main benefit is that by reducing the area of a cell by a
factor of four (forced by cutting R by two) the capacity in the microcell area is
increased by four. For example, consider Figure 8, which shows an original macrocell
grid, next to an “inserted” microcell area.

However, at the edges of the microcell area, there is a conflict. Cells that were
separated
by distance R√(3N) for the initial R are no longer separated by that much. Conflicts in
channel assignments at the edges are solved by splitting the channel group into two
sub-groups. These subgroups can have different sizes, e.g., the sub-group used for the
microcell might have fewer channels assigned to it compared to the macrocell.
(a) macrocells (b) macrocells plus microcells.