Auto configuration dans LTE : procédés de mesure de l’occupation du canal radio pour une utilisation optimisée du spectre

Projecte final de carrera realitzat en col.laboració amb el centre INP Grenoble - ENSIMAG. École Nationale Supérieure d’Informatique et de Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble i Alcatel-Lucent Bell LabsLong Term Evolution (LTE) est la quatrième génération de technologies radio qui est conçue afin de fournir des débits de données élevés aux mobiles, offrir une faible latence et permettre une flexibilité accrue dans l'attribution du spectre de fréquence. Les techniques de réutilisation du spectre permettent ainsi de faire face à la demande croissante en bande passante des utilisateurs. Nous nous concentrons sur le cas où toutes les cellules partagent la même bande de fréquence (frequency reuse-1). Ces cellules ainsi déployées peuvent générer des niveaux d’interférence intra-canal importants, ce qui affecte considérablement les performances du réseau. Le but de ce stage est de développer des méthodes de sensing du spectre permettant de caractériser les cellules qui partagent les mêmes ressources radio. En utilisant des informations telles que nombre de cellules en compétition notamment, les mécanismes d’allocation des ressources radio peuvent être optimisés, améliorent ainsi la performance du réseau. Les méthodes ainsi étudiées exploitent les propriétés d’orthogonalité des canaux de contrôle tels que signaux de synchronisation diffusés par chaque station de base. Une première étape du stage a ainsi consisté à mettre en place des méthodes de synchronisation fiables en ‘frequency reuse-1’ et d’en étudier les performances. Au cours de la deuxième partie du stage, une méthode d’identification du nombre de cellules en compétition sur un même canal est proposée. Cette méthode repose sur l’utilisation des canaux de synchronisation. Le stage a lieu sur le site de Villarceaux d’ Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs et s’est intégré aux projets de recherche sur l'auto-configuration des cellules dans un réseau LTE. Ce rapport présente les travaux réalisés pendant le stage. Celui-ci s’est concentré sur la procédure réalisée par les mobiles afin de se synchroniser au réseau. Dans cette optique,nous avons proposé une méthode pour trouver le nombre des cellules en compétition, afin de caractériser l'occupation du spectre

