10th Telecommunications forum TELFOR'2002, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Nov. 26-28, 2002.

Time Division Duplex MC-CDMA for Next Generation Mobile Radio Systems
Ivan Cosovic 1, Michael Schnell1 1Institute of Communications and Navigation, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany

I. INTRODUCTION Over the past several years there has been increased interest in wireless mobile communication systems that use code division multiple access (CDMA). The systems such us IS-95 (Direct Sequence CDMA, DS-CDMA) and UMTS (Wideband CDMA, W-CDMA) already use CDMA based techniques. On the other hand, thanks to excellent multi carrier (MC) modulation properties in the frequency selective fading radio channels, MC techniques gained a lot of popularity lately. The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as the most common MC technique has been chosen as the European standard for digital audio broadcasting (DAB) and as the digital terrestrial video standard (DVB-T) (OFDM in DAB and DVB-T). Following this, a lot of research was devoted to the usage of hybrid schemes that use the benefits of both CDMA and MC. This led to the development of MC-CDMA, MC-DS-CDMA and similar techniques that are suited for applications in future mobile communications [1]. The MC-CDMA proved to be a suitable technique for the downlink transmission [2]. Uplink transmission, due to the more complex propagation conditions, introduces additional problems which result in harder applicability of MC-CDMA in uplink. The goal of this work is to explain the problems involved in uplink transmission and to offer some solutions which enable us to use modified MC-CDMA as an uplink transmission technique. Moreover, time division duplex (TDD) MC-CDMA as a promising transmission technique for next generation mobile radio systems is presented. The remaining part of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II the basic principles of CDMA, MC and hybrid techniques will be reviewed. Then in Section III the principle of the channel estimation in the downlink MC-CDMA is presented. In Section IV main problems that occur in the uplink transmission are discussed. Section V introduces TDD MC-CDMA, that uses pre-compensation algorithm in order to overcome some of the problems that occur in uplink transmission. Possible TDD MC-CDMA strategies are presented in Section VI. Finally conclusions are given in Section VII.

II. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CDMA, MC AND HYBRID TECHNIQUES Principles of DS Spread Spectrum and Multi-Carrier Modulation In DS-CDMA multiple users simultaneously use the total available bandwidth at the same time. The separation of the users is performed in the code domain by using spreading codes with good correlation properties.

Figure 1: Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access principle. In MC transmission the available channel bandwidth is subdivided into Nc narrowband channels. The data symbol rate per subcarrier is reduced by a factor Nc and with that ISI is reduced. The most common MC technique is OFDM.

Figure 2: Multi Carrier modulation principle. Combinations of DS-CDMA with Multi-Carrier principle In MC-CDMA a data symbol is spread in frequency (spreading code is grouped in the frequency domain). Each user allocates the whole bandwidth all the time. Each chip of the code modulates one subcarrier. The users are separated by different codes.

Figure 3: Multi Carrier Code Division Multiple Access principle. MC-CDMA is very suitable for the downlink. The time and frequency synchronism between the users in the downlink allows a simple realisation of an efficient channel estimation at the mobile station required for coherent detection. MC-DS-CDMA extends a data symbol in time (spreading code is grouped in the time domain). The same spreading code is used for all subcarriers. Again, the separation between users is done through the spreading codes.

small with respect to coherence bandwidth and coherence time, only then the effects of time and frequency selectivity of the channel will be properly taken into account. Pilot symbols can be transmitted with larger average energy than the symbols. Such pilot symbols are called boosted pilot symbols. This provides us with a more accurate channel estimation but results in a reduced SNR for the received data. Several authors have investigated the optimal pilot symbols boosting level [3]. f
0 0 Nf Nc- 1

Nt

pilot symbols data symbols

Ns 1 -

Figure 5: Illustration of the pilot symbols insertion in the OFDM frame. Nc=21, Nf=5, Ns=10, Nt=3. In the given example (Figure 5) the number of carriers is Nc , the number of symbols is Ns, the distance between pilot symbols in time direction is Nt and the distance in frequency direction is Nf. The received symbols can be observed as, Ri , j = H i, j S i, j + N i, j , (ii)

Figure 4: Multi Carrier Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access principle. MC-DS-CDMA can be observed as a DS-CDMA performed over several subcarriers. If we set the number of subcarriers to one MC-DS-CDMA reduces to DS-CDMA. III. CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR THE MC-CDMA DOWNLINK In the case of coherent receivers, it is necessary to obtain the information about the channel state at the receiver. The transmission over a mobile radio channel is, in the most common case, described by the influence of random noise (AWGN) and frequency selective fading as given in (i), where S represents transmitted data matrix, R received data matrix, N the AWGN matrix and H the channel transfer function. The meaning of mentioned matrixes will be explained later on. The disturbances caused by fading can partly be estimated and removed. This is usually done by pilot symbol aided channel estimation [2]. R = HS + N (i) The principle of pilot symbol aided channel estimation is to multiplex pilot symbols into the data stream. At the receiver the position and the original values of the pilot symbols are known and are used to make initial estimations of the channel. This information is used to estimate the complete channel impulse response by filtering. In MC-CDMA the multiplexing of pilot symbols is done in both dimensions: time and frequency. The pilots and data symbols are multiplexed into a matrix structure called OFDM frame as shown in Figure 1. It has been shown in [2] that rectangularly distributed pilot symbols give optimal channel estimation performance. It is important to choose the distance of the pilot symbols in the time-frequency pattern sufficiently

where indices i,j represent the position in the OFDM grid (i=1,...,Nc ; j=1,...,N s), S i,j the transmitted symbols, Hi,j the channel transfer function and Ni,j the noise components. The first step is to make an estimation of the channel transfer function at the positions of the pilot symbols:

H i, j =

R i, j S i, j

(iii)

After getting initial estimates the estimate of the complete channel transfer function can be obtained by a 2-D filtering. It has been shown, that 2-D Wiener filtering can provide optimal coefficients. Due to the large computational complexity of 2-D filtering, two-times 1-D filtering can be used instead because it gives a good trade-off between performance and complexity. 1-D filtering is usually performed by first interpolating pilot symbols in frequency direction and afterwards with interpolation in time direction by using all pilot symbols and previously interpolated values (interpolated in frequency direction). The equalization of the received data symbols within an OFDM frame (Ri,j) is done using the information about the estimated channel transfer function. The received matrix of the OFDM frame is element-wise multiplied with the equalization matrix. The equalization matrix is calculated from the estimated channel transfer function by using one of the common methods given in [2]. IV. UPLINK TRANSMISSON - IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEMS The MC-CDMA as presented in [2] is very suitable for downlink transmission, but if we try to apply it directly to the uplink transmission we are facing some important problems. The main problems are: A. Channel estimation problem - Problem occurs because signals from many mobile stations that arrive at the

base station (BS) are affected by different channel transfer functions as illustrated in Figure 6. Since each signal is, due to the frequency selective fading, influenced by different channel transfer function, pilot based channel estimation becomes difficult. Pilot symbols from different users must be placed on different positions in OFDM frame, otherwise severe multi user interference will prevent estimating the channel of desired user. But, if each user needs dedicated positions on OFDM grid for the pilot symbols most of the bandwidth will be occupied by the pilot symbols and not enough bandwidth will be left for the data. As a result, the system capacity drastically decreases. B. Synchronization problem - Base station tries to synchronize with different users, but each signal has different Doppler shift. Also, at the base station we have signals from different users that try to synchronize to one time reference, but each user have different speed and different distance from the base station. Uplink synchronization for the MC-CDMA is difficult. One of the alternatives is to use MC-DS-CDMA with low number of subcarriers in asynchronous mode. The low number of subcarriers (4-16) results in the possibility to use the broadband transmission instead of OFDM and this leads to lower peak to average power ratio (PAPR). By operating in the asynchronous mode the problems of synchronization are avoided, but we decrease capacity. Other possibilities are to use frequency division multiple access (FDMA) based techniques such us: IFDMA [4], OFDMA, SS-MC-MA [2]. With frequency separation of the users we avoid the problem of the users that share the same bandwidth as in the case of CDMA techniques. In this work, we will develop TDD MC-CDMA which enables us to deal with some of the mentioned problems.

slots. The fact that the same frequency band is used in both directions will be exploited further on in order to develop TDD MC-CDMA that successfully deals with the channel estimation problem described in Section IV. Pre-compensation The idea is to estimate the channel only in the downlink transmission and to use this channel estimation also for the uplink transmission. Assumption is that the TDD time slot is short compared to the time-variance of the channel. Then, predictions of the channel are likely to be accurate for adjacent TDD time slots and we can adjust the transmission signal in order to achieve better performance. If this assumption is valid, pre-compensation will ensure the separation between users at the BS. For the downlink the channel is estimated by the pilot symbol aided channel estimation as described in Section III. However, for the uplink transmission no pilot symbol insertion is needed since we use the downlink estimation to precompensate the uplink frame.

Figure 7: Pre-compensation, basic principle. Pre-compensation in TDD mode As already described, the TDD mode separates uplink and downlik transmission in the time domain. This enables us to deploy pre-compensation algorithms. Pre-compensation operates on the premise that there is a correlation between downlink channel conditions and uplink channel conditions. This is a reasonable assumption especially in the case of a slowly varying channel. As shown in Figure 8, Hi (i=1,...,4) represents the channel transfer function in base station to mobile station (BS->MS) direction while Hi represents the channel transfer function in MS->BS direction, and we presume that Hi Hi. The downlink disturbances caused by Hi can be mainly eliminated with pilot symbol aided channel estimation at the MS as described in Section III. The calculated equalization matrix is also applied to the OFDM frame that we wish to transmit. This precompensates the influence of Hi.

H3

H4

H2
H5

H1

H7

H6

Figure 6: The typical propagation scenario in the case of uplink transmission. V. TDD MC-CDMA WITH PRE-COMPENSATION TDD Time Division Duplex In every two-way communication system it is necessary to use separated channels to transmit information in each direction. This is called duplexing. In wireless systems this is done by either separating the channels in frequency or in time Time Division Duplex (TDD) is a duplex technique where the same frequency band is used both by the base station and the mobile stations (downlink and uplink), but at different time

H 1 H1
H1

H 2 H2
H 3 H3

H4

H 4

Figure 8: The principle of pre-compensation.