Terminal LTE flexível

Mstrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e TelecomunicaçõesAs redes móveis estão em constante evolução. A geração atual (4G) de redes celulares de banda larga e representada pelo standard Long Term Evolution (LTE), definido pela 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Existe uma elevada procura/uso da rede LTE, com um aumento exponencial do número de dispositivos móveis a requerer uma ligação à Internet de alto débito. Isto pode conduzir à sobrelotação do espetro, levando a que o sinal tenha que ser reforçado e a cobertura melhorada em locais específicos, tal como em grandes conferências, festivais e eventos desportivos. Por outro lado, seria uma vantagem importante se os utilizadores pudessem continuar a usar os seus equipamentos e terminais em situações onde o acesso a redes 4G é inexistente, tais como a bordo de um navio, eventos esporádicos em localizações remotas ou em cenários de catástrofe, em que as infraestruturas que permitem as telecomunicações foram danificadas e a cobertura temporária de rede pode ser decisiva em processos de salvamento. Assim sendo, existe uma motivação clara por trás do desenvolvimento de uma infraestrutura celular totalmente reconfigurável e que preencha as características mencionadas anteriormente. Uma possível abordagem consiste numa plataforma de rádio definido por software (SDR), de código aberto, que implementa o standard LTE e corre em processadores de uso geral (GPPs), tornando possível construir uma rede completa investindo somente em hardware - computadores e front-ends de radiofrequência (RF). Após comparação e análise de várias plataformas LTE de código aberto foi selecionado o OpenAirInterface (OAI) da EURECOM, que disponibiliza uma implementação compatível com a Release 8.6 da 3GPP (com parte das funcionalidades da Release 10). O principal objectivo desta dissertação é a implementação de um User Equipment (UE) flexível, usando plataformas SDR de código aberto que corram num computador de placa única (SBC) compacto e de baixa potência, integrado com um front-end de RF - Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). A transmissão de dados em tempo real usando os modos de duplexagem Time Division Duplex (TDD) e Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) é suportada e a reconfiguração de certos parâmetros é permitida, nomeadamente a frequência portadora, a largura de banda e o número de Resource Blocks (RBs) usados. Além disso, é possível partilhar os dados móveis LTE com utilizadores que estejam próximos, semelhante ao que acontece com um hotspot de Wi-Fi. O processo de implementação é descrito, incluindo todos os passos necessários para o seu desenvolvimento, englobando o port do UE de um computador para um SBC. Finalmente, a performance da rede é analisada, discutindo os valores de débitos obtidos.Mobile networks are constantly evolving. 4G is the current generation of broadband cellular network technology and is represented by the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, de ned by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). There's a high demand for LTE at the moment, with the number of mobile devices requiring an high-speed Internet connection increasing exponentially. This may overcrowd the spectrum on the existing deployments and the signal needs to be reinforced and coverage improved in speci c sites, such as large conferences, festivals and sport events. On the other hand, it would be an important advantage if users could continue to use their equipment and terminals in situations where cellular networks aren't usually available, such as on board of a cruise ship, sporadic events in remote locations, or in catastrophe scenarios in which the telecommunication infrastructure was damaged and the rapid deployment of a temporary network can save lives. In all of these situations, the availability of exible and easily deployable cellular base stations and user terminals operating on standard or custom bands would be very desirable. Thus, there is a clear motivation for the development of a fully recon gurable cellular infrastructure solution that ful lls these requirements. A possible approach is an open-source, low-cost and low maintenance Software-De ned Radio (SDR) software platform that implements the LTE standard and runs on General Purpose Processors (GPPs), making it possible to build an entire network while only spending money on the hardware itself - computers and Radio-Frequency (RF) front-ends. After comparison and analysis of several open-source LTE SDR platforms, the EURECOM's OpenAirInterface (OAI) was chosen, providing a 3GPP standard-compliant implementation of Release 8.6 (with a subset of Release 10 functionalities). The main goal of this dissertation is the implementation of a exible opensource LTE User Equipment (UE) software radio platform on a compact and low-power Single Board Computer (SBC) device, integrated with an RF hardware front-end - Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). It supports real-time Time Division Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) LTE modes and the recon guration of several parameters, namely the carrier frequency, bandwidth and the number of LTE Resource Blocks (RB) used. It can also share its LTE mobile data with nearby users, similarly to a Wi-Fi hotspot. The implementation is described through its several developing steps, including the porting of the UE from a regular computer to a SBC. The performance of the network is then analysed based on measured results of throughput

Narrowband IoT: from the end device to the cloud. An experimental end-to-end study

This thesis is about a novel study and experimentation of a Cloud IoT application, communicating over a NB-IoT Italian network. So far there no been presented studies, which are about the interactions between the NB-IoT network and the cloud. This thesis not only fill this gap but also shows the use of Cognitive Services to interact, through the human voice, with the IoT application. Compared with other types of mobile networks, NB-IoT is the best choice

System optimisation and radio planning for future LTE-advanced

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis work is related to wireless communication. In this Thesis three main issues are addressed for future cellular networks: power consumption, interference and mobility. These issues continue to be a burden on the system’s performance as long as technology keeps evolving. In the presented chapters, the focus was to introduce greater intelligence to the LTE system algorithms and bring to them a dynamic and self-organizing approach. The first approach concerns power consumption in wireless terminals. The currently applied solution to save energy is the DRX mechanism. It organizes the time when the terminal wakes up and starts receiving data, and when it goes into sleep mode in order to save its battery power. The current DRX is described as static or fixed which makes its parameters unsuitable for the nature of the bursty traffic. In this work an adaptive DRX mechanism is proposed and evaluated as the wireless terminal battery saving algorithm. The second approach is co-channel interference mitigation. To increase the system’s capacity and avoid spectrum scarcity, small cells such as Femtocells are deployed and operate on the same frequency bands as the Macrocell. Although these small nodes increase the system capacity, however, the challenges will be in the femtocells planning and management in addition to the interference issues. Here a dynamic interference cancellation approach is presented to enable the Femtocell to track the allocated resources to the Macro-users, and to avoid using them. The third approach concerns mobility management in heterogeneous networks. The wireless terminal may have different mobility levels during handover which increases the handover failures due to failure in handover commands and aging of the reported parameters. This issue is presented in detail with the aim to avoid performance degradation and improve the reporting mechanisms during fast mobility levels. For this regard the presented method proposes more cooperation between the serving cell and the end-user so that the large amount of overhead and measurement are reduced. Simulations with different configurations are conducted to present the results of the proposed models. Results show that the proposed models bring improvements to the LTE system. The enhanced self-organized architecture in the three presented approaches performs well in terms of power saving, dynamic spectrum utilization by Femtocells, and mitigation of sudden throughput degradation due to the serving cell’s downlink signal outage during mobility.Brunel University Londo

Initial Access Frameworks for 3GPP NR at mmWave Frequencies

The use of millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies for communication will be one of the innovations of the next generation of cellular mobile networks (5G). It will provide unprecedented data rates, but is highly susceptible to rapid channel variations and suffers from severe isotropic pathloss. Highly directional antennas at the transmitter and the receiver will be used to compensate for these shortcomings and achieve sufficient link budget in wide area networks. However, directionality demands precise alignment of the transmitter and the receiver beams, an operation which has important implications for control plane procedures, such as initial access, and may increase the delay of the data transmission. This paper provides a comparison of measurement frameworks for initial access in mmWave cellular networks in terms of detection accuracy, reactiveness and overhead, using parameters recently standardized by the 3GPP and a channel model based on real-world measurements. We show that the best strategy depends on the specific environment in which the nodes are deployed, and provide guidelines to characterize the optimal choice as a function of the system parameters.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, accepted to the IEEE 17th Annual Mediterranean Ad Hoc Networking Workshop (Med-Hoc-Net). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1804.0190

Frequency synchronization in HSPA+/LTE communications : a general model and towards uniform implementation

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Evaluation of 3GPP Technology Candidate Towards Fourth Generation Mobile

[ES] LTE-Advanced es una de las tecnologías candidatas para convertirse en la próxima generación de comunicaciones móviles (4G). Es responsabilidad de la Unión Internacional de las Telecomunicaciones (UIT) evaluar esta tecnología a través de los Grupos de Evaluación Externos (GEE), entre los cuales se encuentra el consorcio WINNER+ (Wireless World Initiative New Radio +). El Grupo de Comunicaciones Móviles (GCM) del Instituto de Telecomunicaciones y Aplicaciones Multimedia, como socio de WINNER+, está analizando diferentes técnicas para optimizar la red de acceso radio LTEAdvanced. Esta tesina de máster se enmarca dentro de este trabajo, y especialmente, en la comparación de los turbo-códigos (TC) y Low Density Partity Check (LDPC) para anchos de banda de hasta 100 MHz. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que tanto los TC como los LDPC son buenos codificadores para esos tamaños de bloque. Los códigos LDPC representan una mejora de 0.5 dB como máximo respecto a los TC. Además, se ha realizado un estudio de prestaciones de la capa física de LTE en el enlace ascendente y descendente, junto con una propuesta de calibración de este tipo de simulaciones de enlace.[EN] LTE-Advanced is one promising candidate technology to become part of the next generation mobile (4G). It is up to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardization body to assess this technology through the External Evaluation Groups (EEG), being one of them the WINNER+ project (Wireless World Initiative New Radio +). The Mobile Communications Group (MCG) of the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications, as a partner of WINNER+, is currently analyzing and proposing different techniques with the aim of optimizing the LTE-Advanced radio access network. This Master Thesis is part of this activity and, especially, on the comparison of Turbo (TC) and Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes for bandwidths up to 100 MHz. Results prove that both TC and LDPC codes are good encoders for those block sizes. The LDPC codes only entail a maximum 0.5 dB improvement as compared with TC. In addition to this assessment, a performance study of LTE downlink/uplink (DL/ UL) physical layer together with a calibration proposal for link level simulations has been carried out.Cabrejas Peñuelas, J. (2009). Evaluation of 3GPP Technology Candidate Towards Fourth Generation Mobile. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/27347.Archivo delegad