The idea of pre-compensation can be further developed. It is also possible to pre-compensate Doppler shift or the time delays, by using the information acquired from the downlink frame. VI. POSSIBLE TDD STRATEGIES TDD transmission can be realized in several ways. We propose three possibilities which can be used as a base for more complex strategies. For each of the strategies the advantages (marked with +), and disadvantages (marked with -) are given. The following abbreviations are used: Ttdd TDD guard intervall, Tprop time of propagation, Test time of channel estimation, Twait - waiting time, Rx receiver, Tx transmitter, UL uplink, DL downlink. 1. Full TDD guard intervall + complete time separation of downlink and uplink long TDD-guard intervall Ttdd = 2Tprop + Test difficult frequency, time synchronisation of Rx, UL
0 250 Tprop Tx, DL pilot Rx, UL Tx, DL pilot 500 750 1000 t [s]

250

500 Tprop

750

1000 t [s]

Tx, DL

pilot

Tx, DL

Rx, UL

Tx, DL

Rx, DL Tprop

Rx, DL

Twait

Tx, UL

Tx, UL Test

VII. CONCLUSIONS This paper discusses TDD MC-CDMA as a promising transmission technique for next generation mobile radio systems. It is outlined where problems arise in uplink transmission, and how the channel pre-estimation can be successfully performed in the uplink case with the use of a pre-compensation algorithm at the transmitter. Next, possible TDD strategies have been discussed, with the special emphasis on the case of small radio cells with low time delay. In the future work presented TDD strategies will be further investigated, compared and developed. Also, the basic comparison between other possible uplink candidates is also given. REFERENCES [1] Fazel, K. and Papke, L., On the performance of Concolutionally-Coded CDMA/OFDM for Mobile Communication System, Proceedings IEEE International Symposium on presonal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC93), Yokohama, Japan, pages 468-472, Sep. 1993. [2] Kaiser, S., Multi-Carrier CDMA Mobile Radio Systems Analysis and Optimization of Detection, decoding and Channel Estimation, VDI Fortschrittberichte, reihe 10, Nr.531, Duesseldorf, Germany: VDI-Verlag GmbH, Jan. 1998. [3] Hoeher P., Kaiser, S. and Robertson, P., Pilot-symbolaided channel estimation in time and frequency, Procedeeings IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM97), Communicatio Theory Mini-Conference, Phoenix, USA, pp. 90-96, Nov. 1997. [4] Schnell, M., De Broeck, I., Sorger, A promising New Wideband Multiple-Access Scheme for Future Mobile Communications, European Transactions on Telecommunications (ETT), Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 417-427, Jul../Aug. 1999. Sadraj: Poslednjih godina mnoga istraivanja iz oblasti bezicnih telekomunkacija su posvecena hibridnim tehnikama koja koriste iskustva dobijena radom na code division multiple access (CDMA) tehnikama i multi carrier (MC) tehnikama. Kao rezultat pojavile su se tehnike kao: MC-CDMA, MC-DSCDMA. MC-CDMA se pokazala prikladnom downlink tehnikom za buduce aplikacije u telekomunikacijama (4G). S druge strane, mnogi problemi koji nastaju pri uplink trasmisiji i dalje nisu reeni. U radu je najpre dat kratak pregled pomenutih hibridnih tehnika, potom su opisani problemi koji se javljaju pri uplink trasnmisiji MC-CDMA signala. TDD MC-CDMA obecavajuca tehnika koja prevazilazi neke od problema u uplink-u je

Rx, DL Tprop Test

Tx, UL

2. Reduced TDD-guard intervall + shorter TDD-guard intervall Ttdd = 2Tprop we are transmiting at least 2 Tx, DL packets together Twait makes estimated channel value older
0 250 500 Tprop Tx, DL pilot Tx, DL Rx, UL Tx, DL pilot 750 1000 t [s]

Rx, DL Tprop

Rx, DL

Twait Tx, UL Tx, UL Test

3. No TDD-guard intervall, small cells Assumption: 2Tprop + Test less than OFDM guard intervall + no TDD-guard intervall, no Twait + interference between Rx,UL and Tx, DL eliminated with OFDM guard intervall Test=0, is that realistic?
0 250 Tprop Tx, DL pilot Rx, UL Tx, DL 500 750 1000 t [s]

Rx, DL Tprop

Tx, UL

Assumption: processing delay Test larger than OFDM guard intervall + advantages similiar as in case above Twait>0, we use older channel estimation

prezentevona i detaljno opisana sa algoritmom za prekompenzaciju kanala. Predocene su moguce strategije kojima se mo e realizovati TDD mod. Posebna panja je posvecena propagaciji u pico celijama, gde je i MC-CDMA u TDD modu pre svega i namenjena da funkcionie. Time Division Duplex MC-CDMA za buducu generaciju mobilnih radio sistema, Ivan C osovi c, Michael Schnell.