4G Technology Features and Evolution towards IMT-Advanced

Kiinteiden- ja mobiilipalveluiden kysyntä kasvaa nopeasti ympäri maailmaa. Älykkäiden päätelaitteiden, kuten iPhone:n ja Nokia N900:n markkinoilletulo yhdistettynä näiden korkeaan markkinapenetraatioon ja korkealuokkaiseen käyttäjäkokemukseen lisäävät entisestään palveluiden kysyntää ja luovat tarpeen jatkuvalle innovoinnille langattomien teknologioiden alalla tavoitteena lisäkapasiteetin ja paremman palvelunlaadun tarjoaminen. Termi 4G (4th Generation) viittaa tuleviin neljännen sukupolven mobiileihin langattomiin palveluihin, jotka International Telecommunications Union:in Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) on määritellyt ja nimennyt International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced). Nämä ovat järjestelmiä, jotka pitävät sisällään IMT:n ne uudet ominaisuudet, jotka ylittävät IMT-2000:n vaatimukset. Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-Advanced) ja IEEE 802.16m ovat IMT-A sertifiointiin lähetetyt kaksi pääasiallista kandidaattiteknologiaa. Tässä diplomityössä esitellään kolmannen sukupolven järjestelmien kehityspolku LTE:hen ja IEEE 802.16e-2005 asti. Lisäksi työssä esitetään LTE-Advanced:n ja IEEE 802.16m:n uudet vaatimukset ja ominaisuudet sekä vertaillaan näiden lähestymistapoja IMT-A vaatimusten täyttämiseksi. Lopuksi työssä luodaan katsaus LTE ja IEEE 802.16e-2005 (markkinointinimeltään Mobile WiMAX) -järjestelmien markkinatilanteeseen.The demand for affordable bandwidth in fixed and mobile services is growing rapidly around the world. The emergence of smart devices like the iPhone and Nokia N900, coupled with their high market penetration and superior user experience is behind this increased demand, inevitably driving the need for continued innovations in the wireless data technologies industry to provide more capacity and higher quality of service. The term "4G" meaning the 4th Generation of wireless technology describes mobile wireless services which have been defined by the ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) and titled International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced). These are mobile systems that include the new capabilities of IMT that go beyond those of IMT-2000. Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-Advanced) and IEEE 802.16m are the two main candidate technologies submitted for IMT-Advanced certification. This thesis reviews the technology roadmap up to and including current 3G systems LTE from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and IEEE 802.16e-2005 from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Furthermore, new requirements and features for LTE-Advanced and IEEE 802.16m as well as a comparative approach towards IMT-Advanced certification are presented. Finally, the thesis concludes with a discussion on the market status and deployment strategies of LTE and IEEE 802.16e-2005, or Mobile WiMAX as it is being marketed

Quantifying Potential Energy Efficiency Gain in Green Cellular Wireless Networks

Conventional cellular wireless networks were designed with the purpose of providing high throughput for the user and high capacity for the service provider, without any provisions of energy efficiency. As a result, these networks have an enormous Carbon footprint. In this paper, we describe the sources of the inefficiencies in such networks. First we present results of the studies on how much Carbon footprint such networks generate. We also discuss how much more mobile traffic is expected to increase so that this Carbon footprint will even increase tremendously more. We then discuss specific sources of inefficiency and potential sources of improvement at the physical layer as well as at higher layers of the communication protocol hierarchy. In particular, considering that most of the energy inefficiency in cellular wireless networks is at the base stations, we discuss multi-tier networks and point to the potential of exploiting mobility patterns in order to use base station energy judiciously. We then investigate potential methods to reduce this inefficiency and quantify their individual contributions. By a consideration of the combination of all potential gains, we conclude that an improvement in energy consumption in cellular wireless networks by two orders of magnitude, or even more, is possible.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1210.843